Here are the things I’ve given up since Mike was laid off:

1. The housekeeper was a luxury to begin with. I never really got comfortable saying “my housekeeper.” Mike would just call her “The Lady.” I would stumble over her name, Olia, which I never properly learned how to spell because I wrote the checks to her boss, the owner of Fresh Start Housekeeping. They were wonderful in every way and if you live in Portland, I’d recommend them. There is nothing quite like walking into  your house after it’s been owned for three hours by a someone who knows what they’re doing with cleaning implements. For a good 24 hours, you can pad across the spotless floor in bare feet. And you didn’t have to nag or argue with anyone about how it got that way.

2. The lattes were another extravagance. I may not be a math wizard, but I know that $3 a day for fancy coffee is an indefensibly reckless expense. But! I work from home. And before I acquired a job-hunting officemate, those trips to Stumptown or Haven or Peet’s supplied what was sometimes my only face-to-face interaction of the day. I loved ambling through the neighborhood with Seeger, tying him up outside the door of a shop for all to admire while I chatted up baristas (or sullenly mumbled my order, depending on my mood) and procured my foamy, caffeinated delight. These days: The dog still needs to be walked, I still amble. But I miss the ceremony of those exchanges. I miss the first sip. I miss wrestling with my eco-guilt when I forgot my thermos mug at home. I miss the extravagance of it all.

3. We go to the library pretty much every week to get books for the boy. We have to. We read to him every night and without some new material, it’s pretty easy to lose your mind. So it occurred to me that instead of picking up a paperback at Powell’s I could just, you know, check out a book. Groundbreaking. The problem with this little brainstorm is that I go to the library with the boy. And I go utterly unprepared with a title or author of something I’d like to read. So I walk over to the adult fiction section with an armful of books about animals and trains and start scanning. The boy, meanwhile, starts running laps around the library. I linger to read the back of a novel they have propped up on top of the shelf. It sounds like crap. The boy does another lap and clips some guy working on the computer. I finally grab something that looks mildly interesting and wrestle the boy to the checkout desk. The first time I did all this, I got lucky. I grabbed Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer, which even though I haven’t read the prequel, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, was a delight. Last night, though, I picked up some novel about a young woman in war-torn Iraq. It looked like it had potential, but it’s poorly written enough to be annoying. I’ll finish it, though, out of some retarded sense of duty. I’ll just be annoyed.

4. Okay, I can’t really blame the wine fast on The New Austerity. But  it became evident that I was using it to self-medicate and going through bottles at an alarming rate. So I swore it off for lent and it’s been a helpful exercise. I haven’t given up beer or liquor, I’m no superhero. But those are easy to turn down, it’s wine that seduces me.

5. Having a nearly 3-year-old it’s not like we went out to eat a ton, but we did have our circuit of brewpubs with train tables and decent food that we frequented when I couldn’t be bothered to cook. Weekly pizza nights. Getaways without the boy to the bar at Higgins for pricey wine and unbelievably good food. A few weeks back we tried pizza night at home but the misshapen pies and odd toppings tasted like a budget. But sometimes we pull of a meal that wouldn’t look out of place on a parchment menu. Tonight it was rosemary lamb shoulder chops served with mashed sweet potatoes tinged with basil and topped with shaved parmigiano and perfect green beans. A glass of wine and I could have ignored the smeared food on the dining room table and the distinct stickiness of the floor.

But, yeah, nobody’s suffering unduly.

By the way, I have a little blog crush on Fighting Finn. You should check her out.