If It's Wednesday, It's Dinner Out Day

At Costco! Seriously. I get excited for this. It's like that "Brady Bunch" episode where everybody gets dressed up to go to Sears. Costco's hot dogs are great, and you get one with a drink for $1.50. The pizza is terrific, too. A big greasy slice that reminds me a little of my New York days for $2. And my husband is hooked on the Chicken Bake, which is a lot like a chicken pocket and goes for $2.75. Sure, o.k., I miss the nicer restaurants, and maybe I wonder a little about the need for umbrella patio tables indoors and what's going on inside the handcranked onion chopper at the condiment stand. (I mean, who cleans those things? How long have the onions been in there?) But when it comes to dining out with the kids, where else can you get dinner for four for under $12? And did I mention churros? They have churros! If there's any sweetness in this recession, it's a Costco churro. (Now if I could just squelch the urge to stock up on everything from paper towels to salmon patties to underwear, Costco really would count as a give-up.)

Today's Give Up

I'm trying to learn to love tea. It keeps me away from Starbucks. I'm at work for 12 hours on Tuesdays, which used to translate to a three-vente day. There's a drive-through Starbucks near where I work, which was, in addict terms, enabling. The tea I went for today, though, isn't exactly Lipton. It's Tazo Awake. Which you can buy. At Starbucks.

Giving up is a process.

Recess!

A Latinate root is a Latinate root, but tell me, where's the recess in recession? Where's the fun? The joy? The rest? The other word works better: Depression. Depress. My parents used to tell stories about that other Depression, the one when they wore burlap underwear and played with rusty tin cans and slept eight to a bed and ate flour with bugs in it. "Bugs," my father used to say. "Goddamn bugs. And I ate them. And I liked it. God damn bugs." I hear him now, my father. "Where the hell are you going to be when the bottom falls out on you? You people don't know what it's like to go without." It was all static and cliche back then, my crazy father ranting about waste and folly and the price of haircuts and Campbells soup. "Who needs soup in a can? Make your own goddamn soup." Crazy. Well then. Every day it seems now I'm giving something up, choosing between this essential and that essential. How about you? What are you giving up? What will be the last to go? What matters most? What matters least? What's the difference between need and want, that ever-American question? "Where the hell are you going to be when the bottom falls out on you?" I think, if my father were alive, I'd tell him maybe the answer is I'd be right here, typing this, trying to make a little sense of what's happening, sorting out the choices one by one. Documenting and sharing, when I can, whatever it is I'll learn when I learn it.