Day Four

Good news!  Today we got paid our last paycheck for the school year.  Although this paycheck really only included one day of work, we got our regular amount!  Yay! We realized the amount of money we make is equally distributed throughout the 10 months of our contract, so no matter how many days we work, we still get the same amount paid!  Yes!  That totally changes everything!  I, for one, am not worried about making rent for the month, which is definitely exciting.  And since we aren’t spending any money right now, I’ll have some extra cash until my second job kicks in.  Corin is excited that she’ll have extra cash too, since she had missed her last car payment and had to pay twice this month.  Things are looking up :). On a different note, we’re not sure when we get paid for the summer hours we are putting in so that is another thing to we have to figure out.  Someone mentioned not getting paid those hours until August, which totally blows, but we’ll see.  Seeing that money in our bank accounts really put us in a good mood this morning.  

We’ve been doing really well not wasting food and reusing our leftovers.  For breakfast we each had an egg and some toast.  For lunch, we ate our left over bean enchilada casserole and salad and for dinner I made a potato, onion, and cheddar pizza and a greek salad.  It turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself (and Corin agrees).  After dinner we took a nice long walk around the lake and enjoyed the beautiful weather. 

Since we aren’t spending any money, I’ve been looking around to see what kind of free entertainment is around the area.  I’m signed up to this website Johnny FunCheap and they send me a list of all kinds of events around the Bay Area.  So we are set for fourth of July weekend!  There are so many free firework festivals and whatnot around so we’re excited to check those out.  Also, tomorrow is Oakland’s First Friday Art Walk and we’re going to that.  It’s my first ever art walk so I’m super stoked.  On craigslist I found an ad for a Bay Area talk show looking to fill it’s seats so I signed up to get some tickets and they emailed me the next day saying that we got some J.  Geez, it’s so easy finding fun stuff to do for free.  Forget about spending almost $12 bucks for a bad movie when you can be outside enjoying all the culture around you.

Day two and three

Day 2 and 3

Day two started out on a bad note.  When I woke up I realized that I had forgotten to pay my car payment for the month.  I usually schedule the payment at the beginning of the month so that I don’t forget only somehow I had forgotten.  I noticed that I had more money in my bank account than I had thought, but I just figured it was because I had been trying to cut back and that was paying off. I was wrong.  I immediately got on line to pay the payment and included next month’s payment as well.  I started to do some calculations and realized that I was worse off than I had thought.  I was concerned about my upcoming paycheck because we get paid through the school district and technically had only worked one day in the pay period.  I wasn’t sure if summer school would be included in the paycheck or if they would even remember to pay me (sometimes this happens).  After investigating the matter further (ie asking some other clueless people) I found out that I might not be getting paid for summer school until August!

Betty and I both tend to obsess about these things and the only thing that calms us is to look on craigslist for gigs and etcetera jobs.  It just makes us both feel like we are doing something about our situation.  We both take surveys to participate in paid studies and often reply to childcare ads as we are both in the business.  In my desperation I replied to yet another ad for a paid study. While I have done this many times throughout the years, this time I received a response.  They asked me to fill out an additional survey and then called me within a few hours to tell me I had a place in the study and an appointment for the next day.

Day three was the day I was going in for the study.  They requested that I not wear eye makeup or any hair product, so I refrained from this in the morning when getting ready.  After work Betty and I ate leftovers from the night before (tacos – from taco Tuesday Betty and Corin style), and I left for my appointment.  I was a little nervous when I arrived as I didn’t know what to expect.  Betty had been there a few weeks before, and she told me what would happen, but I was still a little scared and a little freaked out.  They had me sign a consent form and then wait in the lobby.  There were a few people waiting with me who tried to make small talk.  One of the guys was like, “are you here for the focus group?” (the same question he had just asked the other woman in the waiting room).  I replied that I was here for something else but nodded politely.  He seemed a little nervous too.  After a few moments a woman came to the waiting room door and called me in – it was very doctor’s office like.  I went inside where she explained that she was going to put a cap on my head, and then some leave-in conditioner under the cap.  She also placed sensors on my forehead and nose.  Once I was all hooked up she took me to a room where she asked me to perform a number of exercises.  For the first ten minutes I was a little tense and wondered what they could see in my brain – or if they could tell if I was nervous which made me a little more nervous.  After about 20 minutes I was done.  I collected my check and practically skipped out of there.  It was super awesome that I had earned as much money as I do in one day of summer school chasing after kids for four hours in just 20 minutes sitting in an air conditioned room staring at a screen.  

Day One

Today was the first day of the two weeks.  We decided to go shopping for some much needed groceries to help us get started.  First we made a list of staples for low-income living.  We knew we needed to have the basics, so that we could make many different things with the same ingredients.  The list consisted of the following:  Fruit, beans, eggs, potatoes, tortillas, milk, rice, bread and cheese.  We began by crossing off the things that we already had such as rice and milk.  We decided that we would try to pick up some greens if we could, but that we could probably find a way to scrounge more veggies later in the week by going to the docks at whole foods.  We talked about potential places to shop from Trader Joes to Smart and Final.  We decided that most of the things we needed could be found at the grocery outlet.  After spending the weekend in Pride festivities all we had left in cash between the two of us was $34.00.  With a wad of cash burning a hole in my pocket, we headed for the store.

We were both hungry (not a good idea when going to the store with such little cash), but we stuck to our budget.  We walked down every isle keeping a close watch on our $34.00 budget.  We put things in a "maybe pile" knowing that we may need to put those back if we ran out of money after we had gone through the whole store.  The beauty of the grocery outlet is that they have the weirdest stuff for cheap and sometimes you find things that are super yummy, but so obscure that they couldn't get rid of them fast enough in a regular store so they get sent to the outlet.  Our favorite finds of the day were jalapeño sour cream and jalapeño habanero jack cheese.  We also purchased four cans of tomato sauce for a dollar, 20 cage free eggs for four dollars and fifty tortillas for a dollar fifty!  In the end we spent $35.41 for a cart load of groceries (luckily we had $1.41 in change between the two of us).

Betty said that she wanted shepherd's pie for dinner.  Neither of us had ever made it, but we figured that since we both knew how to make each component of it, we could compile them without a problem.  Betty used taco flavored textured veggie protein for the base which we layered with half a red onion, frozen peas, frozen corn, and half a bunch of fresh spinach.  I made mashed potatoes adding a few scoops of the jalapeño sour cream for a nice kick.  We scooped it on top and added some parmesan cheese to the top ($1.50 - for a grated tub!).  We put it in the oven for 20 minutes and then in the broiler (Betty's new favorite thing to do in the kitchen) for four and served it up.  It was DELICIOUS!  The spinach was a little limp from the cooking, but still had a fresh taste and the colors were so much better than any other shepherds pie I had ever had.  It was wonderful.  For dessert we had some oranges dipped in dolci frutta.  It was a good start to our two weeks.

A little about ourselves...

We are Betty and Corin and we have a lot of bad habits.  We try our best, but sometimes our habits get the best of us.  One day, we decided we needed to try harder.  It all started after opening our fridge only to find that, yet again, we were throwing out too many rotting vegetables.  We decided that we needed to stop being lazy and eating out and start eating fresh homemade food.  Then came the first challenge.  We decided that for two weeks we would only eat whatever was in the fridge and pantry.  We couldn't eat out or buy any new foods.  This challenge led to the realization that we weren't bad cooks.  Our newly founded skills led us to create the "Ultimate Nachos!".  These nachos were covered in shredded cheese on top of a can of nacho cheese we had in the cupboard, jalapeños, veggie taco meat, homemade refried beans, olives, and Betty's homemade hot ass salsa.  Let's just say that after we demolished those nachos, we were regretting our gluttonous actions every time we had to poop.  This led to our next challenge, eating raw! 

After that horrible experience and swearing off nachos forever, we decided it was time for a cleanse.  For two weeks we decided to go raw.  All we ate were raw foods, nothing cooked or heated.  At first, we felt limited in our options.  I mean come on, fruits and vegetables all day, for every meal... gross!  We dreamt of hard boiled eggs and pizza, but we knew we owed it to our bodies to do this, especially after those nachos.  By the fourth day of our cleanse, we had purchased a raw food cookbook and were stoked to see all the yummy foods we could make and eat!  Our proudest meal were the raw tacos we made composed of homemade nut meat (which by the way was really good!), homemade nut cheese, and corn salsa, all wrapped up in lettuce leaves.  Though we discovered the health benefits of eating lots of fiber, it got to be too much after the tenth day so we decided to cut it short.

Although these challenges did not lead us to eating solely raw foods or never eating out, it allowed us to be more cognizant of the way eat.  It gave us new ideas on how to eat better, allowed us to explore our inner chef, and gave us a new perspective on how to deal with our bad habits. 
 
Once again, we are embarking on a new adventure.  This time we decided to blog about it.  It's summer and since school is out, we basically are out of work.  Luckily we are both working summer school but even still our hours have been reduced.  Our funds are running low and we need to make it through the next two weeks before our second jobs as nannies begin.  We have $40 to spend on food and entertainment for the next two weeks.  This blog will follow our two weeks trying to make it on the little money we have.