Well, well, well....things have been going on around here.
First, and I will write about this in more detail a little later: we are under contract for a house. We are first-time buyers, and haven't closed yet, so things are not set totally in stone, but all things being equal, we should be moving next month. This has been a very weird and amazing experience, and I can't quite write about it yet.
Except to say: it's crazy to be buying a home, which is such a grown-up thing to do, and something I thought I was too poor for. Sure, I am too poor to buy a large home, and I am too poor to buy a home in Southern California, where I grew up, and yes, I am too poor to buy a restored Victorian row house downtown. I am not too poor for a starter house in the suburbs, and, in fact, buying a home like this will save me money in rent AND gas for commuting. This experience has made me think hard about a lot of things. One very certain one is that unless things change a lot back home, I will probably never move back to the L.A. Basin. We COULD, one day, after racking up quite a bit of equity in this home and perhaps going through quite a few pay raises, consider moving to California, with all the expenses that entails. But this much is clear: my cost of living here enables me to have a much higher standard of living than I would in my beloved home state. My money means more, here. Plain and simple. Yes, it's humid in the summer. Yes, it rains a lot, and we do run the risk of hurricanes. Yes, we live in a flood plain (ahem--so do millions of people in the valleys surrounding the Santa Ana and LA Rivers). Yes, mosquitoes bite me frequently. No, there are no 24 hour Starbucks. Yes, the grocery stores sometimes close early. Yes, my immediate family lives on the other side of the country, and sometimes that hurts. The price of financial stability is not one that should be considered lightly, but I made an irrevocable choice 5 years ago to move, and all things considered, it is still the best, albeit most controversial, choice I've ever made.
Second, I am reading an incredibly engaging book called What To Eat, by Marion Nestle, an acclaimed nutritionist and food politics writer. In it, she describes and breaks down the complex choices food shoppers face when walking into a grocery store in America, and the powers of the food industry that create that complex shopping experience. She looks at product placement, pricing, organic certification, ingredients in foods, and seems to be doing what I enjoy most--not directing reader's choices but offering simple-to-understand information so that readers can be better equipped to make their own decisions about what to eat and how to spend their food money. The politics behind the business vying for your food spending are complex and make for compelling reading. I hope to offer some insights from this book and how I attempt to apply them to my life and my food budget on this blog as I read. We shall see. In the meantime, I recommend this book to anyone interested in taking control of his or her own food shopping and consumption. It can directly affect your health and your bank account.
