feelings, finances, and friendship

thank you for your prayers and thoughtfulness during this trying time in my life. it’s been a wild rollercoaster ride the last couple of weeks. the clouds still linger, but tomorrow they should dissipate. i’m really hoping the weather clears up because we have a baseball game to go to; pre-season game between the Detroit Tigers and the Atlanta Braves.

 

it’s expensive to live in america. i’m reminded of that day after day. after living in tanzania where i spent about $100 a month for all my needs, i’m often overwhelmed by the cost of daily living here in america. troy and i live quite cheaply most of the time (with the exception of the truck.) our monthly living expenses including food (excluding the truck payment) are about $1,500. probably i didn’t need to list that, but i try to be tranparent on this blog. owning vehicles and luxuries like cable tv, internet, cell phones, etc. add up to the wealthy american life.

 

before troy and i got married, i lived without a dryer. my power bill was ½ of what it is now. is a dryer a need or a want, and could i live without using it? now that i have one, i’m not sure i would want to live without it. what else could we do without? because troy is on the road so much, our cell phones get used. i’m not sure i would be content without talking to him when he’s on the road.

 

eating out. troy looks at food much different than it do. i look at it as a source of nutrients that i need to maintain life. troy looks at it as a masterpiece. he needs to make the food into masterpieces. he’s not content with a bowl of cereal for dinner; that would be fine with me. i would be fine with a can of soup, and he needs to buy each ingredient so the soup is fresh and delicious. our pantry is filled with food  - troy says we have nothing to eat, and i see an endless supply of options. so when we go to grocery store together, troy wants to get all the extras to make the food tastes good, and i want to buy the essentials. most of the time troy and i can spend less money eating out with a coupon than what he can to fix a meal at home for himself. a meal for troy costs about 10 dollars a person. a meal eating out for troy and i with my coupons is about 10 bucks.  for instance, last night troy and i had swedish meal balls with cabbage and mashed potatoes from Ikea for $10.57. if we were to go to the store to create that meal, it would’ve been way over $10.

 

too often i forgot that cooking matters so much to troy. it has never been that important to my family. we eat because of necessity, not out of luxury. i didn’t grow up with lots of sweets or food which took hours to prepare. the biggest meal we ever shared was probably thanksgiving, which included a turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, stovetop stuffing, and maybe a pumpkin pie from the store. troy’s family makes nearly every meal into an event – with someone always pulled away from the family because they are tied up cooking. it’s odd for me to not have everyone sitting around talking while the turkey is cooking.

 

troy and the kids have had to adjust to making everyone sit together when we eat. it’s important to me that we all take 10 minutes during the meal where we get to look into each other’s eyes, and converse about whatever is going on. the kids are still adjusting eating together as a family, and the hard part is not being able to play with their toys during meal time.