Random goings on

I've really been cutting back on dining out. It's a huge waste of money and there really isn't much good around here. Basically, it's just dragging myself and the kids to some mediocre joint with mediocre food and shelling out $60 each time. It is starting to make me grumpy. I can take $60 and make steaks, potatoes, fresh vegetables, hot bread and even wine. There are plenty of leftovers and ingedients for future meals as well.

So, I've been cooking at home a lot. It's much less stressful and the kids like learning to cook.

With grocery prices up more than 30%, I decided no more junk food, no more name brand chips and crackers, no more $8 for a six pack of regular beer. I'm buying basic foodstuffs and making food from scratch. To tell you the truth, it's really not that much harder than opening a box and boiling water.

Luckily, before I quit to take care of the kids, we reduced our debt to house and cars only. We can get along fine on one income but there is no good reason to toss money away in this kind of economic climate.

I'm trying to teach my kids about politics. They see and hear all this shit going on and are pretty confused by it. I tell them it's easy.

Democrats want to take away your money and the right to choose how to run your own life. They want to rob from the producers and give it to the non-producers. They want us to give up the standard of living that we have worked so hard to attain because of some nonsense about global warming. They also want to criminalize speech they disagree with.

Republicans are almost the same but they want to do it more slowly.

I'll tell you what, I can't wait for all these military personnel to come home from Iraq and get into politics. They know what they've been fighting for and against for 5 years and should have some pretty good ideas on how to fix the shitty mess we've gotten ourselves into.