Wednesday 17 March 2010

Well there goes the diet then...

Being frugal is like being on a diet.



At first the diet goes well, a little weight is shifted, success seems on the horizon, you're feeling right chuffed with yourself.



And then the diet gets a bit boring and repetitive. A life of salad is dull. Perhaps you haven't lost quite as much weight as you'd like, progress is slow, friends stop telling you how wonderfully well you are doing and get fed up with you mentioning food all the time. They try and tempt you with takeaways and trifle.



And then, one day, you snap. You have the sudden urge to treat yourself, to reward yourself, to completely and totally pig out!

Well that's exactly what happens with frugality. And today we pigged out. Once in a while I just take the kids out, we have lunch out, we spend money we haven't really got (or that should be earmarked for something else) and then we go home, feeling like the kid who stole the chocolate cake at diet camp.

Money was burning a hole in the children's money boxes. Dd has been asking every day for around a week if she could spend some of her money. I don't think it's the money that interests her, just the process of going into a shop with her own money and buying something. She was getting desperate (and annoying).

So why not help her spend her pennies. And the boys were keen to break open the piggy banks too. So where could we go. Well how about that place with a toy shop and - er - the (shhh) wool shop.. [You didn't think the trip would be entirely altruistic do you?]

So after wandering round charity shops, chip shop, weird plastic and assorted junk shop, toy shop, pet food shop, and WOOL SHOP we came home with:

2 soft toy beanie dogs
1 hard plastic, extortionately-expensive dog
1 wind up furry mouse (possibly a rat?) that makes the dog bark
2 bags of sour Haribo sweets
1 pack of Pokemon cards
4 full bellies from greasy chips from very unhygenic chip shop (remind me not to go upstairs to the toilets in restaurants until AFTER I've eaten the meal - it's best not to know what you might be eating or where they chop the chips)
2 balls of black double knitting wool (for ds1's balaclava)
1 ball of furry skinny wool (for socks?)
1 sack of chicken mash
1 sack of chicken corn
and 1 of these:













Oops...how did that get there?!


Ok, so I forgot to mention the bike shop that was next to the pet shop. Saw the above item outside the shop and fell in bicycle love. Well as much as a committed non-cyclist can be attracted to something that you have to put energy into to get to move.


Ok, so it's a bit battered. But it fits in the car. And will probably fit even better once I've worked out how to fold it (erhum). Bet the guy in the shop enjoyed watching me as I tried to squeeze a fold-up bicycle in its non-folded-up state into the back of a people carrier on top of two sacks of chicken food, one large bag of just-bought tat and three small children. That should keep him going in laughs for a few weeks at the pub.


What is most amazing is that the bike fits me. I mean I can actually sit on it and reach the floor with my feet (Unlike my huge great hulking lump of iron on wheels that is currently residing in the garage - yeah one of those 1940s things that you expect to see a huge breadbasket on the front). And the wheels of this bike don't go round with almighty clunks and shudders that throw you off course(unlike my huge great hulking lump of iron on wheels...etc etc) and this bike is kinda cute (unlike my huge behind when I'm riding it...).

Anyway, I don't know why I'm here justifying my decision to break from the dieting regime. So, I confess, today I AM the kid that stole the chocolate cake at diet camp. But, life is just too short to not impulse-buy strange bicycles outside pet shops.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love reading your blogs....

Carolyn said...

LOL!!!!
I used to have one of those! In exactly the same colour!!!
So do you imagine you cycling while the kids and dog run dutifully and happily alongside? Or do you think you might escape the confines of motherhood for blissful and peaceful solo rides like Libby in the Waltons? Must go find the episode now and share it with you sometime! :-)

MadameSmokinGun said...

See - right there! That's a high achieving kind of day! I worship!

Big mamma frog said...

lol MSG. Personally I figure the day is a success if I get out of the house wearing matching shoes.

Carolyn I reckon they only did 1970s shoppers in maroon, pale blue or brown. I think my sister had a blue one when we were kids, but with ridiculously teeny wheels and a ridiculously high saddle (she looked like she was training for the circus). I had a gold/orange bike, a 'Pegasus', which I loved, until my parents persuaded me to exchange it for a proper big bike. You know one of those nice lady's raleigh bikes with nice lights and a nice saddle and nice gears and just lots of niceness(sound of child sticking fingers down throat - blurggh). Parents are so cruel.

Me, escape confines of motherhood? Not unless I can move countries and get a secret identity. And even then, the blighters'll track me down.

And no to dutiful dog (unless it's someone else's dog). I know people do have dogs that might trot alongside a bicycle, but I have a spaniel. Nuff said really. Most likely he'd want to stick his head in the spokes and I'd have to get the vet to surgically remove his stupidly long ears from the bike chain.

Carolyn said...

LOL yes, spaniels are great aren't they! That said though, we did a 5 mile or more (poss 7) in The Forest of Dean a few years back with our 2 dogs!!!! YES 2!!!! One of those was a springer spaniel, and I don't think she ever really worked out why we all suddenly sprouted wheels! Although I guess it was cheating a little with it being gravel tracks, mostly.

Jax Blunt said...

we had a reak from both kinds of diet yesterday by having chinese takeaway. Yum.