Day 4

Yesterday was day 4. A couple of days ago a co-worker of mine was telling me she had let a friend stay with her and as a thank you, the friend had stocked her fridge and pantry. Consequently she had so much food in her fridge she didn't know what to do with it all. "Freeze it". I said. Her freezer was already full. She lives alone and was worried about not being able to eat it all by herself. Her main concern was a bag of potatoes and a "huge thing of chicken" when she didn't really like chicken anyways.

My fridge is getting pretty sparse.

She was also telling me about a friend of hers that is going to Mexico to teach art classes to children, and how she was planning on giving her some art supplies as a parting gift. I asked if she would be willing to trade some of the extra food for some paints I had at home. She was delighted at the idea.

So I spent the morning choosing which art supplies I could part with. I kept the primary colors so I could still create any color I wanted, and packed the rest. I also kept one tube of brown acrylic that I had not yet opened and still had the $8.99 price sticker on it. I kept this one for the option of returning it and exchanging it for something I might need during the course of the month. I also threw in some construction paper and card stock I had bought on a creative whim but had barely used.

After packing my lunch I headed out with my duffel bag, art supplies and two pieces of leftover cold pizza for breakfast. The day before, I met a friend for dinner at the mall after my shift. He was kind enough to pay for our meal and give me a ride home as well. The cold pizza was a welcomed treat and I was glad I had saved it for the morning, triumphing over the late night snacking temptation that had occurred about midnight the night before.

As I left the gate I waved good morning to one of the apartment employees. He called after me. "Do you need a ride to work?" I offered him a slice of pizza in exchange for the ride and he accepted. Taking the ride meant I was at work 40 minutes early. I decided to hang out at the public computer in the Starbucks at the mall. I asked the barista to send any wrongly made drinks my way. Within 15 minutes I was sipping on something deliciously hazelnutty and checking my e-mail.

The day before another coworker had kindly brought me a portion of enchiladas her mother had made. I decided to save it for tonight, a fitting Cinco De Mayo feast. The anticipation of eating those enchiladas drifted in and out of my thoughts the whole walk home from work. My initial instinct was to heat up the entire entree, but not knowing when I would be able to enjoy my next Mexican meal, I reassessed the situation and put half back in the fridge.

I find it interesting that money was created to make things easier, a universal way to put a value on things, but it can also stand in the way of the things we need. My co worker would never consider selling her extra food, something that would be difficult and awkward to accomplish, but it also never occured to her to trade it. Trading something for something was the *first* way people came up with to get what they could not produce themselves. It was pretty smart. Now the pig farmer could also get grains, and the wheat farmer could enjoy some bacon etc. We are so familiar with the language of money, we forget what it really is, a way of communicating the things we need. When we take out the middle man that is currency, when we drop that barrier between ourselves as humans, when we reach out directly to each other, we can often find even better solutions for ourselves than the dollar could have offered.