It’s probably been two years since I bought a jug of plain white vinegar to clean with. I have a lot of cleaning to do.

I was used to paying 3 or maybe 4 bucks for it.

It costs Seven now. About double. It’s the same with so many things.

***

I’ve been good about No Restaurants, but I am lazy about cooking, so when I shop at the lone grocer I’m always looking for MREs. Meals Ready to Eat.

The main problem with them is the same as with dining out. You basically have no idea where the food came from, and you can bet that wherever that was, it was the cheapest thing available, and not organic, or grass-fed, or free of additives and filler.

But I bought some hot meatloaf anyway. About a pound of meat, a couple ounces of ketchup and bread mixed in I would guess, and $9 at the deli counter. I wolfed it around 6 pm last night and it was a soothing comfort meal that put me in the mood to sleep early.

Which didn’t work out in the end because this is the single worst weekend of the year at the ranch in Sand Rock. My house sits a block from the Fairgrounds, and this is the week of the Fair. So the normally barren streets are crammed with people who want to park in my driveway and go distract themselves, and the air is full of garbage music at unsettling volumes, and the ugly voice of the superpatriot shitkicker rodeo announcer.

But that’s off-topic.

Today I went back to the grocery to see how little I could spend on makings for meatloaf that wasn’t suss.

The hamburger meat was spendy, and the even vaguely natural versions were astronomical. I thought about some 30%-off stuff that would have run five bucks a pound, but it didn’t even pretend to being good, so I checked out the ground turkey.

$9.99 a pound for the organic. I was surprised they even had it, and I almost paid the price.

But then I saw that on sale, for the exact same price, was *3* pounds of decidedly un-organic ground turkey.

It was literally the cheapest meat in the store, at least this side of scrapple and hooves. $3.33 to fill oneself with protein and keto juice, provided you had a stove, and a skillet, and an egg to mix it with, which I blessedly do.

So I bought it.

***

Just before it rained last night (for the last time in a while, they say), I got almost all the big wide driveway blown clear of dust, new leaves, old leaves, and random cat dishes and toys.

The rain finished that part of the cleaning for me.

It’s looking pretty good; coming along.

Then I ate my pound of suss burger and tried to sleep with those mixed results.

Twenty four hours later, I’m back in a similar place, with a little more done. I’m scratching at several tall piles at once. I’m trying not to listen to Dildo the Cowboy yammer his flag-waving bull shit. I’m fully charging the headphones in the hope I can sleep with them on until the yeehaws shut the fuck up around one, two in the morning.

I don’t know if it’s a living, but I’m sure it’s a life, and not a lifestyle.

I wonder how much it would cost to turn myself into the guy that owns a bunch of storage lockers, and why I didn’t do that when I had the chance.

But I wonder idly.

And secretly, I know the answer.