The complicated cost of my hair cut

My good friend TL cuts my hair.  She's a terrific friend, and she's an even better hair cutter.

(She's also my running boss, leading me 8 miles up and down hills last weekend, and threatening me with 10 miles this next weekend.  She runs like Tigger, bouncing along on her toes, never seeming even remotely tired.  I'd curse her peppiness if I weren't a total sucker for everything TL, but the truth is, I'm totally under her sway).

Last Saturday as we got toward the end (huff-puff) of our run, TL mentioned that she's taken up swimming in a regular way.  So much so, she said, that she'd started looking at swim suits.  In stores.  She said this, and then she paused.

And I knew, of course, what she was asking with that pause.  Because of course, I don't go to stores.  And I know how to get swimsuits for cheap.  In fact, I just happened to have about 4 decent suits in my drawer that I'd bought for  $1-$2  each.  (Two of these pairs -- the expensive $2 ones, I'd bought with the tags still on from a development yard sale.  Neighborhood yard sales in places where all the homes have vinyl siding -- that's the place for all sorts of excellent booty!)

With four suits sitting in my drawer getting no use in the pool, especially now that the school year has whomped me, it's a joy to be able to share with TL.  So the next morning in church (limping along after the grueling workout she gave me), I handed TL my smallest, newest suit.  Not the one with leopard spots, though, because even though I don't get much chance to wear it, I love that leopard print suit.

The swimsuit isn't a payment for my latest hair cut; it isn't a barter; it's friendship.  It's sharing.  Our back-and-forth is the best kind of what Robert Putnam calls "social capital", the ways that investing time in relationships and community makes us richer in ways that are sometimes hard to measure, but sometimes very clearly financially advantageous.

Still, it set me wondering:  if I *had* made a "you-cut-my-hair; I'll-give-you-a-swimsuit" kind of a deal, then how much would my haircut have cost?  What would my payment to TL have been?   From my point of view, a max of $2.  That's what I spent on the suit after all, and given how well-stocked my swimsuit drawer is, I'm unlikely to feel the need to buy a "new" one anytime soon.   From TL's point of view, probably much more, because stores sell swimsuits for $30, or $50, or even $60 (at least, from what I could see on line).

Did I hand her a $2 bill that turned into a $50 bill once it touched her hand?

135: Variations on a theme

This week, being a little more hectic than I had planned for, I did no grocery shopping whatsoever.  The husband had his own grocery-fest to the tune of $99, bringing home bread and spaghetti and plastic bottles of this-and-that.  I admit I was too distracted to pay attention to the this-and-that.  This brings our grocery average to $135/week for the past 25 weeks -- a new Miser Mom low.  But next week will see a huge bump:  turkey kielbasa arrives on Tuesday.

What is it like to eat in a household where we haven't been doing much shopping?  There's been a variety of very plain dinners, if that even makes sense.  Eggs.  Chili.  One night where we just ate peanut butter sandwiches, with-or-without jelly.

J-son put away the food like the teenage boy he is.  One night, he ate 3 potatoes, a tuna fish sandwich, the leftover spaghetti, and a bowl of soup.  When he asked for ice cream, I suggested he ought to get some vegetables, too.  I'd cooked up a large batch of kale to feed the crew later in the week; maybe he should have some of that?  Too late, he told me.  He'd found it in the fridge earlier in the day and eaten the entire pot of it.  

With the weekend, a bit more sanity arrived . . . or so I thought.  I found, to my surprise, a pair of kielbasa links in the freezer, and so I put them in the fridge to thaw in time for dinner.  But come dinner time, they were the slimiest, limpest sausage links I'd ever seen.  How on earth did that happen?  I spent some time trying to figure out whether the meat was salvageable . . . and finally I realized that the kielbasa was actually a pair of bananas.  Oh.

My vegetable lovers help with the beans.  

On the other hand, when I started getting all our CSA vegetables cooked up and ready to eat for the upcoming week, I had a surprise of a different sort.  The kids begged to be allowed to help.  In fact, I first turned N-son away, but he pouted at not being allowed to snap green beans.  What was I thinking?  We blanched more kale, plus chard and corn and green beans, all in record time.

A variety of plain things.  Every number bigger than 5 (so said Lagrange, a famous mathematician) can be written as the sum of at most four squares.  My new low weekly grocery average would do Lagrange proud.  135 is the smallest number with seven (count 'em, 7!) different ways to write it as the sum of four squares:

1. 135 = 1*1 + 2*2 + 3*3 + 11*11
2. 135 = 1*1 + 2*2 + 7*7 + 9*9
3. 135 = 1*1 + 3*3 + 5*5 + 10*10
4. 135 = 1*1 + 6*6 + 7*7 +  7*7
5. 135 = 2*2 + 5*5 + 5*5 + 9*9
6. 135 = 3*3 + 3*3 + 6*6 + 9*9
7. 135 = 5*5 + 5*5 + 6*6 + 7*7

Life cycle of clothes

I've seen clothes from five different stages of the consumer life cycle this past week.

Clothes Scene 1:  The Store.
On Tuesday, I went to an Outlet Mall.  To a national chain store named after a chasm or an abyss.  This is (for me) highly unusual, of course, and in my defense, I'll claim it was my friend's idea.  (Ever since Adam and Eve invented blame, we pin our sins on other people, so I'll blame my finger pointing on the two of them).

My friend suffers from a yucky degenerative disease and is confined to a motorized wheel chair, so I admit that yard sales are just not easy for her.  The whole getting-the-wheelchair-in-and-out-of-the-trunk routine took a lot of strength and time, and so even going to the mall was an adventure in ways that I hadn't appreciated until Tuesday.

But being in the Chasm Store was a wild experience for me.  Row upon row of nearly identical clothing . . . wow.  Price tags way, way, way above what I've paid for clothes in the last decade, even though Everything-but-Everything was marked "40% Off!!!" with big red signs.   The Friend, shopping for birthday gifts for her grandson, would hold up a pair of pants and ask, "What do you think of this? Is it worth the price?"

We ended up purchasing three small outfits that, folded up together, took up less space than a football.  The Friend paid about as much as I spend all year for all our clothing combined.  Her grandson is 3 years old.  This, I do understand, is normal.  I know that.  But it still depresses me.

Clothes Scene 2: The Yard Sale
As mentioned, this past week's yard saling brought in a bodacious haul.   The haul includes fresh air shopping (whether we want that hot, humid, fresh air or not).  Piles o' clothes for cheap.  A distressing lack of predictability in the hunt, for good or ill.  But likewise, darned reasonable prices, and the virtuous feeling of keeping clothing from heading into landfills, at least for a little while longer.

Clothes Scene 3.  The Rescue
I made some highly satisfying patches in my husband's bicycle shorts -- complete score, because new bike shorts cost an arm plus the leg that would have gone in the shorts.  I also fixed my son's backpack (technically not clothes, but I used my sewing machine, so I'll count it anyway).

Clothes Scene 4:  The Release.

K-daughter piled up a bunch of her soon-to-be-former clothes in a box of goods we have bound for Haiti. But I pulled them back out of the box and re-directed them to local charities.  My own trip to Haiti last December was a clothing eye-opener; despite the giant piles of rubble and trash that seemed to be everywhere, people wore incredibly new-looking and surprisingly clean clothes.  I'm not so sure they want our gently worn cast-offs.  We'll send toiletries instead.

But, as another friend K pointed out to me, local charities don't really pass all your clothes along to people who want to wear your clothes.   As Elizabeth Cline, in this Slate Magazine article describes, "Most Americans are thoroughly convinced there is another person in their direct vicinity who truly needs and wants our unwanted clothes. This couldn’t be further from the truth."

Our clothes become rags; they travel overseas; they're sold by the pound; they go back into the earth to molder.  A far, far cry from the glossy, sanitized, regimented rows of the giant outlet mall, of course.

Clothes Scene 5:  On the body
I wore my clothes this week.  This is hardly a revelation.  But I just wanted to remind myself that our belongings aren't supposed to own us; we're supposed to own them.  So in this complicated mish-mash of shopping and buying and mending and releasing, it was a real pleasure to put on some of my favorite dresses, to feel like the clothes made me look good, to feel comfortable or professional or dressy as the situation demanded.  To use what I own, and use it well.

And really, that's the point.

Decrepitude and Disrepair

Just as I was repeating this mantra to myself --  "I will NOT complain about being busy.  I will NOT complain about being busy.  I will NOT complain . . . " -- my husband asked, "Do you hear that awful noise the car is making?

No, I didn't hear that noise.  Two days later, my husband said, "The noise is getting worse.  I think it's a wheel bearing problem; you should take it in to the shop."  I love my guy.  I humor him.  So early the next morning, my Trusty Mechanic welcomed me in.  He pushed me for specifics:  What kind of noise is it?  (I don't know; I couldn't hear it myself.)   Where is the noise coming from?  (As far as I can tell, it's coming from my husband).

Trusty M. took the car out for a spin and came back with good news and bad news.  The good news is that my husband is right about the car.  And the bad news is that my husband is right about the car.  So Saturday I'll get to spend a few more hours with the Trusty M. while he replaces a pitted wheel bearing. I will NOT complain about being busy.  No, my life is rich and full.

I was reminding myself that life (in particular, mine) is rich and full as I returned up and pulled up to my garage . . . but no amount of button pushing would open the doors.  Those doors -- they've been cantankerous for several years, and my son-in-law-to-be has urged me to let him replace them.  By good fortune he stopped by that very evening, and I moaned and whined to him.  And, sweet guy that he is, the very next evening he'd replaced them.  This took really almost none of my time, although the doors that my car will drive through cost three times as much as the wheel bearings it drives on.

Work emergencies.  Back-to-school nights.  My life is rich and full.  And just when I was thinking, "Tonight while my husband is working late, I'll get to finish that goshdarned report I've been waiting on!", instead I had kid meltdowns.  And dog disobedience.  And then, when I went to push the "start" button on the dishwasher . . .  nothing.  I pushed it again, and got nothing again, only more emphatically.  Drat.  Another repair.  More time, more money.

But what's keeping me busy -- er, I mean, full . . . to overflowing -- is mostly things.  Piles of paper.  Machines.  Stuff, but not the important stuff.  It's okay to wash dishes by hand with my sons, to have a car (rather than a person) get sick.  It's okay.

But, still, I know I'd feel better if I just finished that goshdarned report.  

81 dimes: a Math Panic

My yard sale coin collection
 in a canning jar with a funnel

All winter long, I save up dimes and quarters for yard sale season.  Last Saturday, I was out-and-about with my quarters in my left pocket, dimes in my right, when I happened upon a family selling some DVDs I thought my boys would like, $1 each.

When I started counting out quarters and dimes to pay her, the woman's eyes lit up.  "I LOVE dimes!" she gushed.  We talked long enough that I knew she meant it, so after I paid her (in dimes), I emptied out my right pocket, handed her all the rest of my dimes, and told her I'd be back after I checked out the yard sales further up her street.  She could count the dimes and give me dollar bills in exchange.

When I came back, there was a small pile-up of shoppers on her porch; she hadn't had time to count.  She handed the dimes to her husband who counted them out in front of me.  And then [watch it: here comes the math moment], he got a stricken look and asked, "that's 81 dimes.  Um, how much money would that be?"

How much money is 81 dimes?  You might expect that I'd rant about the stupidity of not knowing the answer.  But I want to take the opposite view; that the guy could figure out the answer, but he had a very common attack of Brain Freeze.  A moment of Math Panic.  It happens to us all.  You've had Math Panic.  I (who teach math for a living) have had Math Panic.  We all have Math Panics, at times.

A burst of Math Panic can be expensive.  It can be expensive on the large scale:  you get a sales pitch from that guy selling time shares and don't realize until later that his math doesn't match your budget.  It can be expensive on the small scale:  you're at the store and your friends are waiting, so you grab the more expensive barrel of pretzels by mistake because the pricing is so complicated.   A recent study by marketing professor Michael Tsiros at the University of Miami School of Business shows that this kind of grocery store math-anxiety-ignorance costs shoppers a lot of money.

My dime exchange interaction had all the ingredients leading up to the big brain freeze.  

• First of all, it was an unexpected problem, one that was sprung on this guy last-minute.  Almost nobody (but me) carries a pocketful of dimes around, so he hadn't been thinking about dime-to-dollar conversions at all.  
• Secondly, there was an audience for his math: not only was a crowd milling around, but I was standing there, staring at him.  It's very hard to think about both people and numbers at the same time, and for most of us, people win over math.
• Third, there was time pressure.  He felt like he had to answer right away, because I had already been waiting a little while.  

All of which says, if you're faced with a purchase that has math involved, you should know that Math Panic Happens.  If you can prepare yourself for the math beforehand, fabulous.  But if not, do everything you can to give yourself more time and to get away from the observant eyes of other people.  Tell the salesman you need to go home and think about it.  Tell your friends you'll be there in 5 minutes, and send them off to look for root beer.

And most of all, don't let that moment of Math Panic be your boss.  It's easy for us all to think we're just too stupid to handle certain problems, to let that sense of stupidity define us and establish the way we do things.  I remember once freaking out over my taxes.  Finally, I realized, "Miser Mom; you have a PhD in Math.  If you can't do taxes, nobody can!"  So I took a deep breath, slowed down, and did those taxes with almost no problem.  Just, slowly.

In the same way, we can all decide that the moment of "Oh, shoot, I don't know the answer!" is not the real us.  The real us is someone who is patient, persistent, and smart.  That arithmetic:  just do it.

Yard sale scores

Thrift stores.

They are just too pricey.

Because if you're good (or at least, persistent) at yard sale-ing, you can wind up with weekends like this.  I spent a total of $5.50 at Saturday's yard sales, and I got

• 2 pairs of boy's shoes
• 1 pair of school shorts
• 2 pairs of boys' pants
• 4 shirts
• 2 jackets
• 3 DVDs
• a kitchen scale
• a metal canning funnel
• salad tongs
• an alarm clock for J-son
• 30 new wooden pencils
• a flip-flip toy (my favorite score of the weekend)

Of course, the difficulty with yard sales is, they're erratic.   This weekend was awesome; last weekend the yard sales were basically non-existent (although I did find a complete set of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books for just $1.  That was a total SCORE!).

Yard sale clothes are gender biased.   I've had my eyes peeled oh-so-carefully for long-sleeved shirts that the boys can wear to school.  No luck.  Girl's clothes, on the other hand, are everywhere.

Yard sales are also age biased.  If you're looking for infant or toddler clothes, yard sales abound in good merchandise.  If you're searching for teenager clothes . . .  well, you and Diogenes (who wandered around Greece searching for an honest man) can wander a little while longer yet.

This is to say, I'm probably going to have to go to those expensive so-called-thrift stores sometime this fall to round out my boys' wardrobes.  Drat.

$136: reaching new lows

I've been keeping track of grocery spending for 24 weeks -- not quite consecutive weeks, though.  So it surprised me that it's possible at this point to reach a new low average:  $136/week, for 24 weeks.  It could go so low because this week for some reason, we spent only $16 at Market on dairy products and a tiny bit of kielbasa.  And that was that.  

Weekly grocery spending, for 24 weeks.

So the average was the lowest ever (since I've been keeping track).  Go figure.

Average weekly spending, in $/week.

I mentioned last week that I might want to buy kale or other dark leafy greens, but the freezer is full.  The canning jars are almost all in use.  I had had a few empty half-pint jars left, but they got put to service for storing pickled jalapeño peppers from our CSA.  So I'm not going to go buy kale anytime soon.  Probably.  We'll see.

136.  In binary, it's 10001000.  That's pretty cool.  If you line up 136 dollars the right way, you can't get a perfect square, but you can get a nice triangle.

No deep insights -- just sharing my surprise.