Most of you all know, I'm on a pretty tight "budget". I have to even put the word budget in quotes because, in all honesty, I'm lucky enough to be in the position not to have a ton of bills to pay, and most of my money goes towards non-essential things. (This is because I have made certain other compromises and continue to live with my parents, although I am not sure that is the best situation for any of us, but it's where I am right now. When I tried to figure out the finances of living on my own, my social security check did not cover rent, let alone food, transportation, or utilities, and so: here we are.)
Anyways, the majority of my money goes towards some longer term goals - for example, I put a specific fraction of my monthly check away towards Christmas, so that when December rolls around I am able to buy presents for family members, and I have also been saving for a new camera for about five years, and now I'm considering switching to a smart phone, so there's another goal to fund.
And then I've got the regular budgeted costs of smaller things like Netflix & the Internet - one of which I consider essential, and the other which is a big help when you have a lot of flare days, like I do - and things like prescriptions (which are covered under my Mass Health and only cost $3-ish a piece, thankfully, but when you're taking 20 prescriptions, it still adds up) and vitamins (which are ridiculously expensive) and then everyday essentials like soap and shoes and sweaters - I'm not extravagant by any means, but it adds up.
But something that's important to me is charitable giving, and so I make sure that that money is budgeted first - even before my Christmas cash - and I used to just pick a random charity (that I'd investigated, of course) and write a check every month, and that was that. But lately I've been spending my charitable funds (I love the way that sounds, as if I have unlimited funds to give out, when in reality, some months it is less than $50) in ways that I think are more engaging and interesting, and I'd love to share a couple of them with you.
First off, I still write a check every month: I have 12 top charities, and each of them gets the same amount of my money, once a year. Picking 12 charities that deserve my support was hard, because there's about 12 million - but these are causes that mean a lot to me, (like the local chapter of the CFIDS association, or the Walnut Street Center, where my uncle, who had Down Syndrome, worked & was cared for, for the majority of his life) and I feel great knowing that (even though it's not a lot), I'm helping them as much as I can.
Secondly, I use Kiva, or Donors Choose, the microlending & public school funding sites, respectively, to help fund different projects across the country & the world - Through Kiva I've loaned over $100 in 4 countries, and sponsored four different women in their endeavors to better their lives and their communities. On Donors Choose, I've helped fund 27 books for a classroom that needed them; markers, white boards & crayons for a kindergarten class in a local school, and musical instruments & art classes in after-school programs across the country. All things that I think are vital, and that I can give my portion to help, and know that others will contribute as well. So far, I have not been disappointed. (Another note: Kiva usually has a match program, so try to sign up when they're doing that - like if you put in $25 it counts as $50. Also they have groups, and I highly endorse the Nerdfighters Kiva group as both active and awesome.)
Thirdly, I'm funding a lot of independent projects through Indiegogo & Kickstarter. I will freely admit that I, ardent Marshmallow that I am, helped to fund the Veronica Mars movie. I don't really count that as charity, although I suppose you could make an argument for artistic endeavors and patron-ism, which is basically where I'm going with the rest of this paragraph, but I'm not sure that a studio sure-to-be-blockbuster film really counts as an 'independent project', so that's an iffy one. What's not iffy are the millions of amazing projects listed on the two sites that need backers ASAP. The things that I like best about these sites are the wealth and diversity of campaigns that need funding - there's literally something for everybody. Whether you're interested in the environment, art, food, social justice-inspired science fiction literature, technology and intersectional feminism, or, say, a documentary about CFS/ME, which (as you might guess) has special import to me:
there's always something worth funding. My problem is always wanting to fund too many things, as opposed to not finding something worth supporting. Another great thing is that the projects are always changing - with 1 month windows, there's always something new to explore: I have recently funded, for example, a 50-state adventure/poster project; a poetry picture book on manners; the aforementioned documentary & feature film; and a Star Wars convention in England for people with disabilities. (Jealous!)
Just as an extra bonus, most of the Kickstarters & Indiegogo projects have rewards, so you're not only doing good & helping fund some excellent ideas, you get to participate & be included in the end product as well, which is both inspiring and addictive. In my opinion, one of the ways Kickstarter has a slight advantage over Indiegogo is the "remind me" button, which will tell you when a Kickstarter campaign is almost over, so you can check to see if it's fully funded. Say I don't have the money for two campaigns at the beginning of the month, and Kickstarter reminds me at the end of the month that project 2 is still looking for backers, so that I have another chance to contribute, which is nice.
So that's my formula for charitable giving lately - 1 part known & trusted charity, 1 part microfinancing loan, 1 part patron of the arts, sciences, technology or social justice: Oh and 1 (teeny tiny) part pocket money to people who ask. I can't pass up panhandlers, no matter how it makes other people's eyes roll when I give them cash: I don't care what they're spending it on (of course I'd rather they didn't spend it "injecting drugs into their eyeballs", as my sister once put it,) because I figure there's very little keeping me off the streets, and I can't imagine how hard it must be to have to ask for money all day, to be (mostly) ignored or spoken rudely too, to know people think less of you. So, I try to keep a couple of dollars free, expressly for this purpose, even though it makes my mother sigh each time I take the money out of the glove compartment and roll down the window, it always makes me feel better.
All parts things that are important to me, and things that I'm so glad I'm able to support. How do you guys manage your charitable giving, and have you supported anything super fantastical lately that you'd like to share?
Showing posts with label Money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Money. Show all posts
Friday, June 28, 2013
Friday, May 20, 2011
There's a lot of side notes in this: Do you read them while you're reading or save them for the end?***
Today I had a telephone review of my SSI benefits, and while it went about as well as could be expected*, it has caused me an untold amount of anxiety. Between Wednesday, when they pre-called (out of nowhere) to tell me to be ready for this morning's call, and the actual call, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell could've gone wrong. Was I over my $2000 limit? ** Was there some mix-up with the new bank account (I'd changed to direct deposit, so maybe that was it)? Had my use of some other agency/program counteracted with my SSI benefits? There were so many ways this could have gone wrong, and I thought of almost all of them, I'm sure, in those two days.
While it turned out to be a routine review - something that seems to be happening to more and more of the government sponsored programs I belong to as the economy works on its imitation of a black hole - it's one of those things, one of those semi-degrading things - that winds up making me feel like an eternal loser. I usually don't worry about money - and I'm very lucky in that I don't: Living with my parents, contributing as I can, when I can is a situation that I am more than grateful for. I absolutely know that if it weren't for them, I would be homeless/dependent on the state (which can amount to practically the same thing). Back when we were living with Nana, and the PUS were tormenting our daily lives, I went so far as to sing up for state sponsored housing, because I knew that the situation we were in was poisoning all of us, and I wanted out. Of course, it turned out that the state's waiting list was between 2-3 years (I think), and none of the public housing had the accomodations I would need in order to be able to live there (regarding not just the physical space, but also things like chemicals and smells and things like that). My only other option was state sponsored medical/rehab/halfway houses: places for people with disabilities that require help with activities of daily living. There are a number of reasons why I hope never to have to take that option, but I don't forget that the only thing keeping me from having to use it is my parents' generosity.
And today's phone call was just a reminder of that: the rough estimate of our monthly household expenses (and the fact that I could not be specific when queried about such costs as gas or house insurance, like any other "grown-up" would know), divided by the number of people living here, and my entire SSI check comes out to be much less than my fair share of the expenses. That means even if I were to just turn over my check (and there go all of the 'extras' of my life like clothing and craft materials, take out or - as is the case this week - birthday presents for little girls), I would not even meet the amount of money I could reasonably be expected to contribute. And that is a hard thing to acknowledge, even if I already knew it.
So I've been feeling a little low about that, but trying not to, because I know it's not the end of the world, and I tend not to think that making money is the be all and end all of a person's life anyways, but it's just another example of feeling like a burden, only this time it's all there in black and white. It's been proven, like those geometry proofs we used to have to do. 'If'' x , then 'y'. Show all the properties that make it so. I knew there was a reason I hated math.
In other news, I am trying to get my writing mojo back, if only to be able to tell you all about my new insomniac friend, 'anxiety dreams'; how to plan a wedding shower for a wedding I wasn't sure was happening until a month ago (and it's now 77 days away); the story of 'Burny', my old/new computer that decided to smell like fried hair; and how a soon-to-be five year old gave me the finger three times in the course of one afternoon, all the while pretending that she wasn't. Doesn't that sound like fun?
*Side note: What is the first thing they tell you about your social security number? "Never give it out over the phone, or the internet, or even in person, unless you absolutely have to. It's not safe." What's the first question some random person claiming to be from the government will ask you when they call to talk about your SSI benefits? "Can you confirm your social security number, please?" Even though I had no idea why they were calling, or what this was about. Seriously, SSI people? I will also NOT confirm my mother's maiden name or my bank account number. Let's me in person, shall we?
** Side note the second: Did you guys (who aren't on SSI) know that there's a limit to the amount of funds you are allowed to accumulate if you are receiving benefits? It's $2000. Later on we can have a nice discussion about the institutionalization of poverty for individuals with disabilities, and how the system creates an environment that basically requires poverty by limiting the amount of personal wealth an individual receiving SSI can have, but for now let me just say, as a saver, that being constrained to the $2000 limit is quite difficult for me. There's no sense of security there, at all. There's nothing to 'fall back' on, and if my benefits were to disappear, or decline, or become delayed, the situation would become very dire, very quickly.
***I usually save them for the end.
While it turned out to be a routine review - something that seems to be happening to more and more of the government sponsored programs I belong to as the economy works on its imitation of a black hole - it's one of those things, one of those semi-degrading things - that winds up making me feel like an eternal loser. I usually don't worry about money - and I'm very lucky in that I don't: Living with my parents, contributing as I can, when I can is a situation that I am more than grateful for. I absolutely know that if it weren't for them, I would be homeless/dependent on the state (which can amount to practically the same thing). Back when we were living with Nana, and the PUS were tormenting our daily lives, I went so far as to sing up for state sponsored housing, because I knew that the situation we were in was poisoning all of us, and I wanted out. Of course, it turned out that the state's waiting list was between 2-3 years (I think), and none of the public housing had the accomodations I would need in order to be able to live there (regarding not just the physical space, but also things like chemicals and smells and things like that). My only other option was state sponsored medical/rehab/halfway houses: places for people with disabilities that require help with activities of daily living. There are a number of reasons why I hope never to have to take that option, but I don't forget that the only thing keeping me from having to use it is my parents' generosity.
And today's phone call was just a reminder of that: the rough estimate of our monthly household expenses (and the fact that I could not be specific when queried about such costs as gas or house insurance, like any other "grown-up" would know), divided by the number of people living here, and my entire SSI check comes out to be much less than my fair share of the expenses. That means even if I were to just turn over my check (and there go all of the 'extras' of my life like clothing and craft materials, take out or - as is the case this week - birthday presents for little girls), I would not even meet the amount of money I could reasonably be expected to contribute. And that is a hard thing to acknowledge, even if I already knew it.
So I've been feeling a little low about that, but trying not to, because I know it's not the end of the world, and I tend not to think that making money is the be all and end all of a person's life anyways, but it's just another example of feeling like a burden, only this time it's all there in black and white. It's been proven, like those geometry proofs we used to have to do. 'If'' x , then 'y'. Show all the properties that make it so. I knew there was a reason I hated math.
In other news, I am trying to get my writing mojo back, if only to be able to tell you all about my new insomniac friend, 'anxiety dreams'; how to plan a wedding shower for a wedding I wasn't sure was happening until a month ago (and it's now 77 days away); the story of 'Burny', my old/new computer that decided to smell like fried hair; and how a soon-to-be five year old gave me the finger three times in the course of one afternoon, all the while pretending that she wasn't. Doesn't that sound like fun?
*Side note: What is the first thing they tell you about your social security number? "Never give it out over the phone, or the internet, or even in person, unless you absolutely have to. It's not safe." What's the first question some random person claiming to be from the government will ask you when they call to talk about your SSI benefits? "Can you confirm your social security number, please?" Even though I had no idea why they were calling, or what this was about. Seriously, SSI people? I will also NOT confirm my mother's maiden name or my bank account number. Let's me in person, shall we?
** Side note the second: Did you guys (who aren't on SSI) know that there's a limit to the amount of funds you are allowed to accumulate if you are receiving benefits? It's $2000. Later on we can have a nice discussion about the institutionalization of poverty for individuals with disabilities, and how the system creates an environment that basically requires poverty by limiting the amount of personal wealth an individual receiving SSI can have, but for now let me just say, as a saver, that being constrained to the $2000 limit is quite difficult for me. There's no sense of security there, at all. There's nothing to 'fall back' on, and if my benefits were to disappear, or decline, or become delayed, the situation would become very dire, very quickly.
***I usually save them for the end.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Points of interest (ish)
For Lent, I am giving up not posting every day: It's my own personal NaBloPoMo! Basically, bad things happen in my brain when I don't have a place to blurt it all out, and since you all are kind enough to come back and listen, I should do my best to post as regularly as possible. And we all know that I do better if I feel I have to post, so I'm signing up for posting everyday till Easter Sunday, and committing to it right here on this nice bloggy thing. If When I make it, I will let myself get a little treat. Must think of good treat. Feel free to offer your suggestions below.
For my first post, I'm going to attempt the dazzling and death-defying bullet point post (oh! ah!):
For my first post, I'm going to attempt the dazzling and death-defying bullet point post (oh! ah!):
- My parents may have found a house that they like enough to buy. They're going to the bank today to talk about putting down an offer so that they can get an inspection done. The only opinion I have about it is that it has a lot of stairs outside so that I cannot get in, and this does not please me. This whole house buying situation is showing me just how deep my control freak nature is - I am very uncomfortable buying a house I haven't been in, knowing I will have to live there for the foreseeable future. It's scary.
- Come to think of it, the house buying/having to move is bringing up a lot of issues that I'm not entirely comfortable with - the fact that I can't just go buy myself an apartment and have to keep living with my parents; the fact that my parents are not good with money and I just want to take it away from them (perhaps an allowance?); the idea that we've sold our 'family home' - it's been in our family for over 100 years, although it was originally a family run business. My great-grandparents moved here when Nana was just an infant, so from 1923 - 2009 my family has lived here. That's a lot of history to just be giving up on. And sometimes it does feel like we're giving it up. (I know we're not, it's just the closer it gets, the more I realize that this is forever.); the fear that my brother is trying to figure out a way to move with us into this new house (he didn't come out and say it, but he sure was asking a lot of questions about the house's finished basement, and the fact that it has it's own bathroom seemed important to him) because things are not going well with Soon-to-be (?) Sister-In-Law. A lot of things.
- We took my grandmother to lunch last week and she met three people she knew in the restaurant. I met 0. I was so happy for her, because she never goes out, really, and was so excited, but there was still a little piece of me that was jealous. Of my 92 year old Grandmother. Nice.
- I still haven't packed much of anything: A couple of boxes, but there's nowhere to put anything else, so why bother?
- Lil Girl is potty training and doing really well - no accidents at all yesterday. She came wearing big girl 'underwheres' (she says it like it's got that little h in it), and seeing them made me kinda sad, cuz she's the baby.
- This does not mean that we want another baby to take care of, so the universe should not see it as me putting out a call to any of my siblings. We are - none of us - in a position to have any (more) kids right now. I'd like to be, but that's a whole nother post.
- A little update from Friday's post about my TBR challenge - I suck at reading things I'm 'supposed' to be reading. If a new PBS book comes in the mail, I put it at the top of the pile - although I have cut down a lot on PBS incoming books, because I am trying to get rid of books, I still will say yes to a wish list book if it becomes available. And then when it gets here, because I know it's been on my list for so long, I read it first. I am totally counting this because it's been in my virtual TBR for longer than some of these books have been in my physical TBR. Counting it.
- I learned two new things while typing this post - how to do bullet points and strikethroughs on HTML. This makes me ridiculously happy.
That's all I've got for you right now... Check back in soon, because it's going to be a long Lent. :)
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Technology is depriving kids of ... horrible smells?
When I was younger, we didn't get an allowance. There were 5 kids, and if we needed money for something, we'd ask and take our chances on the answer. The money I had was mostly presents - Christmas or my birthday, a dollar from a visiting great uncle or whatever Nana passed out at report card time, that kind of thing - and I tended to be a saver, so it mostly all went - clink and cram - into a piggy bank: first a Funshine Bear, and later on a purple Opus. But there was one way that my brother and I could actually earn money, and that was by taking the cans and bottles back to the recycling center.
Back in the late 80's early 90's, recycling was a pretty new idea. At the very least, it was new to me, and newly popular in our area. It hadn't yet blown up to the degree that it has now though: I had never seen a recycling bin, and probably wouldn't for another 5 years or so, and there was only one bottle and can redemption center in our town. Luckily it was pretty close to our house, down one big hill on a street parallel to ours, about 3 blocks over. (Everything in our city is either up or down at least one big hill. Our city was once called the "Rome of Massachusetts" because it was founded on 7 hills. Inane trivia, meet the internets. Internets; inane trivia.)
At the time, we were mostly 2-liter bottle drinkers (soda in cans was beyond our price range then), so we'd lug humongous garbage bags filled with empty plastic bottles and smaller bags with whatever beer or wine cooler leftovers my parents had from our house down to the center. I don't know who did the job in the winter time - probably my mom, while we were at school - but all spring, summer and fall, every couple of weeks my brother and I would trudge down the hill with at least 5 of these gigantic bags, praying that one wouldn't bust open and lose its cargo or (as the years went on) that none of our friends would be outside to see us.
You couldn't do the job yourself: why we never thought to make more frequent trips so there'd be less to exchange, I don't know, but by the time we got around to it, it was always a two man job. The bags were light, but unwieldy: You couldn't just drag it along behind you (ahem, some of us know this from experience), because it would snag on rocks and cracks in the sidewalk and eventually spill open and cause a commotion... the 15 extra minutes it added to your trip as you chased after every last rolling bottle was never worth it. Especially with your big brother standing there impatiently, or, even worse, sitting on the curbside laughing as you "play in traffic:" I might have been thankful that the walk was downhill with all the bottles safely ensconced inside a bag, but once they were let loose, I could only curse our path. I would spend most of the walk trying to negotiate with the bags, the sign poles, other pedestrians and my feet - the only time I was graceful as a child was when I was dancing.(It's the reason they started me in dancing in the first place, but unfortunately, that ease of movement just didn't carry over into other aspects of my life.)
I know we did it for months every year, so I'm sure it must have been cooler some times more than others, but I always remember it as being hot. And humid. So that, by the time we'd finally get to the center, my face would be that nice red it adopted whenever I was outside &/or exerting myself, and people passing by most likely thought that I was lugging bricks instead of empty plastic bottles. The thing I remember most of all though, from all of those trips, is the smell.
The smell of old beer, and tonic gone past sweet to cloying.
Of heaps of plastic sitting, baking.
The redemption center was just a large warehouse, and it smelled like every basement I've ever been in, only ten times worse.
Just moldy and yeasty and dank.
It was always dark, even in the middle of the day with the cargo door wide open. The walls were made of tin, so that when one of the soda bottles would roll off of its pile, it would 'ping!' before hitting the ground. And you could hear all the bottles clanking together as workers shifted them off the tables and into bins.
When we went in they'd have cafeteria tables set up for you to put your stuff on: it was up to you to take each bottle out, line them up in rows and wait for the guy to come around and count them. This was my major contribution, since Only/Older Brother usually carried about 3 times as many bags as I did.
I'd take each tacky bottle out of the bag, and line them up in rows of 5, usually getting about 50 on a table. It wasn't required that these rows be need, but I mostly couldn't help it - even though I wanted to get out as quickly as possible, if I was putting them in a line, they needed to be in a straight one. My brother would roll his eyes if he saw me fixing the ones that were already on the table, so I had to try (discreetly) and get it right the first time, which made it seem an onerous task.
By the time I was finished, my hands would be sweaty and sticky, and I almost always wound up pulling at least one bottle with that last little drop in it out of the bag upside down and getting watered-down soda on some part of my body. My shoes would be gummed to the cement floor, and I'd wait for the money man, trying to edge closer to the open door to grab some fresh air.
The guy who ran the place would eventually heft himself out of his folding lawn chair and make his way over to our table, lit cigar in his mouth. Or there'd be a kid - maybe 16, 17 - who'd wander over from the piles and count our load out loud. Either way, we were never short changed, and the money would go from his sticky hand to my sticky hand - insane totals like $4.35 or $11.80 - and I would carefully split the take in two and give my brother his half (extra nickel going to the person who'd guessed closest to our actual take). Then I could escape outside again, into the bright sunlight and away from that smell. My brother would head off for who knows where and I'd go back home to shower the stickiness and stink away.
Which is all to say that today I waited in the car while my parents ran into the liquor store. We were parked close to the door, and when it opened, that same smell came out and I thought "Who'd drink anything that smells as bad before you drink it as it does rotting away afterwards?" And also? I saw these machines that just eat up your old bottles and count them up for you, which I knew they had, because Mum does them every couple of weeks now, but still. Whatever, technology.
(please pardon the glare, since I was in the car.)
Back in the late 80's early 90's, recycling was a pretty new idea. At the very least, it was new to me, and newly popular in our area. It hadn't yet blown up to the degree that it has now though: I had never seen a recycling bin, and probably wouldn't for another 5 years or so, and there was only one bottle and can redemption center in our town. Luckily it was pretty close to our house, down one big hill on a street parallel to ours, about 3 blocks over. (Everything in our city is either up or down at least one big hill. Our city was once called the "Rome of Massachusetts" because it was founded on 7 hills. Inane trivia, meet the internets. Internets; inane trivia.)
At the time, we were mostly 2-liter bottle drinkers (soda in cans was beyond our price range then), so we'd lug humongous garbage bags filled with empty plastic bottles and smaller bags with whatever beer or wine cooler leftovers my parents had from our house down to the center. I don't know who did the job in the winter time - probably my mom, while we were at school - but all spring, summer and fall, every couple of weeks my brother and I would trudge down the hill with at least 5 of these gigantic bags, praying that one wouldn't bust open and lose its cargo or (as the years went on) that none of our friends would be outside to see us.
You couldn't do the job yourself: why we never thought to make more frequent trips so there'd be less to exchange, I don't know, but by the time we got around to it, it was always a two man job. The bags were light, but unwieldy: You couldn't just drag it along behind you (ahem, some of us know this from experience), because it would snag on rocks and cracks in the sidewalk and eventually spill open and cause a commotion... the 15 extra minutes it added to your trip as you chased after every last rolling bottle was never worth it. Especially with your big brother standing there impatiently, or, even worse, sitting on the curbside laughing as you "play in traffic:" I might have been thankful that the walk was downhill with all the bottles safely ensconced inside a bag, but once they were let loose, I could only curse our path. I would spend most of the walk trying to negotiate with the bags, the sign poles, other pedestrians and my feet - the only time I was graceful as a child was when I was dancing.(It's the reason they started me in dancing in the first place, but unfortunately, that ease of movement just didn't carry over into other aspects of my life.)
I know we did it for months every year, so I'm sure it must have been cooler some times more than others, but I always remember it as being hot. And humid. So that, by the time we'd finally get to the center, my face would be that nice red it adopted whenever I was outside &/or exerting myself, and people passing by most likely thought that I was lugging bricks instead of empty plastic bottles. The thing I remember most of all though, from all of those trips, is the smell.
The smell of old beer, and tonic gone past sweet to cloying.
Of heaps of plastic sitting, baking.
The redemption center was just a large warehouse, and it smelled like every basement I've ever been in, only ten times worse.
Just moldy and yeasty and dank.
It was always dark, even in the middle of the day with the cargo door wide open. The walls were made of tin, so that when one of the soda bottles would roll off of its pile, it would 'ping!' before hitting the ground. And you could hear all the bottles clanking together as workers shifted them off the tables and into bins.
When we went in they'd have cafeteria tables set up for you to put your stuff on: it was up to you to take each bottle out, line them up in rows and wait for the guy to come around and count them. This was my major contribution, since Only/Older Brother usually carried about 3 times as many bags as I did.
I'd take each tacky bottle out of the bag, and line them up in rows of 5, usually getting about 50 on a table. It wasn't required that these rows be need, but I mostly couldn't help it - even though I wanted to get out as quickly as possible, if I was putting them in a line, they needed to be in a straight one. My brother would roll his eyes if he saw me fixing the ones that were already on the table, so I had to try (discreetly) and get it right the first time, which made it seem an onerous task.
By the time I was finished, my hands would be sweaty and sticky, and I almost always wound up pulling at least one bottle with that last little drop in it out of the bag upside down and getting watered-down soda on some part of my body. My shoes would be gummed to the cement floor, and I'd wait for the money man, trying to edge closer to the open door to grab some fresh air.
The guy who ran the place would eventually heft himself out of his folding lawn chair and make his way over to our table, lit cigar in his mouth. Or there'd be a kid - maybe 16, 17 - who'd wander over from the piles and count our load out loud. Either way, we were never short changed, and the money would go from his sticky hand to my sticky hand - insane totals like $4.35 or $11.80 - and I would carefully split the take in two and give my brother his half (extra nickel going to the person who'd guessed closest to our actual take). Then I could escape outside again, into the bright sunlight and away from that smell. My brother would head off for who knows where and I'd go back home to shower the stickiness and stink away.
Which is all to say that today I waited in the car while my parents ran into the liquor store. We were parked close to the door, and when it opened, that same smell came out and I thought "Who'd drink anything that smells as bad before you drink it as it does rotting away afterwards?" And also? I saw these machines that just eat up your old bottles and count them up for you, which I knew they had, because Mum does them every couple of weeks now, but still. Whatever, technology.
(please pardon the glare, since I was in the car.)
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