Yesterday I returned two 40 oz., $5 cans of Modelo because they were too expensive. This is a big deal for me. I’m not a huge returner. In fact, I’m a big, let’s just get it done and move on with our lives type of person, which equates to “Oh, HowAboutWe.com automatically charged me an $80 renewal fee for their site even though I don’t use it and forgot to cancel before the deadline. Oh well.” I spend $4 on a latte a day, $40 on wine every week, and $90 on brunch and takeout every weekend. I let Groupons expire and veggies rot in my crisper. I take cabs when I’m too drunk to figure out the GPS on my phone, go to expensive restaurants when I’m flat broke and slap the entire expense on a credit card, and spend $2 an episode on “The Vampire Diaries” on Amazon when I’m bored instead of just waiting for them to come out for free on Netflix. Yes, the fucking Vampire Diaries. There is a gratuitous amount of hot male shirtlessness on that show, okay?
I’m paycheck to paycheck and I act like I don’t know why.
The result of my recklessness has trickled down into other aspects of my life that don’t involve having $60 to my name after paying rent, most recently, my weight.
I went to get a physical last week and I found out that since I moved to New York two years ago, I’ve put on 20 lbs. I was shocked. I knew I had put on weight, but not that much. And it’s a result I should have foreseen a year ago when I began ditching the gym in favor of the thrift shop located directly across the street. I’d literally sign up for a spinning class, go over to the store to kill some time, spend an hour finding the perfect faux fur coat I’d probably wear twice, and ultimately, not work out. Then I’d go home, drink half a bottle of wine, and look at vampire abs before passing out.
Yet, my disinterest in the gym wasn’t a pure result of my laziness, lushness, hedonism, vanity, or materialism, I also I didn’t like my gym. I had been going for a year and found their aerobic classes to be boring, every instructor would do the same kind of class every time I showed up. Wash, repeat, yawn. There was no challenge, their machines would frequently break down, and no one would ever fix them. I started showing up and sitting on a machine I didn’t particularly like just so I could watch re-runs of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” because I don’t have cable. And no one’s going to get thoroughly into a workout when their distracted by Teresa Giudice flipping tables.
So, I quit my gym and started buying Groupons for other gyms in my neighborhood in the hopes that I’d find something I liked. But I was frequently disappointed. So, I started jogging (well, walking and some jogging) and doing at-home workouts. I started eating more pizza because, well, it’s pizza and it wasn’t like I was taking a hardcore boot camp class the morning of to remind myself “hey, you worked your ass off this morning, don’t ruin it by going nuts on this pizza.”
Then, last weekend, days after finding out I gained 20 lbs., I actually found a gym I like. A gym I can see myself going to several times a week that can smack me back into gear. Only problem is, it’s $89 a month. And how can I afford that?
Easy.
I’m going to watch my money. I’m cutting out fancy lattes and bottles of wine during the week. That alone should cover my payment. But I don’t want to it end there. I want to actually start saving money again, maybe even afford to go on a vacation and pay off a credit card or two. Maybe I can afford cable!
So, yesterday, when I bought those two cans of Modelo – which were for cooking by the way, not for boozing – and realized how expensive they were after buying them, my initial reaction was “fuck it.”
It was raining, I wanted to go home, and the overpriced grocery store where I bought them was convenient. I got half way down the block with the pricy 40s (an oxymoron? Not quite, but conceptually, almost) when I stopped dead in my tracks. I wanted to keep walking home, but I couldn’t, not if I wanted to afford this gym. Not if I wanted to change. Not if I wanted to be a fucking adult for once.
So, I turned around and walked back into the store. I plopped the two tall cans of beer on the counter.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I need to return these. They’re way too expensive."
The cashier looked at me like I was crazy but refunded my money. I left and walked home in the rain instead of taking the subway so I would pass a bodega where I knew they sold the same kind of beer for $3 a pop.
And I know I didn’t save that much, but once my dinner was done last night, it tasted delicious. More so than usual, so I had a tiny extra serving. One day at a time, right?
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