Living Below the Line

Okay, I'm a little late with this blog post. (I'm sure you're all shocked.) Live Below the Line started today, and I will do a post about my meals later, but since I never did a shopping post, that's what you're getting now.

So with no further ado, here's what I'll be eating for the next 5 days:

Yup, that's all of it. Want some detail? Okay.

1 lb Whole Wheat Bread, $1.19

1 dozen Eggs, $0.99 (an AMAZING deal)

1 lb Frozen Corn, $0.89

1 lb dried Pinto Beans, $1.19

6 oz Tomato Paste, $0.39

10.5 oz Tomatoes & Chiles, $0.59

Here's my other AMAZING deal: 10 lbs potatoes, $1.79

And because I CAN learn from previous experience, SPICES!

From left to right, that's
2 tsp Salt, $0.01
0.5 tsp Black Pepper, $0.02
2 tsp Garlic Powder, $0.04
3 tsp Chili Powder, $0.06
2 tsp Onion Powder, $0.03
3 tsp Cumin, $0.07

It is allowed in the rules to figure the price per gram for spices and just count how many grams you need. This is the only exception to the "You must buy the whole package" rule. I converted grams to teaspoons, but I can show my math if anyone wants.

More math:
1.19 + 0.99 + 0.89 + 1.19 + 0.39 + 0.59 + 1.79 + 0.01 + 0.02 + 0.04 + 0.06 + 0.03 + 0.07 = $7.26
1.75% sales tax = 0.13
Total spent: 7.26 + 0.13 = $7.39

That means I have 11 cents left for the week. I suppose in case I need more spices or something. Not sure what else I could afford with that.

 If you'd like to sponsor me, I'm still short of my $150 fundraising goal for Concern Worldwide. You can sponsor me at my page on Live Below the Line. $1, $2, $5 ... it all adds up. Thank you!

(Deenie's not at her goal yet either. She's raising money for UNICEF.)

A Tale of Two Kitties

Cats! On the internet! Guys, I think this might turn into a worldwide trend or something.

(Okay, I think I'm funnier than I am. Still, I am talking about cats today.)




This is Tiptoe. She's my mother's cat. My mother would be willing to share her, but Tiptoe is emphatically NOT ON BOARD with that idea.












She did let me pet her in December. I'm pretty sure it was her Christmas gift to me.

This is her usual attitude towards me. That's a pretty extreme zoom. I'm sitting on the far side of the dining room. She's hiding in the hallway by our laundry room. The entire length of the kitchen is between us.





She's not doing well. The vet thinks it's either wet-form FIP (from her symptoms) or congestive heart failure (from blood enzyme levels 15 times the "normal" count). Or possibly both. At this point, the only thing weighing against the FIP diagnosis is that she's still alive. She's a tough kitty.

She originally came into our lives when she wandered up to my mom on our front porch. She was wearing a collar with a rabies tag on it, so my mom brought her in, thinking that we'd track down her people for her.

Turns out the rabies tag was 11 years old (Tiptoe was only about 3 at the time), and for a DOG. While we did originally call her Spare, in a completely vain attempt to prevent my mom from getting too attached, she stuck around. We decided that Spare was a bit unkind, so she was rechristened Tiptoe. She and Lilac (our other cat) (who was here FIRST) (Lilac insists on the second parenthetical), tolerate each other. They are not friends. In fact, Lilac is usually a bit of a brat to Tiptoe. My mother is refusing to acknowledge how ill Tiptoe is, but I think the fact that Lilac hasn't pestered Tiptoe at all in over a week kind of says it all.

The second kitty from the title is Seamus. He's my sister's new cat. Well, new-to-her, as he's about 3 years old and was adopted from Hinsdale Humane Society (where we also got Licorice, my late dog, back in 1983). If you're looking for a pet in the Chicagoland area, they're pretty awesome.

Anyway, this is Seamus. He's much more friendly than either of our cats.












No, seriously. MUCH more friendly. This was the first time he met me, when we were at my sister's house to (belatedly) celebrate her birthday. Which is Seamus' birthday too! They're clearly meant to be.






SO. MUCH. More Friendly. Okay, it's not the most flattering pose for either of us, but spontaneous chin-rubs from a kitty! That hasn't happened to me in years and years. Later that evening he fell asleep in my arms. I could tell because his purring got softer and softer until it finally stopped.



I haven't had contact with an actually FRIENDLY cat in so long that I was practically giddy, and that lasted for hours after we left Seamus. Oh yeah, and my sister. Sorry sis! You're definitely ranking second to your cat at the moment.

In non-feline news, I'm still fundraising for Concern Worldwide through the Live Below the Line challenge. And I'm hanging onto 98th place on the Top 100 Leaderboard for US fundraising. That's good and bad. I mean, it's awesome to be on the leaderboard! But I've only raised $75 so far. And although that's way ahead of my fundraising at this point last year, it's still a little disheartening to think that there are only 97 people in the US who've raised more. It's better than when I was in the top 30 though. I was up there for over a week.

If you'd like to bump me up the leaderboard, you can sponsor me here. My friend Deen is also doing the challenge, and her page is here. She's way ahead of me though: she's #67!

It's That Time Again

Who remembers this photo?

That's right, it's time for me to start fundraising for Live Below the Line again. In case you've forgotten since last year, LBTL is a global challenge where participants commit to spending only $1.50 per day on food for a five day period. I'll be joining most of the US participants from April 27 to May 1.

Live Below the Line is dedicated to raising awareness of global poverty and to raising money for charities that fight it. The reasoning behind the $1.50 per day is that about 1.2 billion (that's BILLION) people in the world live in extreme poverty, and extreme poverty is defined as living on $1.50 per day or less. To make it more manageable for participants, we only have to limit our food and drink budget to $1.50. We don't have to include shelter, transportation, medical care, schooling, clothing, and everything else in that amount. Whew!

This year I am raising money for Concern Worldwide (US). This is a charity that was started in Ireland in 1968. It was born out of the same conflict in Biafur that triggered the beginning of Medicens Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders. Concern Worldwide helps over 6.5 million people in 27 of the world's poorest countries. They provide emergency aid, nutrition assistance, safe water, education, help for people with HIV/AIDS, and skills training and the like to enable people to become independent and support themselves. If you'd like more detailed information, check out their program page.

Concern Worldwide (US) also has 4 stars on Charity Navigator, with a 95.92 overall rating (out of 100). That's the highest rating I've ever seen on that site (although I don't pretend to have looked through every single charity they rate).

So who's with me? You can sponsor me HERE. My good friend Deen is also taking the challenge, and her page is here. She's already raised more money than me though. You should sponsor me first. >_>

If you really want to help, take the challenge yourself! I'd be happy to share tips from last year's experience. I'm definitely doing things differently this year.

I'm So Excited!

(Did I earworm you? I've done it to myself several times now, so I'm only half sorry.)

Rafe and Taro are back!!!

I love Rafe and Taro. They are easily in my top 10 of all fictional characters. KD Sarge has published her fifth book in the Dream'verse, and this is the third one that features Rafe and Taro as the central characters. Now that they're settled on BFR and settled in their relationship, it seems like things should be a bit easier, but a mysterious someone who's bent on revenge can complicate the most conventional relationship. And Rafe and Taro don't have one of those.

I've read and reread all four of the previous Dream'verse books, as well as KD's short stories--some available at Turtleduck Press and some through the M/M Romance group on Goodreads. (You must be a member, but that's free and so are the stories.) I've spent decades reading murder mysteries written by a wide variety of authors. You'd think, after all that, that it would be tricky to completely flabbergast me, but KD managed it. Even when I had a Very Bad Feeling™ about Taro going off on his own, I was utterly surprised by what actually happened. I love a mystery that can fool me. :D

Official Blurb:

Buy your copy from Smashwords! (It's also available on Amazon, but Smashwords does handle the .mobi format that the Kindle uses.)

Want to read a few chapters for free to be sure you like it? Click here.

Or...

Are You Feeling Lucky?

Enter to win a free e-copy! Leave a comment telling me you want to be entered. On Sunday, January 4, 2015 (my birthday), I will use a random number generator to choose one lucky commenter. The copy will come via Smashwords, so the available formats are epub, mobi, pdf, rtf, lrf, pdb, txt, and html. Let me know which you prefer.

ETA: Winner chosen! It's the lovely Renee Noelle.

New Glasses! & My Live Below the Line Wrap-Up

            stodge*

                 stäj

                     noun

BRITISHinformal

                     1. food that is heavy, filling, and high in carbohydrates.

                         "she ate her way through a plateful of stodge"

                     2. dull and uninspired material or work.

So very much of my food fit both of those definitions during my 5 days of Living Below the Line. I did end up with a great quantity of food, but it was all bland, boring, and... well, stodge. By the end of the week, it was frequently difficult for me to make myself eat another meal of tasteless food, even if I was hungry. It got to the point where I didn't even feel hungry, although I was certainly exhibiting other symptoms of hunger like slowed thought processes, extreme lethargy, and a hair-trigger temper.

I'm glad I did the challenge. I met my goal** and raised $150 for UNICEF, which isn't a huge amount, but is definitely something. I developed more empathy for people who live on any sort of limited food budget, even if it's not so limited to qualify as the "extreme poverty" that the challenge is designed to emulate. I proved to myself that I actually could complete the challenge, not just think that I could complete it if I tried.

(Thinking is pretty much what I did last year.)

I am definitely going to do the challenge again next year. I've already started working on my shopping list and meal plan. It's going to be rather different. There WILL be spices; that's not negotiable. I need to start fundraising earlier, and possibly more aggressively. Only one third of my donations came from other people. That needs to change, especially if I raise my goal amount. It's not at all likely that I'll be able to work next year either, and $100 is about the limit of what I can scrape out of my already tight budget in a couple of months. Yes, I could just start saving now and donate that money next year, but it's important to me to give to other charities as well. I donate monthly to Feeding America. I support the Yarn Harlot and her family and team when they do the Friends For Life Bike Rally in support of Toronto's branch of People With AIDS. Doctors Without Borders usually gets a chunk of my charity budget. So I'm going to stick to taking no more than two months of my charity budget to help me meet my goal next year.

Living on such a limited budget also gave me a couple of ideas about local giving. There's a group, Addison Switchboard, that helps people who live in my town. They run a food pantry, among other services. I'm going to make a point of eliminating meat for a few days every month. I'll take the money I save from buying beans and the like instead of meat and use it to buy food to donate to them. My other idea is that I will choose the food I buy to donate Very Carefully, because I do want to get the most bang for my buck, but I also don't want anyone who depends on Switchboard for all or part of their food to be stuck eating nothing but stodge. Because that's a really terrible feeling, when surrounded by all the choices that our society and the media make sure that everyone knows about. Maybe nothing but beans, rice, eggs, toast, and potatoes would be easier to take if that was all I'd ever had or known about, but knowing what's out there, being confronted with ads for other food... well, it was really hard to take.

In completely unrelated news, my eyes have finally settled down from their diabetic shenanigans, and I have new glasses! It's SO exciting to be able to see clearly again after over two months of not.

front(ish) view

side view

Just ignore the weird smirk on my face. I absolutely Could. Not. get a decent picture. These are the best of over a dozen.

* definition from Google
** If anyone would still like to donate, you have until June 15. Here's my donation page.

Seventeen Cents

I figured out what to do with that $0.17 I had leftover from my grocery shopping for Live Below the Line.

Lucky that it's on sale this week. I was afraid that tax might bump it up to $0.18, but I got lucky.

Why do I need ramen? For the seasoning packet. My rice-and-kidney-beans-with-minced-garlic dinner on Day 1 was so bland that I had trouble eating all of it. Last night I added water to make soup.

I'm sure you will be shocked to hear that it wasn't a dramatic improvement. However, I am hopeful that adding a third of the Ramen seasoning packet will add enough flavor that I won't have to force myself to finish my dinner tonight, tomorrow, and Friday.

I don't know exactly what I'm eating on Saturday, but I can tell you that it will NOT have rice, beans, whole wheat toast, eggs, potatoes, or garlic in it.

Here's my Day 3 breakfast. It's difficult to crack open 2.4 eggs per day, so I have some days with 2 eggs and some with 3. This is one of my 3 Egg days. Thank goodness for a non-stick frying pan that lives up to its name! (That's American-style Toad in the Hole, in case you can't tell.)

Update on the beans: They're simmering away on the stove. They've been going for a couple hours at this point. I am NOT going to make the same mistake twice. Hopefully they'll be ready soonish.

(Did you miss the bean story? Check out my blog at the LBtL site. While you're there, I'm still looking for sponsors. Any amount will help - it's amazing how quickly little donations can add up. Deen's page is here, although she's already met her goal. Lucky! (Go Deenie! Excellent fundraising!))

Day One

Well, I've made my breakfast. What's that? Almost 11 pm is kind of late for breakfast? Why yes. Yes it is. I meant to have breakfast around 4 pm, like usual, but I had to boil the eggs, and then I wanted them to be cool before I ate them, so I started cooking the (dried) beans for my lunches this week. And then I had to mince all the garlic. And since I'd gone that far, I might as well make my dinners for the week (more dried beans) (and then rice).

So I got a bit of a late start. Luckily it's the first day, so I wasn't hungry at all going in. I think I'm probably going to end up skipping my lunch just because I have to be in bed early tonight. At least almost all of the cooking is done though. That will be a big help going forward. (Tuesday's and Thursday's breakfasts can't be cooked ahead.)

So, here's my Day One Breakfast. Posted a scant 59 minutes before Day Two starts for most people. That bottle is actually full of tap water (hence no label) because I buy 2 bottles of water per year and reuse them to death. And tap water is allowed without having to come out of the $7.50. So.

If you're feeling inclined to sponsor me, you can do so here. Deen's link is here. Thanks for reading/commenting/silently supporting!