More reckoning

Monday:
$15 for counselor

Tuesday:
$3.50 for coffee

Wednesday:
nothing

Thursday (it may've been a party day (because, really, what else):
$34: rum & Bailey's
$12: cupcakes
$3: coffee
$15: appt with psychiatrist
$10: treats for class

Friday:
$50: accidental thrift store splurge but oh, *so* good (four new shirts for when I am employed again, a skirt for same theoretical context, pants, two zip-up hoodies for the unemployment, a slip that will turn into a dress when layered with other slips, one pajama-y top, and four small bowls in the design that I like and pick up at thrift stores)
$6: ice cream for dinner party I was invited to

It looks splurgalicious, doesn't it? And it is, obviously, since more than $1 went out most days this week. But it was how the stars aligned to celebrate my birth, fate, uncontrolled, absolve me fellow tightwads, for I have sinned, etc.

I am also in the midst of materialistic cravings made no better by the appeareance of birthday presents. More Target shoes* and perhaps that shelving system from Pier 1, but only if I can spraypaint it a red/orange. A bathing suit top.

* Remember when I told you that you would set up these neuroses, but you would eventually have to make exceptions in order to live, because humans are corporal and have to eat and such? One of these areas, for me, is shoes. I spent the worst of my tightwad years, the decade or so between when I had expendable income of my own and when I started on medication, buying shoes almost exclusively at thrift stores. And then one day the rains of Prozac lifted the haze of neuroses and I decided to spend money on a pair of new shoes (actually, I think it was required because I was to be in a good friend's wedding and thrift stores are not reliable for appropriate shoe choices on demand). But unfortunately, I am not reliably normal in ways either physical or mental and my shoe size had gone from being the smallest carried at most shoe stores to not carried by almost all. And thusly I held my breath when plunging my face into the pool of neuroses in the area of shoes whenever I have come across the few that meet the triumvirate demands of fit, price, and aesthetics.

Perhaps there is a magic of triumvirate of demands for any given purchasing decision. Three that can be considered in any situation; any more, and you might be paralyzed, but any fewer, and you might be a spendthrift. This must be pondered further.