As an officially retired Baltimore City school teacher (crying tears of joy), I plan on blogging on a near daily basis about the no-buying adventure. But first, let's clear the air. There have been some transgressions on my part, and Owen's part that we feel the need to discuss. At the beginning of this project, the term necessity was nebulously defined at best, which has led to occasions when we play loose and fast with the rules. For example, does grocery store purchasing allow for impulse buys? Twice this year, I have decided to go to the Aldi (German discount grocery store) close to my school and buy flavored water, yogurt, and cheddar cheese rice cakes for lunch. Is that allowed under the purview of no-buy? It's unclear. On the one hand, those things are grocery items, some might call them staples, and they were purchased at a discount food retailer. On the other hand, they were not premeditated, and they were in small, single serving sizes (i.e. not bulk grocery store purchases). I'm not sure that this koan has an answer, nor that I am particularly looking for one, but this grocery store dilemma is just one of many situations that we have bumped into along the way. It doesn't exactly make me feel guilty to list the rest of our "questionable acts" and I don't need to be absolved, but I do it just to show everyone that we have struggled and given into temptations and twisting of logic. Here is a detailing of our lapses in no-buy purposely written without names to avoid blaming the innocent:
all vacations: Paris, Chicago, Eastern Shore, Portland
BWI: Mama Illardo's pizza
Houston-Hobby: Wendy's Frostee and beer
Aldi: rice cakes, Reese's Pieces, yogurt, flavored water
Urban Outfitter's in Chicago: $2 shirt (in lieu of coffee)
work:stealing from the office coffee fund to buy a Dr. Pepper
Eve: nine and five course meal with drinks
last week of school: drinks and bar food
There you have all of our transgressions. We sincerely hope that you still love us.
