Friday, March 10, 2006

I Blame Bush

Well, who else would I blame?

This is a post about what's up at the grocery story, and with the power company, and the gas company, and at the pumps.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticing how much harder it is to get from one end of the month to the next these days.

"What's the deal?" mr. delagar demanded of me last night. "Why don't we have any money any more?"

I didn't smack him, because, you know, I'm a sweet woman, I am.

I just pointed out to him a few rough things that had happened over the past few months -- Spike's eye injury, and the car trouble, and me getting slapped in the hospital for a suspected tumor, and the kid's nine weeks of therapy, which the insurance did not cover -- and told him he might add on to all that what the entire country had been going through this year.

Which is that all of us have, in fact, seen our electric bills and our gas bills and our gasoline bills double, at least. Grocery bills and clothing bills have also increased -- well, clothing bills did not increase for me, because we haven't bought clothes. No money left for clothes in the delagar household. Not after paying medical bills.

But grocery bills? We walk into the grocery store these days, buy almost nothing -- nearly no meat, no junk, nothing fancy -- and walk out with a bill for over a hundred bucks. For just basic food. (Well, okay: I do buy organic milk and free range eggs and free range chicken -- those are my three luxuries -- but except for the milk, which *is* pricey, none of those are much more than the regular goods.) For three people. One of them only seven. What's happened here? Why is food so expensive?

Because fuel is so expensive. It costs more to ship the groceries, so they cost more. And it costs more to cool and store them -- more to run the grocery itself. Prices everywhere have increased. The only thing that hasn't increased is my salary, or mr. delagar's.

In fact, my salary looks like it might get cut -- already the university is talking about raising the caps for summer classes, and cutting those that don't meet the caps. No summer pay for you!

Charming.

Here's more from mouse:

http://amousehole.blogspot.com/2006/01/this-little-thing-thats-been-buggin-me.html

1 comment:

zelda1 said...

Up here on the hill, we are feeling the crunch. Not only are we paying on a loan on our house, the house was paid for, but stupid me took out a loan to get my daughter out of trouble, anyway, we are paying that loan, plus rent which puts us paying out over a 1000 bucks a month for housing, then there are the other bills, and the food bill, which I spend about 200 bucks every two weeks. I don't even worry about the gas, I mean, we either have money to roll or we stay on the hill. This reminds me of when my children were little, and Reagan was president, and they cut the school lunch programs for those of us who had an income, they cut medical for those of us who had an income, my rent went up, my utilities went up, and I, for one, could not afford to drive. There were many days, my children shared a box of macaroni and cheese and I waited until they were full and the left overs were safely secured in the refrig, and I ate the leftover off their plate. That's how bad it was the last time a Republican caused such a strain on our economy. I can assure you, there are single women, who work, with children and they fall through the cracks of help, and they are rationing their food, right now. Their children will not have school supplies, by the way, that's a great way to help single women, buy extra school supplies and drop them off at the nearest elementary or high school and they pass them out, same for back packs, I get about fifty bucks extra in notebooks and crayons ect and usually buy two or three back packs and give them to the public school in my home town, anyway, back to the not having school supplies, and they will not get new clothes. It is the saddest day when we have children in this great country who go to bed hungry. That's what I'm talking about. Hillary Clinton has the right ideas about health care and child care. Everyone should remain equal in that race.