Friday, November 14, 2008

Bottom line

Like many these days, I have avoided looking at the bottom line of my bank statements. And like many these days, when I did look, I was shocked, and then scared. That’s a big chunk of our retirement gone, or, looking at it another way, many more years of working and less playing than I was hoping for. For some, it is dreams that are lost, for others, it is much more.


I think that those who choose to plug into the media are a bit worse off, as both journalista and advertising moguls try to get more blood from an increasingly dry stone. I had the opportunity break my usual television fast during my annual translation pilgrimage this year. I wanted to see election returns: my hotel room screen blared images of hope (the three big networks), and rheotric forecasting gloom and doom (my first encounter with Fox news). And yet, I still needed to eat every day, even as markets crash and foreclosures loom around me. And I still need to eat, even in a hotel. Navigating a restaurant menu is always a challenge, and after a week, I had exhausted the possibilities and was into reruns.


As is usual for these events, I am happy to return home, in spite of the things that may have piled up in my absence (though Darling Husband does hold down a fairly tight fort and is easy to come home to). Without a TV blaring canned messages, I am free to think about things and make up my own mind. Without a grueling conference and meeting schedule, I am free to respond to my and my family’s more human needs. Without the confines of a restaurant menu, I am free to eat as I wish.


And joy of joys, my inbox was replete with good stuff: an invitation to a birthday party, an invitation to what promised to be a congenial work party at school, and an invitation to join a box scheme from a local farmer. I found it easy to say yes to all of them.


And so yesterday, I picked up carpool kids and a huge crate piled with muddy potatoes (scads of them), carrots, parsnips, cabbage and kale, intoxicatingly fragrant bunching onions and a handful of sweet pears and apples. And it is good news for our bottom line: even with an unfavorable exchange rate, this bounty of local and organic produce, farmed by people we know and have broken bread with, cost us less than $30. I shall go to the market tomorrow, and invest in a $15 chicken, and improve our bottom line for the week.