ready? Sunday, October 2, 2011

3-day Food Stamp Challenge groceries

I’m not prepared for this.

(Shawn, I stole your thought).  But it stayed with me for nearly a week.  I’m not prepared to be poor this week.

We spend our lives preparing for stuff.  Important stuff.  Mundane stuff.  Fun stuff.  Scary stuff.  Eventful stuff.  Beige stuff.  I’m an engineer so my stuff is prepared for in the form of a list, aligned just so and in order of importance.  Yes, borderline OCD but that’s the way we roll.

Sunday nights I prepare for Monday.  Monday morning, I prepare for Monday afternoon meetings.  During the meetings, I prepare for the next meeting (in my head, if I have to talk; on paper, if I just have to listen).   I plan my after work route home – whether it’s via the gym, gas station, grocery store, softball field – any and/or all before dinner and bed.  Not having children, I can only imagine the gym and softball game would be replaced by kid-like activities and 3 -5 more items thrown into the fray, just to make it real.

We’re preparing for Halloween and Thanksgiving will be coming soon too.  Christmas is 84 days away.  How many of you have your shopping done?  Not me.  I can’t bear to think about it.

Last week Sunday, I was preparing to do the Food Stamp Challenge for 3 days – Monday through Wednesday that week.  Right after masses, I was heading to the grocery store with $9 in hand to buy my food for my 3-days of fun.  I didn’t think much about it at the time.  Heck, I’ve done this for the past 4 years.  Every year we’ve gotten smarter about what options provide the best balance of nutrition with quantity so we aren’t wilting within ½ hour after a meal.  While it isn’t what I’m used to, it’s a repeat, a sequel, the B-side … nothing new, or exciting.

This year, I was not prepared.

Shopping on such a paltry budget is near impossible.  Well, it is if you try to interject some kind of nutrition into your diet – something beyond starches and bland filler food.  The first year I did this, I think by day 3 was when my pallor started turning a wet-cement gray and by week’s end, I was just about as sludge-like.

So, I charged into Pick-N-Save, ready to fill my basket and move onto the next 3 things on my to-do list – prepared to check off my afternoon and move on with my life.  Somehow time stopped for one and one half hours – yeah, really – as I wandered aimlessly around that dang store looking, thinking, figuring, calculating, looking, picking, pacing, looking …

I wanted to prove to you, heh, well, mostly ME, that I could figure out this $3/day living thing and do it healthier than ever. My take, in the photo above, is after one and one half hours of plodding and plotting; as healthy as I could muster and a handful of snacky, chocolaty stuff  (what a waste of $$ THAT was!)

All told, honestly I missed the mark by $0.15. Those darn snacks. Would you believe that little bag cost $1.43! I thought, next time, not a chance. But it sure tasted good! Yep, I’ll buy ‘em again.

I stirred up a huge pot of wild brown rice mix and black beans and those were my lunches and dinners for all three days. Had a handful of green beans each day for lunch and the apples for each breakfast. I was somewhat balanced – better than in years past – but it is absolutely, undeniably, completely, ridiculously impossible to obtain proper levels of nutrition – 5 servings of fruits and veggies per day? Yeah, right.  Anything fresh – herbaceous or carnivorous – is ex-pen-sive.

The three days left me with a grumbly stomach – not from (a great) lack of nutrition – simply from quantity alone. No dinners with friends, no glasses of wine, no grazing or snacking.

I wasn’t prepared.

And it left me feeling inconvenienced. Lacking necessities really is inconvenient. And is anyone really prepared for being poor? Eventually one may get used to it – in some ways – but I don’t think anyone can be prepared for being in need. It’s a crushing blow – more than a grumbly stomach – it goes far deeper – physically and emotionally.

I am one of the lucky ones. I humbly and gratefully acknowledge that. I have a job and a warm home. I can put nutritious food on my table. What these three days have given me is a sense of gratitude for what I have and the desire to share what I have with others – whatever I can offer, I want to give. Don’t think I am any kind of want-to-be-saint – I am a regular joe who is caught up in a zillion-mile-per-hour life and this “desire to share” was born from a mild case of selfish inconvenience irritation.

Doing the Food Stamp Challenge reminds me and makes my belief more determined that food is not a convenience. Food is a right. For all.

listening Wednesday, September 21, 2011

My friend is crunching right next to me. An entire kohlrabi of crunching. I hear ‘skwumcschk, skwumcschk, skwumcschk’ although a new SVU is blaring in front of me.
I spend my day communicating in one way or another. I get to talk about all kinds of things. I get to hear about a lot of things too. I am a repository for an assortment of goodies – details of which aren’t important – but liken it to heading up the complaint department while baking cakes and cookies.
I hear the radio on my drive in. I’m a station flipper, seeking music, the kind that brings back memories, smells, sensations, feelings and emotions from years gone by. When I get to work, I am surrounded by conversations – my bosses handle 98% of their business on speakerphone. I can hear my other two officemates, although the giggling and whispering is only one-sided. I hear people talking from across the office suite. In the main office, depending on the section I’m in, I hear WDRV – The Drive or Bob and Brian. I hear talk about Harleys, fixing cars, a show at Mad Planet, the weather … Nothing out of the ordinary from many other water cooler conversations, I’m guessing.
I hear all day long. But truthfully, I do not listen. How do I turn off ‘life’ to listen to what God has to say? Is He speaking to me through the din of my daily existence?
I’ve been struggling with what to write about this week. This past Monday and Tuesday, I did the Food Stamp Challenge, hoping for some kind of revelation. Nothing life changing, but something worth 2 cents. No luck.
But as I write, I came up with this hearing/listening thing.
I am hearing all day long but am I really listening? Is there a message somewhere for me?
In the unending hours I spend in my office, my focus is very task related – my calendar reminds me 15 or 30 minutes in advance of any meeting I have. An 8.5 x 11 piece of paper reminds me of the things I deem critically important that I complete TODAY. My whiteboard reminds me of the projects in progress and things I need to do to get to the next step. Post-it notes remind me of quasi-critical tasks that need to be completed, hmmm, in a couple days or a week. As you can tell, I have countless reminders of the ‘whats’, reward for completion being job retention and 5 more tasks!
Who has time to listen?
I need to find time because I know that God has something he needs to tell me. I need to learn how to listen – really listen – far beyond the speakerphones and whispering.
How do you do it? How do I reach that meditative point during a day of a million pokes?
God has so much to offer – even in a daily existence of chore-like due-lists. That is where He exists, in the every day, in our lives as we know them. We don’t have to change WHAT we do, we just need to listen a little more intently as we live our lives. I invite you to listen; listen every day and realize God’s grace and gift of the everyday lives we have.

One day of … Friday, September 16, 2011

I was hoping for something insightful to write about my day but I have nothing.  My writing juju is as empty as my stomach was at 10:30pm last night.

I was actually looking forward to my $3 day – a little test but one having a definite end.  All sorts of memories of the mini-challenges that make up this larger Challenge came back one thought at a time.  My first thought of note was when I was packing my breakfast (apple with peanut butter – est. $0.30) and lunch (hot dog (veggie) & large carrot – est. $0.81) was my nutrition was going to plummet when having to do multiple days of this.  It always did in years past.  I think one year my skin pallor turned this cement-like shade of gray.

This thought stuck with me I was packing my food;  I recall walking through the aisles at Pick and Save, getting to the cereal aisle and saying to Rich, “we aren’t even half way through the store and we’ve already spent $30!  We don’t have a single vegetable or piece of fruit, no milk for the cereal and no meat.”  So my apple and carrot were huge successes of my day.  Yipee!

I had lunch with a co-worker and had to explain my odd plate of food.  He thought it was some sort of hot dog based cleanse.  Thinking about it, I guess in a sense (sans hot dog reference) it really is a kind of cleanse, don’t you think?  He listened intently and from what I could tell, was intrigued by the entire path and pursuit.  Our conversation wound it’s way back to the nutrition dilemma for those on Food Share.   We talked about Type II diabetes – it’s exponential rise, obesity, Food Inc. – the movie, dollar menus, wonder bread and Hi-C.  I told him about my grayness back in 2008.  The physical woes trickled back and I swear I felt that dull headache that stayed with me for the last 4 days back then.  I took a huge bite of my carrot and scowled.  I don’t like carrots that much but it’s a coveted vegetable and it was affordable – $3 bag that had 14 large carrots from the farmer’s market.  And it was all I had.

After work, I went to the gym for a short time then had a softball game.  Guess who’s thankful for that carrot now!  When 7:30 gametime rolled around I would have killed for another carrot!

I ate my dinner consisting of a black bean veggie burger ($1), a small handful of mixed green lettuce ($0.50) and 8 triscuits ($0.30+).  By my calculations (I am an engineer – we like to calculate), I ate exactly $3 in food yesterday.  And did it pretty nutritiously too!

But that’s only one day and I know it shouldn’t be that easy.

I also thought about fasting and the depth of spirituality to which people realize when done over a longer period of time.  I feel pretty inadequate at my little attempt (and publicly writing about it – oy!) and could I … should I do something a little ‘more?’  I wonder if I could reach some kind of different level of something.  I don’t have the answer.  I was not on track to fast today, that’s for sure.  But it is a thought and I wonder, I wonder …

I just checked my calendar and it looks like next Monday and Tuesday will be the $3 happy meal days next week.  Yes, again, those days fit in well with my schedule.  (Sigh)  At least I’m being honest.

Anyone want to join me?