Omar - Finis

THE REMNANTS

The $2.69 was for TWO loaves of bread, by the way.  And not pictured are a partial can of coffee, a few tea bags and plenty of canola oil, salt and hot sauce.  I also had a couple of bucks left over, but wrote off one towards the Cheerios I bought through my mother since Costco charges a membership fee.  The other dollar goes towards the items I bought at a law firm cafeteria, since the firm probably subsidizes.

Something else not pictured, if you'll pardon the corny segue, is not corn at all, but a little bit of wisdom, and maybe some shame about how I normally live.

First of all, yes, $200 and water are enough to keep me adequately nourished for 31 days.

But more importantly, my family actually went on food stamps when I was 8.  I remember knowing we were poor, and that we therefore couldn't afford a great address or some of the fancier Christmas gifts; but having done the actual budgeting this month, I've only now sipped the brew that my mother had to drink for two years, though knowing it would only last a month and the lack of any children obviously made it very mild.  

In my previous post I mentioned a going-away party to which I'd been invited for this past Friday night.  At the time I had forgotten about a dinner party scheduled for Saturday night.  The former was at a bar/restaurant, where I would've had to order something, while the latter was at a friend's house, where I wasn't willing to go empty-handed.  Usually, attending both would be a non-issue.  But in that final weekend of the challenge, I only really had enough space in my budget for one of them.  So when Friday's blizzard shut the city down, I was like, "Thank you, Nemo!"  

Normally, I would've been disappointed.  Normally, I don't have to think twice about buying coffee at a donut cart, and so I don't think at all, wasting seven, eight dollars on meals I don't especially like, rather than bringing rice and beans to my job; something I now hope to do frequently.  

And I plan to thank God more often than I do.

Additionally, if you're wondering why I've finished before Dave and Mary, it's because I remembered that when I was a kid, we weren't able to magically not be on public assistance for weekend getaways; so I did my 31 days consecutively.  In other words, I WIN!!...  But, seriously, thanks to them for inviting me to do this.