Living Expenses

 Let's talk about what happens in marriage regarding living expenses.

Before marriage or after divorce, causing singleness...

A single person has a 'rent' cost, driving expenses, if they can afford a vehicle, utilities, clothing for working, clothing for everything else, laundry expenses, groceries... incidentals. When her husband dies, not leaving her taken care of. His evil family takes everything they can and she eats soup.

So, let's say a woman, who is renting, is asked to marry a man who owns a house. His house doesn't have any debt. She used to own a house but that was lost in a terrible tragedy. Since then she has scraped by, and has lived on a shoe- string. Her life should get better if she marries a man who says, "I have enough for both of us."

The next thing that happens is 'how they eat' after marriage.

Doesn't that almost sound like a fairytale?

The woman says 'yes' and suddenly her life is all about growing a garden, so she can have food for winter. She grows enough tomatoes to make the most delicious soups and stews and lasagna, and so many delicious dinners. If any apples come her way, she makes apple pie filling for the winter.

At the beginning of the marriage, the man does the honourable thing and buys groceries so the wife can cook food for the two of them.

But two years into the marriage, he starts a strange diet and things get a little weird, in the kitchen.

He starts buying meat, meat, and more meat... and cheese, and canned fish,... he loves to stockpile. 

The wife makes all the food which is often 30 pounds of meat, per week.

On one shopping trip, the wife sees that the two pound hamburger packages are a good price. The husband is at work so the wife buys 30 two pound packages of lean ground beef. If the wife had still been single, this amount of hamburger would have been enough, for her, for 150 meals... enough hamburger for a year, so to speak. Because the husband is sharing with her, as well, he eats 120 meals from that hamburger and the wife only gets 30 meals.

So, the wife wonders... does he think that a wife cook, earning $16.03 per hour, should get paid to cook for him? He doesn't offer.

This year, her tomato harvest is stolen. The husband doesn't take care of the wife. He steals her tomatoes and apple pie filling and frozen hamburger and a few frozen roasts and frozen bacon and Java Club coffee beans, her special buy from Costco.

This is very, very bad, indeed.

Due to... no fault of her own... she is pushed into paying a huge rent bill that no person would ever sign for because she has no income.

The harvest loaf, (right) is my special autumn baking treat that I have made for 40 years. Here it is, at 225... I put it on my 'medallion' square plates, 8 or more, I have. I used them for a special fundraiser at Cross Church many years ago when I produced an Elizabethan- style table. I purchased these plates specifically for that event.

That's my basil, from the garden, that you see in the 'Better Homes and Gardens' bowl I purchased at Walmart.

I also have Christmas ornaments that I used for a Cross Church fundraiser, a different year, stuck at 225, awaiting me to get them into a truck, so I can use all I own, where I, currently, live.

My garden box, in the back, must be missing my 'gardening touch.' My son made this for me after the death of my loved one. 

Now, it is back to soups, in Winnipeg... because the wife has been forced to live on 'next to nothing' as she was never offered a job or any means of support for the entire four years awey.

I am, anxiously, awaiting all my things, at my rented storage unit, in Winnipeg. I cannot bake and cook properly because my pots and bakeware are all at 225 as well as all my groceries.

I have was asked if I want a 'diversion' and I thought, well, isn't four years of hard labour, at 225, enough of a diversion compared with working a job I was getting paid for in Winnipeg?