My continuing adventures as a recovering shopping addict. Click here to see how it all began.
Oh grasshoppers.
Okay, I’ll admit, I was feeling pretty smug after the pancake success of Day 1. And so yesterday, I bustled off to the city* feeling rather over-confident. I was planning to wow you all with a thrifty and delicious $5 dinner at Bombay Frankie’s Roti Roll stand on 109th and Amsterdam. I was going to breeze right by the shoe stores on 23rd Street as they whispered to me about new boots for fall.
Then I got to the train station parking lot.
As you’ll recall, I’ve exempted prepaid transportation from this experiment, because I can’t exactly walk the 62 miles to Manhattan. And I already have a car with gas in the tank, a Metro-North ten trip pass, and a Metrocard. What I do not have is a parking permit for the Beacon Train Station.
I cruised into the lot, realized that to pay the $4.75 parking fee for a metered space would leave me with one shiny quarter to spend for the rest of the day, and promptly pulled into a “Permit Only” space, power-locked the Blubaru, and hopped onto the train.
I felt giddy! Sure, I was rolling the dice on a $20 parking ticket, but Beacon is a small town. And there are a lot of streets being repaved at the moment, so odds were good that our Department of Transportation (also known as “Joel”) would have his hands full and not be bothering to come around tracking parking violations. I was beating the system. Sticking one to the man.
Unfortunately, I am not the sort of person who excels at system-beating. By the time the train pulled into Grand Central 72 minutes later, I was convinced that they would tow the car, lock me in jail, and throw away the key. I spent the subsequent subway ride wondering if we could somehow apply that whole First Amendment/freedom of the press thing to a plea bargain. By the time I hit 23rd Street, I had a migraine.**
On the plus side, I was way too distracted by the blinding pain to notice the shoe stores. On the down side, I had to pull my credit card out of hiding to pay for a $35 cab ride to our Harlem crash pad, where I spent the rest of the day taking painkillers in a dark room. Yup, that was technically the whole week’s budget in one fell swoop. Did I forget to mention that medical emergencies are also exempt from this experiment? Silly me.
So I was planning to wrap up this little fable for you by coming back to Beacon this morning to discover a bright orange parking ticket on my car as final proof that crime rilly doesn’t pay. But instead, I saw this:
A ticket-free Blubaru.
So uh, crime does pay? Or is this like when your parents wouldn’t ground you because they knew your guilt was punishment enough? Is Joel somewhere, shaking his head in fatherly disappointment but confident that I’ve learned a lesson?
I’m in a moral quandary over here. And I want to right this wrong and also make a profound comment about the hidden costs of healthcare or poverty and being driven to desperate measures or what have you, but… my head still hurts.
So instead, I’ll just show you what cheered me up:
It’s the cup of deli coffee I bought for $1.50 on my way back to Beacon this morning. And it came with a free piece of gum! Tell Starbucks to beat that with a stick.
$20.40 to go. (Or, um, -$14.60, depending on your math.)
*back story #1: Dan and I live in Beacon, but we commute to NYC for work and play, and bunk down at my brother-in-law’s Harlem apartment when we’re in town.
**back story #2: I get migraines a lot. They are miserable. ‘Nuff said.
