Cheapskate

Every one knows that I'm cheap. I don't like calling it cheap cuz it has a negative connotation to it. It's more of being frugal or thrifty. I like to say I'm a conservationist. I'll drop ridiculous money on electronics and cool stuff, but I don't like spending money on stuff we don't need or using more than what's required. Before we got the iPhone, Sandy and I both bought the same phone. It had a QWERTY keyboard. Only reason you'd need a QWERTY keyboard on your cellphone is so that you can type faster. The only time you'd need to type is to text. Well, I don't like texting. Not only does it take away the whole human element of actually talking to someone, it costs money. They want you to pay extra to buy a text plan. That's retarded. I'm not going to spend money to text people when I can just call them for no extra charge. Of course, ppl would always text me...even after I repeatedly yelled at them for costing me 5 cents. And I'd always get mad when Sandy would go over her text limit. Even when we got the iPhone, I refused to get a text plan. I don't think you can call that being cheap cuz iPhones are definitely not cheap. Nor is the data plan, but I don't mind cuz I actually use it.

I'm like this cuz I was raised this way. My mom was overly cautious when it came to money. She prolly got it from my grandmother. There was this one time, way back when you lived in Houston, we had a bag of chips. I guess it was past the "Sell by" date, cuz my mom threw it out. I was crying about how she was wasting the chips. So when she left the kitchen, I started eating the chips out of the garbage...just the ones that were still in the bag! She came in and freaked out. Now that I think about it, it doesn't make any sense cuz my mom always eats shit that's overdue or expired. Cam and I would yell at her all the time. Weird.

When my uncle lived with us, he was extremely liberal with the toilet paper. He'd wipe or blow his nose once and just chuck it. I used to go into his bathroom and see the entire garbage filled with toilet paper. So I'd freakin take them out and use them! Like, if I had a cold, I'd use his old, nasty, used toilet paper and blow my nose with it. Sandy's that way too, tho I'm not going to fish that shit outta the toilet. And she won't change her ways no matter how much I nag. You can be clean w/o using up half the roll yo. And it's the really nice and soft double layer stuff. I, myself, am a folder. I'm like origami master with that shit.

I turn off the water in the shower when I'm putting on shampoo and soap. I definitely don't leave the water running when I'm brushing my teeth, washing my hands or doing the dishes. Drives me crazy when I see ppl doing it. If it were my choice, we wouldn't eat out unless there was no food in the fridge. But of course Sandy would cry. She thinks she's above leftovers. I definitely didn't think we needed all new furniture for Bermuda, but I didn't mind buying a new TV. It's weird. I'm the exact opposite when it comes to big purchases. I want the biggest and best. I cut my own hair, but that's also cuz I do a better job. Who cares what the back looks like...I don't hafta look at it. I'm a recycling superfreak. I chase after Sandy, unplugging all the chargers she's not using. To this day, I don't wash my clothes after each time I wear them. I won't wash them until they start to smell. I go thru and smell all my clothes in the closet when it's laundry day. In high school, I didn't want the ass of my jeans to get worn out, so, when I was at home, I'd pull my pants down and only sit in my underwear. Family prolly thought I was a freak. When I was in high school, I'd write down what shirt I wore to school every day on a calendar so I wouldn't repeat until I'd worn every thing else in my closet. That might be more cuz I happened to wear the same tshirt from Kohl's as this super popular kid one day. People were making comments and he said, "That's cuz he wears the same clothes every day." So sad.

There's a famous story of when I was in kindergarten. We had gone out to buy groceries the night before. I specifically remember my mom buying Kraft cheese slices for my lunch the next day. Back then I'd eat the cheese by itself. Fold it up a couple times. We ate out on the deck at school. That day, I got into a fight with a kid. That bastard took my slice of cheese and dropped it thru the cracks in the deck! I freaked out and started crying. Teachers ran over, thinking something crazy had happened. "My mom bought me that cheese!" was all I could say. I cried the entire lunch period and prolly the rest of the day. Don't worry tho, I got my revenge. The next day, I snuck into the cubbies, found that punk's lunch box, took his granola bar and threw that shit down the deck too. At lunch, he was like..."I know my mom packed me a granola bar. I don't know what happened to it." Now that was awesome. I while later, I took his stormtrooper too. Payback with interest.

My point? We bought some yogurt a while back. It was a ways back cuz they say "Sell by Dec 5". Guess what I've been eating these past two days for breakfast? We had 4 in the fridge. Sandy obviously won't touch them. I've never worked at a processing plant or grocery store, but I'm pretty sure you have no more than a week from that "sell by" date before it goes bad. When we first got to the island, we bought some oranges. This is the first week of November. Sandy asked me to clean out the fridge on Monday and throw out all the old food. Well, the oranges were still there. Yes, I moved them from the hotel to the house. They weren't powdery black or anything (we've had those many times back in the states), but there some black spots. Definitely very soft. I huddled over the sink like an Ethiopian and ate all four of those bad boys. Wasn't sour or anything. If you saw how expensive groceries here were, you'd do the same. Each yogurt was like $1.36. That's over $5 I saved. My stomach wasn't feeling so hot afterwards, but I dunno if it was from the food or the pepperoni pizza layered with crushed red peppers. Either way, it was worth it.