“Desire is the root cause of all evil.” Buddha

I try to remind myself of this every time I see something that my avaricious soul desires.*

But it is so very hard to be good.

What I need is a little Christmas Discipline.

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I am currently enjoying a period of forced minimalism, otherwise known as being broke.

I have never budgeted. As a result, I have also never saved much money. I just let the paycheck drop into the account and spent said moolah on whatever I wanted and periodically looked to make sure I wasn’t dipping below the fill-line, so to speak, trusting that the bank will never run out of money.

But it did…for about three days.

November had five Thursdays in it.

FIVE!

Did you notice? I certainly didn’t.

Fun fact, our social security payment arrives on the last Thursday of the month. I auto-pay my bills electronically on or around the 25th because, usually, by then the check has hit the bank.

Unless there are five Thursdays.

Five Thursdays spells disaster with my current un-budgeted way of life. If I’m not careful, the money doesn’t quite stretch to cover the month unless I pay attention and not buy every indulgence that catches my eye.

I had no idea what a spend thrift I could be until I realized I couldn’t spend ANY money for three days.

I mean none.

I got through the days of parsimony and rue recognizing that I have some really bad habits.

It was time to enforce some strict discipline…

I looked at my love of fancy compressed curds and altered my favorite Thanksgiving side dish to omit the Grueyer and Emmenthaler cheeses.** 

Turns out, I might just need a cheddar-vention.

I have some expensive, thoughtless, habits that I now need to pay attention to.

A sudden need for a french fry fix makes me commit a fast food drive by almost without thinking about it. The doctor, at least, will be happy to hear we are cutting back on our deep-fried addictions.

The road to my personal hell is paved with indulgences that would make angels weep.***

So, I’m submitting myself to some long-needed tightening of the purse-strings.

I am become an acolyte for pleasure through self-deprivation.

All books will come from the library for the foreseeable future.

…Or a regional Little Free Library /black-ops drop site.

No more wine.

We won’t mention over-priced chai lattes that you can get at Biggby’s.

And I’m going to cut back on the diet cherry coke habit, though I worry I might actually kill somebody for a taste of the sparkling poison, so be warned.

I am now faced with the consequences of life-long bad habits. I must buckle down and pay attention to my finances and make fiscally restrictive choices. Or, find another way to make income.

Which brings me to my brilliant sub-theme.

My New Year’s Resolution will be to find out which of the following jobs is the least repellent way to bring in extra cash:

Will Humiliate for Food

I once read a profile on OKCupid for a guy who was willing to pay women to come out to California, dress in appropriate costumes, and humiliate him for hard cash. I’m not entirely sure if this one wasn’t an invitation to join a sex-trade, but maybe he has Skype?

Phoning It In

Sex phone operator. In which we find out whether I can suppress the giggles long enough to achieve a quasi-sultry conclusion. Also, where exactly am I going to do this in a house full of therapy techs and my ever-present child? I’m yawning the minute it hits 8:00 pm…this will take some thought.

Lashing the Page

Or, based on what I’ve seen while Googling images for this topic, there’s an aching void waiting to be filled in the Christmas-based sadomasochism/erotica market. Now how shall I plug that hole?

With such exciting job prospects, I’ll be sure to report back I am once more swimming in something festively green…hopefully it’s money and not jello with marshmallows on a pay-per-view fetish site.

Oh, and could someone remind me in the third week of January that the month has five Thursdays?  Thanks.

Asterisk Bedazzled Footnotes:

*Which, at Christmas, means everything. My inner child is a window-shopping glutton.

**For those interested, here’s the recipe: Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good

***It doesn’t make angles weep–which is what I originally wrote–but then I decided the heartless bastards would just laugh for 90 degrees in their corners until it was no longer funny or acute. How obtuse!

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