09.29.2008 - 4:10 p.m.

Last night I dragged the crock pot out from the bottom of the pantry and made jambalaya.

I always forget how much I like cooking.

I had music on, so I danced between the counter and the spice rack, the spice rack and the refrigerator, the refrigerator and the sink. My fingers still smell like garlic and onion.

I'm doing this--the jambalaya, chili later this week, some other things I can make with cheap meat, break into servings, and freeze--so we'll stop getting Wendy's every night we haven't thought to shop. Takeout is $6 per person and up, while cooking is more like $2. And we eat out a lot, particularly if you count the microwave meal lunches for almost as much as a combo meal, so I figure regular use of the crock pot will cut about a quarter of the food budget out. Maybe even a third.

That's the only thing I've really figured out, though. I can cut back on my phone plan, too, but after that, there's not much fluff left. After that, it's time to redefine fluff until it includes all of our current forms of entertainment, and most of the freedom of having two cars or being each other's only roommate. I don't care what standard of living you have; redefining it is never easy.

I walk through my house at night without flipping the light switches, ghosting through the dark, trusting the cats not to be where I step. Feeling the night's breeze instead of the AC, and trusting the house to still be ours in the morning.

I suppose I'm reacting better than I did the first time, when I acted like the world was ending just to spite me... but only just.

-stonebridge

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