Valentines Day

In re-reading my catch-up post from the other day, I realized that I focused mostly what we have done right in February. That's all well and good, but I really need to acknowledge our screw-ups, as they are rather significant. The biggest one being that infamous day of "Love", Valentine's Day

Remember how I said my entertainment and dining budget become $0 when operating under our current worst case scenario model? Yeah well that didn't stand the test of the big V.D. Its not that we usually make a big hoopla out of this (very commercial) Holiday. In fact, we typically exchange homemade gifts/cards, as we did this year, and then enjoy spending time together. Turns out, its spending time together that's the issue.

By 2/14 we were feeling pretty darn deprived. We had a modest sushi dinner, $28 including tip. Then went to a friends art showing at a local bar, $15 on drinks. Then went out for ice cream with another couple $13. Whew! What a great night!

If only we had stopped there. Valentine's day turned into Valentine's Weekend, when we went to see Avatar $16, and enjoyed popcorn and soda $12.

But wait there's more! In between all that we went to our favorite local chocolate factory intending to pick up a little something for each other. We loaded up on $44 worth of very very yummy, organic, fair trade chocolate treats.

One hundred twenty-eight dollars. $128. In under 24 hours. Wow! I actually hadn't done the math until just now. Amazing. Back in the day, this wouldn't have been worth mentioning. In fact, I probably would have considered it a success. Now it was definitely a leap off the wagon and we really felt it.

Thank Dog for all the Miscellaneous income we earned this month, but this took a chunk out of it, and was really NOT what it was intended for.

I am blaming this on old habits and succumbing to self-induced feelings of deprivation. I would say that we need to treat ourselves in smaller ways more consistently in order to ward off this kind of behavior, which would be all well and good if we could actually afford to treat ourselves in smaller ways more consistently.