Aug 5, 2009
The Daily Poverty Party
Welcome to Bossy’s Poverty Party, an online support group for reining in spending, getting your finances in order, and climbing out of debt. Everyone basically knows what steps to take, but it is nearly impossible to climb that mountain alone.
So every day nearly every day over the next year, Bossy will use this space to report her spending and missteps, along with cheap recipes, savings tips, and suggested tricks and goals.
The above photo was taken at a local grocery store, just a stone’s throw from the entrance to Bossy’s campground. The wine selection, always on sale, is a big reason Bossy agrees to sleep outside and poo in a communal restroom for ten days.
One of the many other benefits of camping — right up there with sleepless nights spent in a tin box while lightning crashes a short distance from your exposed clearing — is the savings associated with being able to cook all of your own meals.
Bossy and her family cook all but a couple of their meals the entire vacation, purchasing the ingredients at the local market and, you know, cooking them up. Please excuse Bossy’s inability to describe anything, as the above story about lightning is true, except add the part about how Bossy also didn’t sleep the night before due to a campsite neighbor who chose three in the morning to break up with her husband.
Anyway, ingredients beat restaurants any day. Sweet sweet restaurants who deliver the perfectly prepared food directly to you and are responsible for cleaning their own egg-encrusted cutlery.
What was Bossy saying?
Check below for the list of blogs already participating in the Poverty Party. And don’t forget to comb the comment section for links to entertaining Poverty posts across the web.
–>So if Bossy buys 8 bottles and saves $1 each time, she gets the 9th bottle free. Right?!?
http://www.WebSavyMom.com
Hokie Deb? Bossy likes your style.
Now don’t be a tease, Bossy. I am waiting for the blow by blow post of the breakup at 3 a.m. in the morning. I am picturing a woman packing up her camp site in the dark all the while saying, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
Beringer also makes an awesome, CHEAP wine. Except that by cheap I don’t mean “cheap”. Just inexpensive.
Audubon Ron is completely crying in his chicken salad sandwich and Vlasic kosher pickle over the notion that Bossy has reached the rock bottom extreme impact of poverty, wondering what will become of Bossy and her family. The image is unbearable.
When Bossy is forced to pay $8 for a bottle of Fetzer Merlot, which is not even in NAPA, but second rate Mendocino county, not even in Mendocino the town, Audubon Ron’s favorite town on earth, but like way up in the hills past the redwood trees in the county; and where Bossy is forced to buy a bottle of Fetzer that is not stored on its side to assure the cork is getting moistened by the wine content inside; and where the look of Bossy’s face tolerates knowing it is very possible the cork could go bad and wine could in fact be oxidized causing a flat lifeless vinegary flavor; and where the image of Bossy being forced to drink the bad wine and show strength and courage in front of the kids; makes Audubon Ron want to gouge his eyes out. I am to be spared nothng? Is there no end?
Was that a bottle of Smoking Loon Cab to the left for $9?
Dear Audubon Ron,
Mendocino misses you. Please come home. Bring Mandals.
Love,
Mendocino (not that inland county crap)
Dear Foolery, say it isn’t so. Beam me up. Can we get a snort at Ole’s Whale Watching Bar at the Little River Inn and then head up to the waterfall at Russian Gulch?
I love campground fights! We are about to go on vacation ourselves and I can only hope that we encounter some kind of cool altercation (hopefully it will involve hookers and Vegas).
http://bitterkat.com/bk/2009/08/how-much-will-this-road-trip-c.php
I for one would need lots of bottles of wine to camp especially in a storm!
Dear Audubon Ron,
Sure, as long as you bring those Mandals. Peace sign must also be firmly in place on your bumper. Blue-green algae snacks — bonus!
Love,
Foolery
(sorry, BOSSY — I’ll stop playing in your sandbox now)
Does BOSSY know you can buy wine preservation systems at REI sporting goods? They are pretty handy to say the least, I love mine. And I don’t camp!
http://www.rei.com/product/781836
I too am thinking about the 3 a.m. Breaker-Uppers. Not grasping camping, I’m wondering: if she already had an inkling she really didn’t want to be with the dude, WHY did she agree to go to all the effort of going camping? Or, is it just that camping takes a perfectly stable relationship when conducted in a home, and throws live pinching lobsters into the tent, so to speak, because it’s … camping? Not to diss camping, you understand.
Here’s my awakened in middle-of-night vacation story, but it happened in a hotel. With thin walls. Loud, enthusiastic female voice, calling out very rhythmically: “Oh. Jimmy! Oh. Jimmy! Oh. Jimmy!”
We lurked in the hotel corridor the next morning, hoping to get a glimpse of the athletic Jimmy and his appreciative partner. No luck.
But now when something particularly wonderful happens (as, the steak tastes just perfect, or the wine divine) we look at each other and say “Oh, Jimmy!”
Audobon Ron: no, to the left is that nasty Manage a Trois from I don’ t know where… (foolery: the sandbox is here for everyone to play in, it happens other places and makes it more fun! check out the really fun blogs and you always find them-just NO FIGHTING)
I am amazed at Bossy’s love of camping. I haven’t done it since I was 25 because the wood was too wet and we couldn’t cook, or a bear came into the campsite and scare the livin’ bejeezus out of us, or I got poison oak, or a yeast infection or my period or all of the above at the same time (no make-up sex for me!). I really don’t like tending to personal health issues in the woods!
Or maybe it was the traveling 1000 miles on a motorcycle in October in between camp sites that really got me…
My understanding was that it wasn’t the break-up at 3AM that kept Bossy up, so much as the ensuing reconciliation that may have rivaled the legendary Jimmy in it’s fervor and intensity.
Noticing that I just used “it’s” instead of “its” makes me want to gouge out my eyes with a penknife.