Life During Wartime. #Louis

 

Seven measly items for $20.45 including the price of a plastic bag...

 

 

 

 

#Louis

Life during wartime—whoever would have thunk it.

Truth is, we’ve been kind of spoiled around here, and some of us who aren’t used to a little hardship once in a while, might just want to re-examine some of our thinking processes. Some of those lazy little habits that we simply take for granted.

Prices are going crazy, food is up, fuels and energy are up, housing and rent is up, pretty much anything you can think of is going up, except of course for ODSP disability pensions and OW, (welfare), here in the Province of Ontario, and that’s probably true in most jurisdictions. Life is about to get a whole lot tougher for some of us, no doubt about it.

Okay. The small tubs of coleslaw, potato or noodle salad, that used to sell for $1.79, are now a ludicrous $3.69. That has more than doubled in price, beginning early in the pandemic, and now fucking skyrocketing along with everything else.

So, what in the hell you gonna do about it?

I have a plan, and it’s fairly simple. It’s also pro-active and forward-looking. It accepts reality, ah, which is surprisingly important in any plan.

Home-made beef soup, fresh #superdough bread.

I’m going to keep gas in the car. 

I'm going to keep food in the fridge, beer in the fridge and a carton of smokes in the fridge...simple little things like that. You might even extend that to include new toothbrushes, soap, shampoo and razors.

You might want to look after yourself, otherwise the world might just get you down a little bit.

Today, gas was $1.87.9 + in town, but I got mine for $1.57.6 on the rez. When I leave this apartment, I cut through the subdivision, on a street which angles and curves a bit and probably shaves off half a k or more of driving—and I’m going to need that half a k tomorrow. I connect to Indian Road at the Eastland Plaza, where there’s a little store where I can get rolling papers for $2.50, saving a buck compared to some other store, and Food Basics is right there across the street. The gas station is perhaps three k further south, and I put $20.00 in today, bringing her up to three-quarters of a tank…by the time this war is over, I’ll have her jammed right to the tits, ladies and gentlemen.

“But Louis, Canada is not at war with Russia,” you might say.

“No, but I am.”

You can do whatever the hell you want—that’s your fucking problem.

Let’s just say I’m a bit ahead of the curve on this one, and that might just be a good thing sometimes…I have as much right as Mr. Poutine, that is for sure.

To turn around and go home, that’s a 12-k round trip right there. However, I tack on a few other kilometres, picked up smokes at $2.50/20-pack, whereas government smokes are an idiotic twelve or thirteen dollars a pack in any corner store. I save almost a hundred bucks by buying one carton off-license. Truth is, I should be selling them around the building and the neighbourhood…they’d be knocking on the door at all hours of the day and night and I just don’t want that…don’t need the money that bad, maybe.

Instead of getting two grams of pot in a licensed bud shop, I get four grams on the rez for the same twenty-dollar bill.

The truth is, I should not be buying twenty dollars’ worth of groceries. I should be buying forty, or fifty or sixty; I should be buying two or three cartons of smokes at a time. I should be buying half-bags of the five-dollar buds, and I should be picking up cases of beer rather than buying six-packs.

Truth is, our distributor had 50-lb. sacks of potatoes last month, and we bought one—this month I see ten-lb. boxes of breaded chicken breasts, and the Boss says go ahead. We’re going to try them, for what, about $32.50 or thereabouts. At 3.5-oz. per breast, that’s forty-five chicken breasts.

We are going to take every possible advantage and leverage the hell out of it.

What would Zelensky do?

Just ask yourself that.

As for myself, I might even have a little fun along the way.

And I'm damned if I'm going to starve.

***

So, what about morale, and mental health? Well, for a scruffy old man, you might want to shave once in a while. Trim them fingernails, toenails, the hair, the beard, the fucking nose hairs and them eyebrows once in a while…you are not Leonid Brezhnev, after all.

You might want to have a good pair of boots…clean socks, and a shiny, sharp little jack-knife, right?

Stand up straight, look people in the eye, when in doubt say sir, and ma’am, please and thank you, you might be surprised how that works sometimes…right, ladies and gentlemen???

So far, I have been holding off calling people my dear, although the temptation is very strong sometimes.

You might want to try and keep your head screwed on straight, and maybe get off the internet, get out of the house once in a while, and maybe go for a walk once in a while.

My dear.

Assuming I could get ahead on laying in supplies, in what is starting to look like some kind of siege mentality, there would soon come a day off, when I didn’t need to keep running out for a tub of margarine or whatever, no fucking errands, plenty of fuel and that might be a good day to get out there and stumble around in the woods for a while.

Spring is just around the corner, or so they say. I have a place to live, a small pension and a part time job. It could be worse.

Eat a salad once in a while... # tips

***
 

Okay, by reading the flyers, and by having a few other things already in stock, I saved $7.95 on a measly seven items, more if one considers no-name brands, including a big bag of chips for a dollar. The vegetable cocktail was $2.79. It’s no-name, but it’s a bigger jug of juice—and the name brand was on sale, for $3.49.

Add in the savings on pot, smokes, gas. It turns out to be quite a lot of money. So; read the flyers, use your head, be a bit flexible, and keep your wits, or even just a sense of humour about you.

 

END

 

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Thank you for reading.