There Were Bad Days, Too

I wrote this funny little piece during a particularly bad mediocre day in February 2019, and publish it now because why not. 

I learned an important lesson about the limits of frugality today. It involves makeshift refrigerators, imaginary food poisoning, and a thousand calories of trail mix-intake.

Today was a beautiful day in Budapest. In the few short weeks since I’ve been here, I’ve quickly learned that the city’s most prevalent face is the steel-grey sky, where I’m convulsing with cold even with three long-sleeved layers and a coat. But today—the sky was blue, the sun was shining— the somewhat smoggy haze of this beautiful city looked romantic with the bright light filtering through it.

I saw none of it. I was at home, fretting about the rice.

I made rice yesterday in a fit of being sick of bread (that is, before getting sick for real). I didn’t realize until after the rice was done that, without a refrigerator, I had nowhere to store the leftovers. No matter. When my roommate and I found out that the fridge in our new apartment was utterly broken, I had come up with an elegant and somewhat workable solution in which I stored all foods that needed to be refrigerated in the narrow windowsill between our inner and outer windows, where the mingling of the subzero temperatures outside and the heated interior mimicked admirably the effect of a refrigerator. Clever me!

My oh-so-clever solution when the outside was bitterly cold.

It’s really too bad that all the Tupperware I have with me is too wide to fit on the windowsill. In frustration, I had just put the leftover rice on the windowsill anyway, leaving the inner window open and hoping that the outside would be cold enough to compensate.

Of course, the next day I woke up and it was forty degrees and sunny, my rice lukewarm to the touch.

It was ten in the morning though, and I was starving with a stuffy nose, a raging headache, and a conviction that my bank account couldn’t afford the loss of these precious cups of rice. Despite the horror stories about reheating rice and sudden death, I decided to eat the rice anyway. So, coughing lightly, I waited for my rice to get piping hot in the microwave, put some scrambled eggs on it, and ate it with some sun-warmed sauerkraut on the side while surfing the Internet on my phone and realizing that reheating lukewarm rice in the microwave is the best way to get Bacillus cereus-induced diarrhea.

Too late. The rice and eggs were down the hatch. And so I waited the nerve-racking requisite five hours (wondering if my stomach gurgling was an indication of impending death) before realizing that I probably didn’t have food poisoning after all.

Huzzah! And, to celebrate, I decided to reheat some of the now-lukewarm lentil stew.

And here’s where I snapped. I was starving. And I needed bread to go with my bacteria-laden stew. So, armed with a few thousand forints, my pajamas, and a face of grim determination, I left my dim, warm house for the first time that day and ventured into the sun to buy some bread and a lemon for the throat.

I got to the store, carefully scoped out one decent lemon and a loaf of bread that was a good mix of cheap and tasty-looking. I also chose one tomato, which was also rather expensive but, I rationalized, filled with vitamins, so it was okay.

And right before the checkout line, I stopped in front of the nut shelves.

Friends, I normally consume at least a handful of nuts a day. Since coming to Hungary, however, my nut consumption has dropped to nearly zero (save the few nuts I can scrounge from my generous friends). My reasoning: nuts are (relatively) expensive and I am too poor to shell out a couple dollars extra for something I really love.

But, with a sore throat, a gurgling stomach I was trying to forget about, and a persistent eye-twitch, I snatched the first bag of trail mix from the shelf, marched to the register, and bought it. It cost double my other purchases combined

A true milestone. I bought the nuts for myself, damn it.

And, out of pure spite (I’m not sure towards whom, possibly towards the fridge and this awful head-cold). I marched home and methodically ate the entire loaf of bread and all 200 grams of those lovely, lovely nuts and dried fruits.

Now my stomach was really hurting, and it sure as hell wasn’t from the food poisoning. But somewhere between the bites of gluten and the crunch of peanuts I realized that maybe it’s not totally necessary to pinch my pennies on the things that truly make me Happy in life. Like nuts. When you’re having a bad day, maybe shelling a few extra dollars (for nuts) is worth it.

And who am I kidding, food is cheap here. Saving a couple hundred forints won’t matter that much in the long run.

Anyway, the lesson here is when you’re frustrated and sick and stressed, it’s important to treat yourself with things that you’ve been depriving yourself of. Maybe, if you read really deep, the lesson is that you should deprive yourself of things so that it feels nicer when you treat yourself to them.

All I know is that man oh man, downing that bag of nuts felt good.