Sometimes your days don’t go as planned. I thought I’d get up, feed the pets, and head to the Dollar Tree to get our foster kittens some sardines to soften their tender feline hearts.
The thunderstorm scared the cockatoo, and the rain must have slowed me down as I finished feeding the pets and having a coffee on the porch at 10 a.m.
But Sunday is the day of rest, so that’s okay.
I headed to the Dollar Tree and spent $9.
Three cans of sardines
1 small box of generic golden crisp cereal or “sugar crisp” as it was called in the 1980s
1 four-pack of individual boxes of cereal
2 packs of Chips Ahoy sandwich cookies
2 bags of Cajun gator dill potato chips
1 jar mayonnaise
Then I went to the Grocery Outlet where for $14.75 I got everything else in the photo. Now, note, this is all processed breakfast foods and various snacks as the teenager starts band camp tomorrow and I know she will need to get something in her system at 7 a.m. and she will come home starved.
So snacks. And cereal. And Pop Tarts.
When I got home the teenager and I decided to try the Doozie cookie bar and the Sour Patch Kid cookies.
The results were exactly as I expected.
The teenager loved the Doozie bar. It was a cookie dough bar— so if you love edible cookie dough this was a nice treat. I thought it was too big for one sitting, that the sweetness got to be too much. I’m sure the teenager disagrees.
Doozie Birthday Cake Edible Cookie Dough Bar
I purchased three of these for 29 cents.
Now the Chips Ahoy cookies, with Sour Patch Kids, were definitely a purchase for me. I bought them at the Dollar Tree.
They tasted like sugar cookies with candy in them.
Today started from the get-go with an air that everything would be harder than it needed to be. I’ll spare you my editorializing and stick to my main message.
The other night, the teenager turned to me and asked what happened with our recent cat litter order. Now with four cats in the house I have 30-lbs of cat litter on auto ship from Petco every three weeks. I actually had this order ship early and I upped it to 60 lbs.
Petco Customer Service
Fog
It shipped on July 24. Well yesterday I tracked it, as our five litter boxes are getting low.
The UPS tracking system said “receiver has moved.” Ummm…. I haven’t moved in 17 years and I have been getting this order for more than a year.
I call customer service. I had a very sweet, very friendly representative named “Jean” who didn’t sound American. She informed me she would file the appropriate claim about the missing package.
I quietly said, “and in the mean time, what about my cat litter?”
She placed a new order, free to me, that should arrive in 5 to 7 business days.
Three 30-lb containers of cat litter arrived at noon today. Kudos to Petco.
Errands and paperwork
I finally wrote the letters freezing my Planet Fitness membership. I don’t have a printer, but the teenager does, even though it is running out of ink. I shared the letter with her on Google docs and asked her to print two copies.
Why two copies?
Because even though my home gym is in Easton, some of my paperwork says it is Mount Pocono even though I have never even seen the Mount Pocono Planet Fitness. The letters need to be certified, according to the contract, so I spent $4.10 each to send two. It’s easier than finding out I sent it to the wrong gym.
I had $33 cash and 15 cents in coins when I arrived at the post office. I told him to give me a few stamps and if he could get the total to an even number I would pay cash. At 55 cents each, the math on making that work… well he gave me 14 and it came to $15.90.
He’s probably now thinking the same thing I am— that 2 more stamps would have been the number we wanted, $17.
Ah, well. I’m still not convinced this federal coin shortage isn’t a political move to force Americans into accepting a cashless society. I’m still pissed that we moved our currency away from the gold standard.
Review: McDonald’s Iced Coffee
On the way home from the post office, I stopped at McDonald’s again for a medium iced coffee and to get my free fries Friday medium fries. I had mentioned yesterday that the caramel iced coffee tasted like a milkshake more than coffee.
So today I ordered a medium iced coffee for $1.29 (and my free French fries with a side of spicy buffalo sauce). The standard iced coffee comes with cream and liquid sugar, which confuses me because I think it is also made with whole milk.
Well I ordered mine with no sugar. I don’t like liquid sugar and I don’t put sugar in my coffee.
When I took a sip, it was awful. My Nescafé is better. But once I started eating the French fries and the buffalo sauce, my searing tonsils didn’t have any problem with the coffee any more.
Perhaps I will have to drink all of my iced coffee plain and compare them all. Get one from Dunkin, one from Starbucks and one from McDonald’s.
This is how I think they would rank:
Dunkin’ Donuts
Starbucks
McDonald’s
So, I want McDonald’s to knock Starbucks down a peg as Starbucks coffee is bitter. But McDonald’s struck me as weird. We shall see.
Well, before we have the serious discussion about poverty and food insecurity in America, let’s get a bit of humor out of the way.
There is a good possibility that the teenager will come home from her grandparents’ house today, and having read this, scream at me (because she has hearing problems not because she is disrespectful), “You went to McDonald’s without me??”
But in all seriousness, I have put on ten pounds since March and most of it is “stress weight.”
Since I lost my job July 10, I havent been to the grocery store this month — except for picking up some instant coffee or a pack of toilet paper.
I received my last pay check July 17, and tomorrow there could be $400 in unemployment compensation in my account but this will be my first payment so we’ll see if the paperwork went through. It should, but the teenager’s father and some of his colleagues were furloughed in June and he returned to work this week never receiving a dime.
So while I have some savings, my financial stability right now is precarious and as the custodial parent as a teenager I worry about the future. Therefore I cling to my pennies.
I peeled the lunch meat, cheese and the tomato out of half a hoagie the teenager didn’t plan to finish because it was “gross” and made an omelet with it for dinner.
We have a small garden. We have some friends with gardens. I keep my non perishables well stocked, so while we may be only eating meat about once a week, we have food.
And most of my food insecurity comes from not knowing when I will have any income again. I still have about half my last paycheck in the bank and won’t even have to touch savings for another month. But my savings are meager, but from what I understand better than average for the typical American who can’t afford an impromptu plumbing repair.
But, you see, when I get stressed I want fast food. The more fast food I have, the more I want.
And with the ease of order ahead apps and the discounted prices, it’s hard.
I worked my way through college at McDonald’s. I worked there 5 years and gained a hatred of drive-throughs (how lazy and inconsiderate can Americans be ordering 8 Happy Meals all custom orders in the drive through) and thought I’d eaten all the McDonald’s I would ever care to eat.
At our McDonald’s, about 25 years ago, each employee working a full shift got a free meal: one medium soft drink, one large fry and one sandwich. At the time I didn’t each lettuce, so I wouldn’t typically get a plain McChicken as I don’t care for mayonnaise either. I would occasionally get a triple cheeseburger without the onions with extra pickle.
I hadn’t eaten at McDonald’s since those days and avoided fast food restaurants so vehemently that the first time my daughter got a fast food kid’s meal (at around six of seven) she exclaimed, “Mom! There’s a toy inside!”
All went well until McDonald’s came out with a stroopwaffel McFlurry. A close friend got me hooked on stroopwaffels before they became a thing in the United States. And then suddenly they were everywhere.
I’m a sucker for a stroopwaffel.
Even after 25 years, in a McDonald’s 25 miles away from my hometown, the lobby has the same exact greasy fast food smell that I remember. My uniforms and shoes all had that smell. The French fry grease smell.
Then my neighbor introduced me to the $1 beverage menu. I downloaded the app when I saw it was free french fry day.
And then I saw the McChicken on the $1 menu. My good old favorite. And it was slightly more boring than I remember it.
Fast forward to today. I ate two small meals so far today. A small whole grain pastry. Some cheese and goldfish crackers. I’m hungry. My daughter is away.
I regress you my blue collar roots and I know I can get dinner at McDonald’s for about $3. I know I could also get a $3 bagged salad, but that won’t have the protein of a big old fast food sandwich. I haven’t had fruits or veggies today. I have some lovely fresh Brussel sprouts, probably also $3.
But I cave.
Now if I really want to be cheap, I can get the $1 McChicken, a $1 large Diet Coke and I have a coupon for a $1 large fry. Except fries are really empty calories.
So ditch the fries. Then I could upgrade and get the $2 double cheeseburger instead of the fries and McChicken. But then I’m not using any coupons so I could swap the Diet Coke with the coupon I have for a 99 cent any size iced coffee. I select caramel.
But then greed and gluttony kick in, I upgrade the $2 double cheeseburger for a $3 triple cheeseburger, the same burger of my youth. I don’t need that much cheeseburger.
But I’m getting that much cheeseburger.
I also click on not one but TWO apple pies. One for me and one for the teen. $1.49. But we don’t need apple pie. I remove it.
But I’m a little heartbroken as when we were McDonald’s crew we would take the outdated hot apple pies, at pre-close, and place them on the trays that had to be for the Big Breakfast, and smother them with the soft serve before we emptied the machine. And then we added the hot caramel. So good.
But no apple pies. I exercised restraint.
But that triple cheeseburger with no onion and extra pickle was exactly as I remembered.
This was my first experience with McDonald’s iced coffee. It wasn’t iced coffee. It was more like a milkshake. Made with whole milk and caramel syrup the coffee was more like coffee ice cream. Not bad, but way too sweet and decadent to be iced coffee. Next time I’ll get one without flavor.
I know this rant doesn’t have much organization, but I realized today I was falling into the trap of many Americans with financial concerns or in poverty. There are so many cheap & tasty options out there that are so much easier than fresh cooking. And in food deserts, the cheap options of Taco Bell and the $1 McChicken are cost effective.
I have always known this truth, but I didn’t expect to be participating in it. I never thought I would revert to my fast food youth. But here I am.
Sometimes I am reminded of my age— when I think of those summers of my girlhood circa the 1980s, when Pennsylvania experienced temperatures that averaged in the high seventies/low eighties and for about 2 weeks every August a heat wave of around 85 degrees.
It also snowed a lot more, and I can’t say I miss that.
Now I won’t be naive enough to suggest this pandemic has been fun. Some people have gotten seriously ill, others have died. Luckily in my circle, those who contracted Covid-19 survived and none ended up in the hospital.
But as I said in the beginning of the pandemic, the Coronavirus has forced us to look at our health system, our purchasing habits, our supply chains, what we need and what we don’t. I have found a more relaxed pace of life, and while I have lost my job, I have found some inner truths that bring me hope. Perhaps that is where my naïveté lies.
Yesterday, I had a business meeting with my first client as a partner in Thrive Public Relations. Thrive is the brainchild of a friend— who has been searching for someone with media, print and editorial experience to complement his digital marketing, strategy and networking expertise. I have agreed to help him, and hopefully this will lead to some paying work that could help keep me afloat and allow me to rebuild my career portfolio.
I spent much of the last year as a grant writer, and would love to highlight some current public relations work to augment my grant writing potential.
So I was asked to attend a business lunch at Sogo Asian Fusion yesterday in one of my favorite environs, downtown Easton. I thoroughly enjoyed, despite the 95 degree heat, dining on the patio. It felt lovely to build an outfit, put on make up and head into the world.
Then later that evening, my propensity for stress-related binge-eating led to me eating most of a jar of “trail mix” — I put that in quotes because it had walnuts and almonds but was mostly butterscotch and white chocolate chips— that my blind friend Nancy gave me for Christmas. I had it on my desk at work and it was one of my possessions that Mr. Accordion drove to my house.
The teenager doesn’t like almonds. So she gave them all to me.
And then my daughter cornered me. She started reciting old bits from Brian Regan, one of my favorite comedians (from the golden age of the early 1990s, before I graduated high school and Nirvana changed the world).
Finally she got tired of her delivery falling flat and we spent an hour watching Brian Regan clips from YouTube on my phone. I grabbed a Diet Coke and finished the rest of the vanilla vodka from County Seat Spirits.
The teenager’s father, my husband of 20-years whom I separated from last summer, does not like stand-up comedy. But a good stand-up comic (like Regan, or Trevor Noah, or for those who have thicker skin and/or less sensitivities Denis Leary and George Carlin), can lift my darkest spirits. So I love the fact that our daughter inherited my taste in comedy.
And when I got up this morning, as mundane life started to overwhelm me with chores and commitments, Nan called.
The Mighty.com had published her piece on our summer picnic and shared it with Yahoo News. It features me, and the teenager, so I got to enjoy reading about my life.
I called Nan, my blind friend, during the weekend and said, “I have to get out of the house. Do you have time this week for a social visit? I have some customer loyalty coupons and specials for fast food— how do you feel about breakfast at Wendy’s?”
Nan has a pretty standard response to my phone calls.
“Ooooooooo,” she says.
We agreed I would pick her up on Monday at 9 a.m.
The teenager usually doesn’t emerge from her room until after 10 a.m. I decide to surprise Nan with a trip to Family Dollar, too.
I need a notebook for my volunteer role as Communications Director for Aspire To Autonomy, Inc., and for my notes as a partner in Thrive Public Relations.
Part of the fun of going to Nan’s building right now is the massive construction project they have going on. Her building has seven stories and they are removing the bricks on the south-most wall. The scaffolding they have is like an erector set for Godzilla.
Nan gets in my car, and despite the temperature already in the 80s and the humidity above 50%, I don’t have the air conditioning on in the car. The breeze is nice, the sun roof is open and the air conditioning is too cold.
We plot our order via the Wendy’s app— I order a small vanilla Frosty-chino (on special for $1) and the maple bacon chicken croissant (free with any mobile order). I want to try the chicken honey butter biscuit, too, but I can’t pass up free.
Nan orders the traditional sausage, egg and cheese combo. We order it on the standard bun as croissants can be greasy and flat and a biscuit might be crumbly. When you are planning a car picnic with a blind person, ease of handling is the primary concern.
We make hers the combo. We can split the seasoned potatoes and she gets an unsweetened ice tea as her beverage. Like me, Nan doesn’t like sweetened tea.
Our total for breakfast comes to $6.77.
We split the tab.
We drive over to Wendy’s, go through the drive through and discover that the Wendy’s parking lot has a lot of shade. Things we never noticed before the Coronavirus pandemic.
Surprisingly, the croissant is not a traditional croissant. It is square. This pleases me as I hate when fast food restaurants use American style croissants for sandwiches.
Nan’s sandwich appears to have a real egg on it.
I really like having chicken for breakfast as I am not a “breakfast meat” person. The maple bacon fills the whole car with maple scent. Nan finds it too strong. It tastes like table syrup.
Nan and I agree the potatoes are amazing. Nan reported that her sandwich was better than the average fast food breakfast sandwich.
“There eyes remind us that the challenge is still there.”
Lily Tomlin talking about Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe in “Gentleman Prefer Blondes.”
So many women. So many epiphanies. So many stories.
“They look free. You want to be like them. You want to do you.”
The word feminist is being replaced by specific struggles— equal pay, equal representation in film.
So many reminders that too many people are still not respected for who they are. So many things that have not changed.
Jane Fonda stating decades ago that a healthy society should be in perpetual change. Jane Fonda today. She talks about herself being “active” and “masculine,” because if you want to be a success, you have to be a boy.
But there is a power in being female— the activists say. Yet, your role as a female is to watch the boys.
Sometimes you have to reject what the world says, and trust your own experience.
And these women featured here had a broad range of experience in major 20th century events… McCarthyism. The Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima. Immigration. Civil Rights and Civil Disobedience.
Women tend to be the peacekeepers. Women understand the larger picture and the fabric of how it all interacts.
Oppression of women rooted in religion.
These women have so many important messages but they are strung together with a stream of consciousness thread that make it difficult to watch for more than a few minutes.
Yet many of the messages are deeply powerful. But like the “Becoming Jane Roe” documentary, it’s a tad dull.
I made it through 30 minutes, which makes me sad, because they have such good things to say.
But at the end of the post, there will be a bit of bad news explaining why I had said blizzard. But let’s focus on the good. Because that’s how I roll.
The teenager and I skipped breakfast and went to Dairy Queen for lunch with Nala, the Goffin’s Cockatoo.
The Drumstick Blizzard
The latest blizzard creation from Dairy Queen is the drumstick blizzard with chunks of deep fried chicken in ice cream. Just kidding.
In reality…
They crushed up bits of Drumstick ice cream cones and peanuts! So good. Very similar to a Snickers Blizzard but not as chewy. The ice cream cone pieces were crunchy and tasty.
And Nala enjoyed her French fries.
So now I have 503 reward points at DQ which is enough for a free 4 piece chicken strip basket.
What I struggle to understand is what is this super bendy straw for?
So, now the bad news… I was informed today that my last day with the non-profit agency where I work will be July 10. That’s why I had a Blizzard.
Here’s to the next chapter. I had a great time learning a lot of new skills in a field that was brand new to me. I had a lot of good experiences and made a lot of new friends and new connections. I look forward to finishing out next week with the team, and I wish the agency the best in the future.
Angel Ackerman 