Having found out that my husband is just one paycheck away from unemployment, I did a cursory survey of the contents of my fridge. My semi-hoarding ways will guarantee us at least a couple weeks or more of meals.

Freezer contents include: a Costco-sized bag of potstickers and another bag of Safeway brand that I hadn’t remembered I had when I bought the huge Costco bag (that goes without saying); a bag of homemade eggrolls from my dear friend Anna (the absolute best around); one pound of Italian sausage; one bag of orange chicken; a package of Nathan’s hotdogs; two top round steaks; a half-full bag of breaded shrimp; a package of four smoked sausages; two potpies; a bag containing a few turkey meatballs; four six-ounce size rolls; an already-opened bags of chicken nuggets; a pound of ground turkey; and a few packages of chicken breasts that I had previously washed and divided into about 1.5 to 2-pound packages. There was other miscellany, but nothing to write a blog about.

In my cupboards, which I didn’t quite get around to inventorying thoroughly, are jars of red spaghetti sauce and alfredo sauce; Korma sauce, with which to make curry; ramen noodles; several packages of pasta; a jar of pesto sauce; walnuts and cashews; plenty of rice–basmati, jasmine, and long-grain varieties; tuna; canned clams; one box of pasta mix, a few boxes of rice mix, and a package of easy-to-make stuffing; canned tomatoes; and more.

Just off the top of my head, I can come up with quite a variety of meals to make with what’s there or by adding a few fresh ingredients, including chili, beef stroganoff, spaghetti, hotdogs, chicken curry, beef and broccoli, linguini with clam sauce, spaghetti with sausage and spaghetti with meatballs, cashew chicken, walnut chicken, tuna casserole, and all the meals that the frozen foods will provide. So, we’re in pretty good shape.

This will be a good experiment to see how long we can go without stocking up. I do see a Costco run in my future, however, but that will consist of more inexpensive spaghetti, pasta sauce, and the other nonperishables that Costco is famous for and which often last months at a time.

Today is my husband’s birthday. We will make an exception from eating at home and will take our youngest child with us to dinner. I have a restaurant.com certificate worth $25, which I bought for $10. We have to spend at least $35, according to the certificate’s terms, and we have to leave an 18% tip and pay the tax, but I think we may be able to get away with spending another $20 or $25 in addition to the 10 I’d already spent. That should be fine for three of us. I’m glad we’re able to do something, but it’s kind of sad that we’re having to coupon and take our son with us, when we would ordinarily go to a nice restaurant with ambiance and have a glass of wine with dinner. Ordinarily, even if it’s a prix fixe meal, it would be something special–and more than double what we’ll be paying tonight.

But that’s life. When you’re dealt a blow, you duck or swerve to the side or you get knocked flat out. I’d rather swerve off course for one birthday dinner. I’m just thankful that I stockpiled enough food to make it through the next few weeks. The fancy restaurant can wait until we’re celebrating my husband’s new job offer.

My younger girl, an adult of 23, is planning to fly the coop this coming month. She and a friend are moving into a rental house just a couple blocks from my older daughter and her roommate. It’s hard to believe that I have children this old and this self-reliant, for it seems not all that long ago when all four kids were itty-bitty babies, dependent on their mother for every little need. But just as I began to wax nostalgic for the good old days, I got a taste of new-mommyhood again.

We adopted a puppy a week ago today. He’s an adorable golden retriever with a friendly, happy disposition (when he’s not trying to bite every little shred of our being). We’ve  had a puppy before–a medium-small mixed-breed dog–but somehow I blocked out all the bad stuff of the adjustment period the minute I laid eyes on Woody. I guess it’s kind of like childbirth. If we were to remember the excruciating pain, we wouldn’t ever repeat the process, some of us three more times.

An inevitable part of the dog-owning program I also finally had been able to push out of my mind was the day we had to put Sammy down. On that day I vowed to never get another dog. But life goes on, and here I am with another needy creature looking to me to fill his every need.

I’m not going to lie. Not wanting another dog wasn’t just about the sentimentality of losing Sammy. It also had to do with my all too keen awareness of the amount of time, devotion, and expense a dog can be. (Doesn’t it always fall on the mom?) Sammy had been a pretty easy pup, too,  as far as upkeep goes. He didn’t eat a whole lot and he was healthy for most of his lifetime. He was also an outdoor dog and, I’m almost ashamed to admit, was easy to ignore at times. Fortunately, he was content to be outside in the beautiful Southern California sun. Who wouldn’t be?

But for whatever reason (was it  being pressured by one of the kids or was it a midlife crisis?), I went against my own fine common sense and took on not just another dog, but a helpless puppy that would one day become a large dog and one that, according to its breed’s nature, will need companionship on a daily basis.

For the past week, it’s been like raising a newborn again. The whining, crying, and attachment are there–especially in the first two days and nights–and the near-constant supervising is exhausting. He needs to be caged in the kitchen (his nursery?) for the time being until he can get used to a crate (his crib?). He also needs to be housebroken, which is quite a lot like potty training a child.

Things are getting better and Woody is adjusting well to his new home, but it’s an awful lot of work. He’s a cute puppy, as all babies are, but I look forward to the day when the little guy is able to make decisions on his own and need me a lot less. Every living creature eventually becomes autonomous. Fortunately, it comes sooner with pets than with kids.

I must say that when I heard that a good number of retailers were opening at midnight on the Friday after Thanksgiving or, worse yet, on Thanksgiving Day, I was furious. For one of the least commercial holidays to suddenly be all about commercialism and getting a leg up on Christmas shopping (because isn’t that what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown?), was nothing short of sacrilege in my eyes. But the rich had found a way to get richer and the workers, pulling in a mighty eight to ten bucks an hour while being pulled away from their family dinners, be damned.

I have to admit, I like me a good bargain. I work too hard and save too hard to squander what I have, so when a day like Black Friday comes along I try to take advantage of the sales. No, I’m not one to camp out in front of the Best Buy several days in advance in order to pocket the latest big-screen-TV  (and then turn around and sell it on Craigslist), but I’ve been known to get up before the sun shines to at least get a bargain appliance or the latest video game for my kids at discount prices. It had become a bit of a tradition for me as well to slip out in the dark of morning before the kids had yet stirred and returning soon after they rose.

And that’s one tradition I was happy to continue until Black Friday became Black Thursday this year. Upon first hearing of the change, I was stunned and wished that this experiment would fail. I don’t have the data yet on how it went for the major retailers, but from my own observations it was a bust.

I woke at my usual 5 a.m. today and I did get out of bed, but I couldn’t bring myself to shower, dress, and make my way out in the shopping world. So, I went about my usual morning routine and when everything I needed to do had been accomplished, I decided to get a firsthand look at what had become of “the first shopping day of the Christmas season.”

What I found made me flabbergasted. Pulling into my usual mall parking lot, I observed the same number of cars I would normally find on any given Saturday morning of the year. I was even able to take my favorite spot in the lot. Inside the Target store it was much the same as outside–some shoppers milling around, but no one making mad dashes for the dozens (and I mean dozens) of leftover $19 DVD players or the stacks of discounted DVDs, video games, clothes, toys, and games. Carts were not filled to the brim. Shoppers were carefully thinking through their purchases and anyone who needed to check out was able to pull up to a checkstand without a wait. Reverse the reel to last year when the line to the checkstands snaked in and out of the aisles of the baby department and nearly three-quarters of the length of the south wall of the store.  Carts were overflowing with bargains such as $3 toasters and $3 coffeemakers, neither of which was offered this year. In fact, most of the deals were not steals.

Maybe the crazy shoppers who don’t mind camping out at the front door had come and gone long before I entered the store (and that’s likely the case), but there was still way more merchandise eight hours after opening than typically clears out in just an hour of most other Black Fridays.

I’m looking forward to hearing the stats on just how well Target, Walmart, Macy’s and the like fared on this Black Thanksgiving. I’m hoping for a turkey.

I’m not one to get into the newest fads or social networking trends, but I might be able to get into Twitter. I understand it kind of works this way: You just post some random thought of the day (or hour or minute) about basically nothing. I guess that’s a change from Facebook, where people post random thoughts about absolutely nothing. I haven’t looked into either one much, so maybe they’re very much the same. But I digress.

There are so many times each day when I am in a situation or am pondering some random thought when it hits me: I should write this down! But where’s the pen and paper or advanced android-enabled 7G device when you need one? So of course in 0.4 seconds the fleeting thought flies through my mind (Is that why they call it Twitter?), never to be thought of again.

Take today, for instance. I’m sitting outside my son’s school at pick-up in my hot car (hot as in uncomfortably warm, not hot as in Ferrari 458 Italia), with the full afternoon sun on me when I realize that the driver of the car parked kitty corner to me has black-tinted windows, is parked in the custodian’s driveway between two red curbs, and has her engine and air conditioner running even though the sun is streaming through the empty passenger-side window (or would be if the window weren’t tinted) and not the driver’s side. Now, mind you, if she doesn’t mind paying for the gas, which at this writing is $3.85 a gallon, that she’s wasting while sitting in her Acura SUV (which, I’m assuming gets as bad or worse gas mileage as my Toyota), so be it. It’s her decision. (That she’s spewing emissions from her tailpipe and a/c unit is a discussion for another day–or Twitter post of another day, if I ever get on board.)

But what bothered me is that she was parked in the custodian’s driveway (between, as I mentioned, two red curbs) because she was what, too privileged to park in a regular parking space? Now, mind you, Friday is a difficult day to park at the school. I’ll give her that. It’s trash day, so the street’s curbs are littered with empty trash cans. But there’s a simple solution to the trash can situation. It’s called getting off of your lazy butts and moving them up off the street. For God’s sake, they’re empty. And on wheels! How much easier could it get? And if they were moved, there’d be plenty of spaces to park along the curb. 

In fact, I had done just that. I stopped my humble Corolla, put it in neutral, set the emergency brake, opened my door, stepped out of the car, wheeled the nearest can off of the roadside, and resumed parking my vehicle. That took about 15 seconds–and I’m being generous. Ms. Acura had arrived at the school before I had, so the parking space I ended up in–which could have fit two SUVs–was available when she pulled up. But I suppose it’s too much of a hassle to have to get down off of those plush leather seats to move a filthy trash can out of the way in order to park legally. Am I right?

And if that’s not enough, when the car parked in a legal space in front of her pulled out, she moved up into that space, even though a woman in another vehicle was waiting patiently for that very spot. I don’t know what runs through people’s selfish minds these days. Definitely something to tweet about.

Oh, and then there was the woman parked behind me at school yesterday who thought everyone wanted to hear “Rocket Man” blasting from her stereo . I was in the middle of a Bill Bryson essay. I was trying to read, OK? That shouldn’t be too hard to do while sitting in a vehicle on a typically quiet street by myself. But no, this woman must have thought a thirty-nine-year-old Elton John song was entertainment desired by everyone within earshot. Now, of course, it wasn’t Eminem or Ludacris or some rap act that some people might find objectionable, but it was music being played louder than necessary while I was trying to read.

And then, just the day before that. . . . Never mind. I’m just going to tweet the rest.

I just returned from one week away in Oregon. My best friend of 36 years lives there with her small family: a husband and young son. It was just three of us on the trip this year: my husband, my youngest child, and I. I worried that I’d be stressed about leaving the rest of the kids (all working adults) home, but once I became immersed in the majestic pine trees, the crashing coastal surf, and the sea otters, I didn’t think about home much at all. 

Having just one not-so-active child, our friends have a much slower pace of life than we have. They aren’t chauffering their son to ballgames, to music lessons, and to friends’ houses. They don’t confer with him on what he wants to eat for dinner, how much video game time he would like (there’s not even a game player in the entire house, for that matter), or when he feels like coming home from his friend’s house so he can get to his chores and homework; they set the pace and he follows along. In other words, he fits into their lifestyle instead of the other way around. How refreshing is that?

Unfortunately, our life is the “other way around.” Once soccer season, followed by soccer season, followed by baseball and lacrosse season, with another session or two of soccer season sprinkled in gets going, our kids’ lives dictate not only what’s for dinner (typically something frozen or fast), but when we eat, when we sleep, and when we get up in the morning.

I long for a slower-paced life where I can drive 55 on the freeway instead of 70, where drivers use the passing lane to actually pass, where people take advantage of warm, sunny days because they know the rain and cool weather is just around the corner. I want to live in a place where the competition is halved.

At one of the children’s museums my son and his friend were playing at, several other boys around their ages asked if they would like to play together. So they all joined in. First it was a game of hide and seek inside a giant Erector set maze, then it was tag. No joy sticks, no remote controls, no TVs or computers were necessary. Just add boys between the ages of 9 and 12 and an area in which to run and hide and you’ve got yourself a couple hours of fun.

I noticed too that none of the boys was wearing designer jeans or skate clothes, which are so popular where we live. I couldn’t recognize a single brand of shirt, shorts or shoes on those children, and that’s the way it ought to be. Competition seems to be a way of life here that even children are forced to join in. I say let kids be kids–let them play without electronic gadgets and let them wear clothes that their friends won’t envy.

I so enjoyed the trip that I hope to take many more before our son and our friends’ boy are too old to want to hang out together and do simple things like play hide and seek and watch movies at night. I’m also hoping to one day be able to pursue a slower pace of life, one in which the air is fresh and clear and there’s plenty of time to breathe it in. Let the rat race continue, if need be, but I’ll be watching it from my rear view mirror.

I think I first saw the “no bad days” bumper sticker on a car in Hawaii. I wish I could share the philosophy. Of course, if I lived in Hawaii I probably could. Today, however, in this heartless metropolis I had a bad day. The entire family had a bad day, in fact. My husband was stuck in traffic for four hours, for one.

As for me, the day started normal enough. But then a plan I had went unfulfilled and so I decided to run an errand in the short amount of free time I had. I needed to exchange a pair of running shoes at a department store. This was my second time making the trip. The first time I discovered when I got home that in the box was one white sneaker and one gray. I couldn’t make an even exchange, I was told, because I had paid for the more expensive gray pair, so I had to find the match to the white one. With the assistance of the shoe clerk, I had a matching set, or so I’d thought, until I got home, tried them on, and discovered that although the colors of the shoes were now the same, one was a B, or medium, width and the other, a D, or wide.

So, a week went by until I could go in. And, you guessed it, the other mismatched pair was nowhere to be found. And there were no others of this type in my size, so I came home empty handed. (Somewhere in a neighboring community a woman is thinking to herself, “My, that right shoe is so much tighter than the left!”)

All right. Not the end of the world there. But then I had to gently encourage my son to figure out a schedule of classes for his first semester of college (I lied, I yelled). It was his day to register online, and the classes go fast.  Mind you, I never had to do this for my girls. They just knew what needed to be done and when. They figured out a schedule and myriad possible alternatives in case their desired courses were filled. Once they had what they needed, they then asked me to put the credit card info in, and, just like that, they were registered. My son, however, waited until the last minute to even figure out which classes are recommended for his major–or for any major, for that matter. So, I was in a scramble-bamble to help him determine what was necessary. And of course, being this day and age and trying to enroll in a public junior college, the pickings are extremely slim. There isn’t enough money to pay enough professors to fill the need for the students, so the students suffer. We all suffer. Especially me. Today. I was on my last nerve, in a panic, trying to help him out, while simultaneously working on two assignments, which are timed. Picture the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Picture me being trampled on said floor.

And if that isn’t bad enough, in the middle of it all, my son looked out the front window to see a meter man (or whatever the male equivalent of meter maid is) getting back into his buggy after leaving a parking citation on my van–the van my son drives and had parked with the front bumper one foot over the red curb. A curb that was painted only at the prompting of a neighbor who wanted another feuding neighbor to stop parking his and his visitors’ vehicles all over the cul-de-sac. So, within the next thirty days, if and when I can find the time, I will have to send a letter off to the city to fight this ticket. The city will probably be reluctant to give in, being that it’s an institution that gets funding from the same people who won’t allocate enough money to the colleges in order to provide enough classes for their students. Sometimes I just want to pack it up and move away. But what state isn’t suffering like this one?

I’m guessing Hawaii.

I think myself unfortunate at times to not have all the accoutrements of what has become today’s middle-class lifestyle, but for the most part I realize how fortunate I am to have the objects–and especially the people and the peace of mind–I do have in my life. I’m not a risk taker and neither is my husband. The few risks we have taken have paid off, but they were well-thought-out plans, not impetuous, off-the-wall decisions. I can say I’d rather be this type of person and maybe not have all the stuff, all the fun, and all the adventure that others have in order to live a lifestyle I can trust will be there tomorrow, and the next day and the next.

One of my dearest friends just called me up to say that she and her husband are facing foreclosure. He had taken a huge risk by stopping to pay the mortgage eighteen months ago in order to force the bank’s hand into setting up a loan modification on a house that has lost nearly half its original value. The risk did not pay off, obviously, and my friend is faced with having to uproot her family to a temporary residence before her husband (he’s the one who makes all the financial decisions without even consulting her) can acquire a loan to buy a less-expensive home. As I said, the value of the houses in their once-promising area have halved in the past six or so years since moving in. The area that was once in the works to be an inexpensive enclave of homes away from two very big cities, where families could buy 3,000-square-foot houses for $300,000 to $400,000–at the time, half of what they were in the two nearest big cities–went belly-up. Losing jobs during the current bad economy, the homeowners who moved there five or six years ago looking for that steal of a deal are now walking away from those very homes, because many of them didn’t have the money or the good credit or the dependable jobs to pay for loans in the big cities in the first place. Banks were eager to lend to these property virgins in order to make a sale.

My friend’s husband, ironically, did have the money to pay off the original loan, and yet he was willing to play with the bank in order to try to get them to reduce the mortgage to current market values. He had thought it was wise at the time. Now the decision looks extremely foolish.

So, my dear friend may very well be facing the biggest move of her life, packing up her two girls and the beautiful home they have containing all the fine things in life (a baby grand piano, flat-screen TVs, a Wii, granite countertops, nice clothes) because of a foolish decision made by her husband.

If taking risks means possibly gambling away my lifestyle, my well-being, my kids’ stability, I’ll happily stick with the devil I know than the very real, risky devil I don’t.