Of cucumbers and cash

It is a relaxing, lazy Saturday morning. My stomach is feeling better so I can genuinely enjoy a cup of coffee. I'm probably also feeling good because last night I finally did all my dishes, I even put them away, and I decluttered several piles. It was about time.

I've been neglecting my chores for far too long, doing only the absolute minimum, feeling unmotivated. I kept wanting to get my mojo back, but my best motivation (or threat, depending), having people over, was missing. The Universe, however, is magnificent and gives you what you need: In my case, a cucumber.

A preference for the grocery store's plastic shopping bags in the bad weather, and laziness when I got the shopping home, meant a pile of half-emptied grocery bags. Things for the refrigerator and freezer got put away, but everything else stayed in the bags. Which meant that if I wanted something I knew I'd bought, I'd have to hunt in the bags for it. Which is how I came to disturb the bag that had the cucumber.

The stink hit me at the same time as my realization that I had left a perfectly good vegetable to rot. Cucumbers are 90% liquid anyway, and a lot of that was now filling the bottom of the bag. The foul stench was starting to fill my apartment. Well, there was my motivation. I had to get off my butt and get the garbage out of my house, the bags emptied and them and their contents put away, and once I was on that roll, I also tackled the pile of mail - no, the two piles of mail - and caught an important bill on time (the first payment on my new computer; I don't want to make a bad impression) and went over January's bank statement.

Having caught up on my bills, I discovered I will have only NOK 800 left in my debit account to tide me over until payday February 20th. It has been a long time since I have had to watch my cash flow. The reason this time is that I have two big credit card charges to pay off (one from last year's summer vacation and the new one for the new iMac) and in my eagerness to do so, I forgot that January's paycheck also had to pay the TV license.

My first impulse was to transfer funds from my savings account. My next one was to put that off for as long as possible, and instead enjoy the game of making the money last. After all, this is what I tell people is typical Sag financial behavior: If we have to make 5 dollars last two weeks, we will. If we have 500 dollars to spend in two days, we will. So instead of dipping into the savings account immediately, I will see if I can't resist temptations and stick with what's in the debit account.

Too bad. I really wanted to buy a new garbage can for the kitchen today.