The other side of the mountain

I've spent most (though not all) of my adult life living paycheck to paycheck.  While my immediate family has been very fortunate in not having had catastrophic illnesses or injuries, many is the night I've laid awake in bed worrying about a car going on the fritz, the refrigerator humming its last hum, or a pipe bursting from the frigid cold (this week's worry!) and knowing there was no money to pay for any one of them.

Never, though, have I worried about having enough money to buy groceries.  We always had enough money for food.  Which is why, after reading this post on fifth Fridays (if you pay rent weekly, a fifth week in a month is hellish), you realize how propitious something many of us take for granted really is.

Have you ever frozen the leftover Christmas ham just so you could have meat for the next month?  Ever dumpster dived for dented cans of vegetables?  Wondered what it was like to wish you had enough money to buy whatever you felt like eating?  The young lady who wrote the post has.

And you can certainly understand her wondering just where in the hell in America this good life that we have all been promised if we worked hard enough is located these days.

Peace,
emaycee