Updates: Books and Money

Back at the start of January, I wrote about money and what I thought 2018 would hold both in terms in income and outgo. Well, January is two days behind us and here is where things stand.

Combined groceries and household (soap, sandwich bags, shampoo) for January; $159.44. Of that, $147.60 represents food, $11.84 is what we spent on household items. So I came in under the $175.00 a month I dreamed about but was skeptical I would hit.

The surprise item was eating out. I commented in that earlier blog that we rarely ate out, which is true. That being said, we ate out twice (one lunch, one breakfast) in January. Those meals, along with two post-chemo fast food stops (so we both can get some lunch in us before Warren heads back to his office and I head home to unwind) and a cup of tea with a friend at a local coffee shop, came to a whopping $44.14 ($4.00 of which represented tips). Holy smokes! For us, that's a huge amount. (I'm not being facetious. That is a huge amount for us for a month, unless we are on the road to/from Mayo.)

However, I can say with pretty good certainty that the February figure for eating out (including take out) will be significantly less because in the last two weeks we also got to the bottom of my foot issues.  The MRI revealed a badly torn peroneal tendon in my right foot (it's around the ankle). Next Thursday I go into surgery to have it repaired. I will be housebound and non-weight bearing for a week, then back at work and non-weight bearing for three more weeks, and then in a weight bearing boot for another three to four weeks after that. There's not going to be a whole lot of coffee dates, let alone lunch or dinners out. (Let's face it: there will be ZERO coffee dates during that time!)

I'm glad the food costs in January were so low, because I have already shelled out a lot of money for doctor appointments, equipment, and my 2018 out of pocket (met) and personal deductible (almost met) for my medical insurance. Ouch.

Good thing there are books. Because reading is what I plan on doing that week I am housebound. Since posting my first ten titles of 2018, I have added to the list. To wit:
11. The Cliff Walk by Don J. Snyder (Subtitled A Memoir of a Job Lost and a Life Found, this was a reread)
12. Corazon de Hojalata/Tin Heart by Margarita Saona (the author's poems about her heart failure and eventual transplant, in Spanish and English)
13. So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (Read. This. Book. This is one of the 46 titles by women of color I referenced in my last book post)
14. Elmet by Fiona Mozeley (a deftly written, disturbing modern tale set in Yorkshire)
15. Planting Dandelions: Field Notes From a Semi-Domesticated Life by Kyran Pittman (quirky essays by a writer I first met in the pages of Good Housekeeping)
16. Reset: My Fight For Inclusion and Lasting Change by Ellen Pao (Pao fought her termination by a major Silicon Valley venture capital firm; although her lawsuit for gender discrimination was not successful, I read this book thinking "yeah, you lost the battle but you have made major offensive progress in the war.")

After finishing Pao, I started the massive (MASSIVE) tome, The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume I: 1940-1956.  For someone like me, who has read most if not all of the Plath biographies, having her letters published without extensive editing and suppression, has been a revelation. Kudos to Frieda Hughes, the daughter and only surviving child of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, for releasing this collection, which takes Sylvia from childhood to her marriage to Hughes. I feel like I am reading and hearing a Sylvia Plath whom I could only catch glimpses of before. Just reading her letters to Ted after their secret marriage gave me a whole new perspective on and appreciation of just how much in love they were and how from the outset they were each other's critics and editors.

The Plath letters weighed in at 1339 pages (not counting the introduction and forward). The book is so imposing and heavy that when I accidentally dropped it on my foot (my left foot, fortunately, not the right), I limped around for 20 minutes.

I finished Plath last night, bringing my 2018 totals to 17. I am two-thirds of the way through Matilda, by Roald Dahl. I have read very few of Dahl's books, including this one, so this has been fun. And as I type out these words, I know that there are three books at the library just waiting to be picked up and two more en route (from branches) that should be in later today or tomorrow. That should get me to the surgery next week and into my convalescence.

Onward to February!