Vox - The best money I ever spenthttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2022-08-06T09:00:00-04:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/179697112022-08-06T09:00:00-04:002022-08-06T09:00:00-04:00The best $4 I ever spent: A sparkly hijab
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pv7e34Fv3kGEQ2N2bJ0ZqjT0JAI=/500x0:3500x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71215444/Hijab.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>In the same year that Muslims were victims of religious hate crimes 2,703 times in the UK, I put my all into celebrating myself. | Dana Rodriguez for Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I had things to say, and a voice to wield, and what I needed to say needed different clothes that in turn had a statement to make.</p> <p id="wjZtXO">For British Somalis especially, the weeks leading up to a big wedding rival the anticipation felt for the Met Gala. Once you have secured your embossed cream-colored invitation to an event, the planning and video chats with girlfriends begin, and it is game on. </p>
<p id="IxJNKd">You would think it was <em>everyone </em>in Leicester’s<em> </em>wedding day, the way mere guests go about dissecting the night’s details. Who will be doing our henna, and does she do nails, too? Does that girl you went to school with still do makeup? And let’s not forget the most important question: What are you wearing? This last question is one that sits at the forefront of our minds for weeks, but in typical Somali fashion, it is only ever addressed in the last 48 hours before the big night itself. Young or old, that question is almost as sacred to us as the wedding itself. We approach it with a mantra that our people have carried with them for generations: You must show up and show out. You <em>must</em>. </p>
<p id="wdXzMv">And when Leicesterians want to show up and show out — more specifically, when Leicesterians want to flex and are on a budget — we don’t go to River Island or Zara. We go to St. Matthews, the cornerstone of culture in our city. A relatively small neighborhood near the city’s center, it provides home and sanctuary to much of Leicester’s Black and Asian community, who make up <a href="https://www.streetcheck.co.uk/postcode/le12bu">an estimated 47 percent</a> of the area’s population. With its diverse makeup, St. Matthews is at odds with much of the city, its streets filled with more masjids and barbershops than one can count. It is where most Muslim parents drive their kids to Madrasah in the evenings or where you go to get the freshest halwa for Eid day. Though an exceptionally working-class area of Leicester, it has a cultural currency that is undeniable. It is also where you come to find the drippiest traditional ’fits when you have a big wedding to attend, like I did last September. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="qKlB2H"><q>We approach it with a mantra that our people have carried with them for generations: You must show up and show out. You <em>must</em>. </q></aside></div>
<p id="gq0oly">The cultural climate I grew up in was one where, at best, the Muslim experience was ignored and shunned by the mainstream. At worst, it was weaponized in a boogeyman narrative. Born a month before 9/11, I am a baby of the “war on terror” era and have never known a world in which I have not contended with people’s assumptions. It seems that instead of fading, the harmful stereotypes that have been stamped onto my people are more visible now than ever. It feels like political Islamophobia has become the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/6/10/analysis-islamophobia-is-the-norm-in-modis-india">easiest ticket into positions of power</a>, with politicians needing simply to pander to fear in order to garner votes. </p>
<p id="vy6fRJ">The consequences of mainstream Islamophobia have often manifested in unjust legislation, like the banning of burqas in places like <a href="https://www.news9live.com/knowledge/hijab-row-complete-list-of-countries-that-have-banned-burqa-154140">France, Belgium, and China</a>. But more times than not, it is an invisible weight on the everyday life of Muslims. It is a burden that dampens your joy, and I shrank into myself and lived without the vigor that I deserved until finally, enough was enough. </p>
<p id="XRlne0">So, last September, in the same year that <a href="https://www.derbyshire.police.uk/news/derbyshire/news/campaigns/2021/november/its-timeforchange-and-time-to-challenge-hate-crime/">Muslims were victims of religious hate crimes 2,703 times </a>in the UK, I put my all into celebrating the very marker of my difference at my first cousin Farhiya’s wedding: my hijab.</p>
<p id="RoP9FP">I went to the Somali corner shops in St. Matthews after work with my mum as I have since I was a child, geared with snacks and fizzy drinks. It was a tradition that we have kept even now in my 20s, meeting up after work before we walk home together. As was to be expected, the place was packed. Some women sat on the floor or on boxes containing freshly shipped clothes. One of the owners passed around shushumow and offered biscuits to the children in tow. A point is made about hospitality in Somali shops, especially on days like this. The vibrance of the garments and loud prints that line the walls may overwhelm outsiders who do not understand our trends, but to me, they bring the same comfort that my home brings. In fact, there are pieces in this shop that I recognize from my own closet, like an abaya with its sleeves lined with pearls.</p>
<p id="fwWcYG">In my periphery, something caught my eye: a display of hijabs bundled into rolls, organized by material, color and design. </p>
<p id="1suCaF">At the top lay the hijab that would, unbeknownst to me, reignite my lost love for fashion.</p>
<p id="RUKLNE">Growing up, I had been obsessed with my mother’s closet. The wild prints and breathtaking textures had riled me into experimenting. But as I got older, I started to fall into the trap of dressing as far from my origins as possible in the hopes of assimilating better. Off came the zebra-print dress and on went a black pencil skirt that I wore because Sarah in my tutoring class had one. The multicolor hijab that my mother had gifted me for my 14th birthday was switched out for the generic slicked-back bun that the girls on the school netball team sported at a party earlier in the week. </p>
<p id="5sd3gu">I started to spend more of my summers back home in Somalia among the rest of my family, and I was struck by just how well everyone dressed. That combined with my political awakening meant that I started to reconnect with my roots through clothes. </p>
<p id="OaFCwW">The extroversion that I had hidden away as I battled against assumptions from others and myself about what a hijab should look like started to unravel when I turned 18. I had unlocked a newer version of myself — and I found that I gravitated toward different clothes, ones with personality and flair. I had things to say and a voice to wield, and what I needed to say needed different clothes that, in turn, had a statement to make. And right at that moment, a purple sparkly hijab from that bundle called to me. It seems silly to say, but it felt fated. It was flamboyant and loud, and it made me feel giddy. The $4 price tag was a small cost to pay for the rarity of partaking in all that is vain and pretty. </p>
<p id="7D2IHX">There is a somberness expected in your dress as a hijab-wearer. But the Somali shop has helped combat all of that limiting nonsense. To those who fled their homes so long ago, they have become a sort of fashion holy ground, cultivating a flashier, more extroverted (and African) take on modest dressing. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="NdKbsE"><q>We needed our wooden Afro combs, organic sesame oil, tuna straight from our shores, and even sparkly scarves</q></aside></div>
<p id="cMOkYL">Trends laid down by fabric owners in countries like Dubai and Turkey can help alter the way an entire community dresses. These small-business owners do everything themselves, from sourcing the fabric in bulk to negotiating with tailors to help them realize their vision for the fit. The lack of a middleman ensures that, for the most part, prices stay down. There is no one to interfere in the trade of these production workers; they are their own bosses and so negotiate their prices with each store owner on their own terms. That in combination with the fact that there is no cute merchandising or packaging to pay for also helps to make the Somali shop a cheaper option than your usual high-street stores.</p>
<p id="d1zqfR">When the civil war of the 1980s erupted in Somalia, many of her people fled abroad, making up the far-reaching diaspora that we see today. Leaving behind their hopes and aspirations, many needed to find ways to make money and so they did what many immigrant populations have done before: They hustled. When it became apparent that the war was not ending anytime soon, they decided to put down roots, a level of permanence for their children, while also connecting their community to the culture they were forced to leave behind. We needed our wooden Afro combs, organic sesame oil, tuna straight from our shores, and even sparkly scarves. </p>
<p id="8sANQb">Whatever we needed, we provided for ourselves. There are few things more powerful than expanding when the status quo would have you shrink, few things more beautiful than seeing someone live their life on their own terms, no matter how inconvenient that is to the systems that exist to oppress us. For me, it took that hijab to help unlearn the falsehoods I had internalized about how a Muslim, Black woman should operate. </p>
<p id="Mzbgym">I paid $4 to help better understand myself, to legitimize my version of femininity. I stood in that shop and wrapped that scarf around me to “oohs” and “aahs.” My mother and I were the hijabis of the wedding, clad in the same tailored dress but she in jade. Besides the scarf itself, the most stunning thing about that purchase was the immeasurable confidence that it sparked in me. On that night, I perceived myself to be beautiful and dynamic. Seen. To the many thousands of Somali small business owners, I thank you. I paid someone $4 to help me better understand myself. I would do it again in a heartbeat. </p>
<p id="BDVWTY"><em>Ayan Artan is a culture and politics writer whose work focuses on engaging critically with intersectional viewpoints, exploring topics such as race, feminine identity, and the migrant experience through an original lens.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23198478/sparkly-hijab-leicester-best-moneyAyan Artan2022-07-23T08:00:00-04:002022-07-23T08:00:00-04:00The best $180 I ever spent: My union fees
<figure>
<img alt="An illustration of a paper bill for union fees, with “Union Contract” written on the top." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Mknf3QLL6mF3GSvhYwr2PeYNEC0=/500x0:3500x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71165262/Dues.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>I would be taking a side, definitively, and I would be paying for the privilege. | Dana Rodriguez for Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By joining the union, I bought myself a new political identity that stood in solidarity with anybody struggling to make the world a better place.</p> <p id="itTFG1">I grew up comfortable. Not rich, but with two loving public servants for parents, in stable jobs that could provide everything my two brothers and I would ever reasonably need. Our quarter-acre block was quiet and dense with trees, and even now when I return, it feels like a deep, calm breath, nestled on the green fringe of inner-city Sydney, just a little over four miles west of the opera house and the famous Harbour Bridge.</p>
<p id="3ttsNG">My mom is the daughter of an Irish truck driver, risen above her station to become the first in her family to go to university. My dad is the son of a stuffy British family made briefly wealthy by World War II. They never let us forget our luck to have been born into such a life. </p>
<p id="DioPNV">My parents read the paper each morning, and discussed its contents each night. The world had red and blue, rich and poor, lucky and unlucky; clear winners, clear losers, clear enemies, and clear friends. I remember the 2007 federal election, both of them astonished and on the edge of tears of joy, as it became clear that the conservative government that had ruled for the past 11 years would finally fall. They spoke in hushed tones, lest words break the spell: “They’ve lost Bennelong — that’s John Howard’s seat! Labor is going to win!”</p>
<p id="ukXC3A">As ubiquitous as feelings of right and wrong were, politics for us was largely abstraction; something that happened — in the papers, on TV — and to which you reacted accordingly. You knew your side, and you supported them as best you could; with your vote on Election Day, your anger or pleasure at policy announcements, your words around the table if your company wasn’t too judgmental. It was not something you <em>did</em>, not something you took with you into the streets, into work, or to family Christmas. And to join a union — that relic of a bygone era, of dusty men in peaked caps shouting outside a shuttered factory before heading home for tea? Forget about it. </p>
<p id="xvY8rS">We were middle-class — quiet, polite, and fiercely self-sufficient — and politics, while important, was not something you fought for as if your life depended on it. Because, well, it didn’t. Though, of course, you were sympathetic to those for whom it did. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="L6HLJn">
<p id="FkKSFo">I went like this through high school. Though the looming threat of climate change scared me shitless, and I nurtured a growing disgust for <a href="https://theworld.org/stories/2014-04-24/11-ways-tony-abbott-ruining-australia-and-threatening-whole-world">Tony Abbott</a> — the lurching, zombielike opposition leader, then prime minister whose slander of women, immigrants, environmentalists, and the poor had toxified Australian politics in the early 2010s — I couldn’t have called myself a political person. The two students in my year who could were, frankly, considered weirdos, and when I did once try to make an intervention — some point about the budget deficit I’d read in my parents’ paper — I earned from one of them a brittle retort: “Well, I didn’t realize <em>you </em>knew anything about economics, Angus.” </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="sGeBQH"><q>I was an observer, a pretender, full of words and empty theories, cosplaying as revolutionary at a sandstone university</q></aside></div>
<p id="9HWNdo">University was different. I’d taken a year to work and travel, and joined a group of youth activists who organized workshops across Sydney to teach schoolchildren about climate change, the environment, and sustainability. My nascent political consciousness, freed now from the hollow moral universe of my Christian Brothers school and in search of a language that I could use to describe the world and what I’d change about it, quickly morphed into ardent student socialism. In the company of like-minded teachers and peers in the political economy faculty — routinely dismissed around campus as a slack band of communist pretenders, but to me, a revelation — I crafted meticulous takedowns of the capitalist status quo, which I would then unleash on the unsuspecting, uncaring, or less-informed. I would berate them for their ignorance, expose their complicity in the evil systems that ruled the world, until I was so puffed up with indignation and my own clever theories that I thought I might burst.</p>
<p id="FlbAgH">Then I would go home, to our leafy quarter-acre, and soak up my parents’ praise over a home-cooked meal.</p>
<p id="G4OmsD">Because the truth was that this was all theoretical to me. I worked a shitty job, true, and I was scared; of climate change, of cronyism and dodgy bosses, of letting the wrong people win. But I was also a white, middle-class kid from a nice part of Sydney, who had leveraged an expensive education and supportive family into the unshakeable foundations of success inside the very system I so passionately skewered. I was an observer, a pretender, full of words and empty theories, cosplaying as revolutionary at a sandstone university.</p>
<p id="BSwUDE">When I graduated I was offered a job at the Australian Treasury, punching out the spreadsheets and paragraphs that keep the government running. Notwithstanding criticism from some of my snarkier classmates — “sellout,” they called me, only half-joking — I moved down to Canberra at the beginning of 2019. </p>
<p id="fhAXrv">Canberra is Australia’s bushy, anonymous capital city, but the Treasury building itself is unmissable. It’s huge, gray, and granite, rising like a prison from the banks of an enormous human-made lake and lawns that stay rich and green during even the harshest summers. On my first day I sat at my desk, shuffling paper, until a polite — though insistent — cough sounded over my left shoulder. I looked up to a smiling face. It was younger than most I’d yet seen in the office, perched over a defiantly patterned shirt with a red-and-white lanyard trailing from the breast pocket.</p>
<p id="Vd6Fmz">“Sydney Uni, eh?”</p>
<p id="mlaFhm">“Yeah, yeah … just finished in November.” I’d talked through my qualifications a thousand times that day.</p>
<p id="PkLdx1">He nodded, and looked around shiftily. A pause.</p>
<p id="MrA8NL">“Political economy grads usually join the union, you know. We’ve got an introductory rate on membership — $15 a month. It’s all here on this form.” He slapped a piece of paper down onto my desk, tapped it once (“think about it”), and left.</p>
<p id="VP0J5T">$15 a month. $180 for the year.</p>
<p id="vTyrNi">It felt like a lot. I was in a stingy, post-relocation frame of mind. Moving states is never cheap, but even then the brutal early-year Canberra rental market, competing with the annual influx of new students and bureaucrats for scarce, overpriced rentals, had blown a hole in my savings. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="cFnkV6"><q>By joining the union, I realized, I had bought myself a new political identity that stood in solidarity with anybody struggling to make the world a better place</q></aside></div>
<p id="e6X8zT">But equally, here it was. An opportunity to at last put some skin in the game. To finally commit to something real, something that was bigger than my textbooks, greater than a collection of coddled kids shouting half-digested words at each other in the corner of a grimy pub. I would be taking a side, definitively, and I would be paying for the privilege. In this seat of political and economic power, at the center of government for a nation that bought so <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/five-great-reforms-are-an-essential-legacy-20090219-8cjv.html">willingly</a> into the crude individualism of the 1980s and ’90s, to be unionized was to be inefficient, slow, lazy, and old-fashioned; to be unionized was to be unable to look out for yourself. </p>
<p id="uwjFnZ">Could I afford it? Yes. Did I want to spend the money? Not really. I was making more than I ever had before, my first proper job after years of minimum-wage work behind bars and shop counters. But it was precisely the cost that mattered. You put your money where your mouth was. And so I joined up.</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="0vF5bc">
<p id="umpBQY">A few weeks later I was watching the news, and the bulletin flashed scenes of a protest in Chile. It had started in opposition to <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/10/29/20938402/santiago-chile-protests-2019-riots-metro-fare-pinera">transit fare increases</a>, but quickly spiraled into a national movement against inequality, repression, and elitist government. In the footage thousands of people were marching down the street, waving flags and chanting as a line of armed police advanced with riot shields. It cut to the president announcing a state of emergency, and then back to violence, bands of protesters now running, pelted by water cannons, and police firing tear gas into the crowd. On the banner along the bottom of the screen scrolled words: <em>Chilean unions call general strike, join calls for new constitution</em>. <em>Leader: “We want to demonstrate that unity is strength.”</em> And suddenly I felt it. </p>
<p id="6DegP4">In one sense I couldn’t have been further away. I was in my living room, in pajamas, with cockatoos hacking in the trees outside and dinner bubbling away on the stove. In that moment, though, I had a powerful, palpable sense of myself as a node in a vast network of political energy, spanning forward and backward through time and across continents. I felt connected to these people, marching in the sun in a country I had only ever heard of, against problems I myself had never faced. By joining the union, I realized, I had bought myself a new political identity that stood in solidarity with anybody struggling to make the world a better place. Not to mention the generations of workers who had lived, fought, and died for things that now felt eternal. The 8-hour day, sick leave, weekends, and holidays; all once dreams, then goals, then demands, then facts. This was an identity that demanded I <em>act</em>, not merely discuss, and for which politics was as real, pressing, and personal as hunger pains or a police baton. </p>
<div><aside id="8VENsB"><q>Here it was. An opportunity to at last put some skin in the game. To finally commit to something real, something that was bigger than my textbooks.</q></aside></div>
<p id="q8frZJ">I became surer, more confident; bluster was replaced by a calm sense of purpose. At work, I realized more people than I had ever imagined were union too; the young guy who sat on my right, the 10-year veteran at my back, the manager at the end of the hall, and the woman in the cubicle immediately opposite my own. We tried to bring more people into the fold, joined arbitrations and wage negotiations, protested against reductions in public service staff levels, and stood in solidarity against the inequalities of race, sexuality, and gender that clove our workplace as much as any. We would see each other in the white-collar trenches — kitchen, meeting room, afternoon tea — and know that we were, in our sterile, small, but very real way, working to make positive change.</p>
<p id="vLSn2j">I stood up to my boss, and called him a racist when he was being a racist. I wouldn’t have done that before. </p>
<p id="YFL1xx">On September 20, 2019, I joined my first strike. It was an unseasonably warm day, with a hot, dry wind, and the first embers of the <a href="https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/black-summer-bushfires-nsw-2019-20/">Black Summer bushfires</a> that would rage for six months, decimating half the country and claiming over a billion animal and human lives, were beginning to smolder. The union had called on its members to leave work in solidarity with millions of children across the world, who in turn had left school in solidarity with one <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49918719">16-year-old Swedish girl</a> who, every Friday for the past year, had stood outside her country’s parliament with a sign that demanded they do more to fight climate change.</p>
<p id="M0dbCS">As I walked, in a suit, in the blinding sun, shouting under union colors that the government I served must take the fears of its people seriously, I felt a lifetime apart from the mouthy student who harangued his parents over dinner. Even more so from the sheltered, confused schoolboy I had been. I had arrived, in the streets, and politics was no longer theoretical. Now, I could not only imagine a better world — free of the inequality, insecurity, and environmental catastrophe that had terrified me first into silence, and then into shallow dogma — but I also knew I would fight alongside legions of others to bring it into being. </p>
<p id="IgpLrs"><em>Angus Chapman is a writer and researcher from Sydney, Australia, now living in London.</em></p>
<p id="5eU7Yv"></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23148762/union-fees-best-money-australiaAngus Chapman2022-07-03T09:00:00-04:002022-07-03T09:00:00-04:00The best $79 I ever spent: Paint for my very own bedroom walls
<figure>
<img alt="illustration of paint bucket" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4R92AHepgMIjnCMtF6e_SZ2SwNs=/500x0:3500x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71043042/Paint.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Choosing a color for my room felt like there was a little girl sitting with me, who did not grow up with the space she needed, helping me make a choice to sustain us both. | Dana Rodriguez for Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The idea that I could help myself recover was unknown to me. Then I decided to paint my room.</p> <p id="r6NOzF">Begin. In the middle of a pandemic. Buy three buckets of paint. One 5-liter bucket of white paint for the ceiling and two 10-liters of paint for the walls. Choose a color you would paint a room to symbolize a new beginning. As many coats of cream white paint as needed to silence dirty baby blue walls. Paint. Hang a framed black-and-white photographic portrait. Purchase new sheets. Discover the womb of your healing. Create the space to love yourself. Start again.</p>
<p id="8BCWtk">I was raised by my unemployed, widowed mother in our three-bedroom home in a small suburb in Johannesburg, South Africa. There was only one bedroom for both my younger sister and me. It had two single beds and an antique chest of drawers that housed our underwear, socks, and pajamas between mulberry-painted walls. While I have reverence for the room for providing a safe space for my sister and me to share secrets since I was about 9 years old, sharing a very intimate space with someone else meant having no intimate moments alone. It was dreadful having to wait until my face was facing the wall right before I fell asleep to be able to cry. There was nowhere for me to feel anything that demanded to be felt, because I had to think of my younger sister’s feelings before I could even welcome my own. </p>
<p id="X5eK8Z">I was incredibly lonely because I am an awkward, quirky Black girl and the eldest daughter, who was often barred from excitedly telling others about how happy her hobbies made her. Maybe I struggled to, because it all deviated from what is defined and accepted as culturally Black, or African. So I sat alone in the library and read fiction. I was isolated, with hundreds of thoughts, judging and belittling me for being me. I never learned to ask for help — not even from myself. My family never looked to objects and spaces that our hands can dismantle as easily as they can build them; when you were struggling, you had to remember to pray. The idea that I could help myself recover was unknown. </p>
<p id="FH3ktR">I was so alone that when my brother passed down his bedroom to me, just before I turned 18 years old, all I had was a double bed on its base between the four dirty baby blue walls that bore his exhaustion. I was okay with the bed and nothing more for about two years.</p>
<p id="BTK8El">The state of the bedroom itself was crying for a functional body. The space was crowded and seeing unwashed cups heightened that feeling. I had to do something about the clothes that lay on the floor for days — the first thing I saw in the morning, the sight overwhelming me — and start asking myself for help. </p>
<div><aside id="9WT1dU"><q>So much of me needed so much more than a bed that only provided physical rest</q></aside></div>
<p id="eTxcoo">So much of me needed so much more than a bed that only provided physical rest. So much of me needed mending. So much of me needed to do more, to be more in the process of mending myself. I wonder why I occupied the bedroom and did not play Alessia Cara’s debut album out loud? Why did I not bring in a desk and a chair to write? I had to stop yearning and seeking for what I desperately needed by spending hours elsewhere, when the sacredness of the mundane in my daily life could bring joy. </p>
<p id="dWsXlL">My grandmother and mother may have had prayer only to rely on, but while struggling to pray I had to ask myself what I had. At the time I did not know that learning to take care of myself would begin with routinely sweeping the floor. I looked around for a fresh start in what I had — something many of the women before me never had, a bedroom of their own. </p>
<p id="CP8d2H">I started over with <em>Eat Pray Love</em>, Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir on her search for everything she required while in Italy, India, and Indonesia. My relationship with her search continually saves me. I fell in love with her memoir through the film one early evening on Netflix. There is a scene where Gilbert travels Italy and has intense, intimate moments with food. I do not know how many times I have rewatched that part of the film and had the strongest desire to feel that kind of intimacy. </p>
<p id="D77ewm">I found myself crouching over a shelf in a bookshop to take a hard copy of the memoir home to read right before the pandemic. Gilbert taught me the importance of stillness in starting over. She listened to God when He told her to go to bed, she listened to those who understand silence, and most importantly, she listened to herself wholeheartedly. I allowed her to guide me when I read: “It was vital to my survival to have a one bedroom of my own. I saw the apartment almost as a sanatorium, a hospice clinic for my own recovery. I painted the walls in the warmest colors I could find and bought myself flowers every week, as if I were visiting myself in the hospital.”<em> </em>And it was not until I read this that I realized that I never offered the exhausted and wounded girl within me the opportunity to rest here, with me, at home, because I did not feel safe alone. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="oNFy33"><q>The sun suddenly started greeting me every morning and bidding farewell every afternoon, without hiding herself, because the cream white paint let her come in to see me</q></aside></div>
<p id="FLlaYC">Recovery and happiness cannot be bought, but I do believe that it is crucial to allow financial freedom to mend us. I did not grow up in a home with abundant financial freedom. When I earned my first salary, I remembered that while the women in my family prioritized necessities, they still managed to put aside a little from the small amount that they earn to spoil themselves. Therefore, I took a little bit of the $387 I earned from my first full-time job ever as a content writer working in the heartbeat of Johannesburg, sometimes in a sunlit office and other times in the dining room. </p>
<p id="zQsmoh">I did not want to spoil myself, though. I wanted to take care of myself, so I asked my mother to paint my bedroom. When she agreed, I spent weeks on Pinterest choosing a color that would silence the remnants of my brother’s voice on the walls. Choosing a color felt like there was a little girl sitting with me, who did not grow up with a space she needed, helping me make a choice that would sustain us both.</p>
<p id="DS76SW">When the bank notification came in telling me that I just spent $79 on three buckets of paint for a room of my own and we started painting, exhaling immediately stopped feeling like a task. The sun suddenly started greeting me every morning and bidding farewell every afternoon, without hiding herself, because the cream white paint let her come in to see me. I never knew that the sun could do that until the walls were carrying <em>me</em>. </p>
<p id="UQDjLv">The walls <em>are</em> carrying me in the black-and-white photograph of myself that I hung on my bedroom wall. It is a reminder that I am a story worth documenting and deserving of being kept alive. I learned this from Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” an essay on her liberating search of what kept our mothers alive daily. I continue to return to the highlighted hard copy when I need a reminder of my role as a writer. Like countless Black women, I come from women who spent many of their days cooking for others before thinking of feeding themselves and learning others’ names without ever learning to spell their own. Black women were refused the time to use their gifts freely for centuries. Walker taught me that Black women died with their gifts, because their genius was denied its necessary power. If I carry my ancestors’ trauma, it is therefore my responsibility to mend them through me. </p>
<p id="BLnwDD">This room — with cream white walls and a dandelion yellow satin duvet cover set, the first of my own — is my antidote. I have the women who raised me and women who write to themselves, for themselves — my ancestors who write through me, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Alice Walker — to thank for allowing me to bow at my own feet, for starting over. </p>
<p id="Xv7yYO"><em>Tshedza Mashamba is a BA law student and writer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. </em></p>
<p id="lK7z5M"></p>
https://www.vox.com/23156416/solo-bedroom-paint-best-moneyTshedza Mashamba2022-06-12T08:30:00-04:002022-06-12T08:30:00-04:00The best $2,618 I ever spent: A second wedding ceremony
<figure>
<img alt="An illustration of a wedding invitation atop its envelope." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yjDB5rYLQzomQpo9kiVGnFM4PNs=/500x0:3500x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70968250/Wedding.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>I was fiercely independent, and didn’t have faith I could care for anyone else. But Antoinette always believed in me. | Dana Rodriguez for Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Six months after I nearly destroyed our first $26,112 day.</p> <p id="8n5biw">Four days after we walked down the aisle for the first time, my wife Antoinette and I cruised off on our honeymoon to Cozumel, Mexico. On our second night, we found ourselves sitting in a theater full of our fellow passengers as contestants on a knockoff version of the ’60s game show, <em>The Newlywed Game</em>.</p>
<p id="meNBrA">The first question was easy — “Where was your first date?”— but they devolved quickly: Which in-law would you least like to be stuck on a deserted island with? Which movie best describes your love life? What is your husband’s most annoying habit?</p>
<p id="KHcCuG">We got every question correct, and every answer was filled with resentment. Our first date was a 1930s diner outing at Quintessence, a Cap City landmark. We both deemed our love life to be akin to <em>Pee-wee’s Big Adventure</em>, and my wife offered three things she despised about me: how I wiped my nose with my finger, my nail munching, and how I was overall a neurotic nebbish.</p>
<p id="iPELiL">We were suffering from the fallout of the past year: everything leading to what would be our first wedding ceremony. I didn’t deal well with change, and a wedding changes everything. It changes your family structure, changes how to organize finances. I was fiercely independent, and I didn’t have faith I could care for anyone else. But Antoinette always believed in me, and, somehow, every time I struggled with moving forward in our relationship, and every time I struggled with moving forward in life, Antoinette pushed me, and together we got through.</p>
<p id="JddSpp">“Fill in the blank,” the Drew Carey-looking cruise director said to me. “The ugliest thing about my wife is ____.”</p>
<p id="CxSwsI">“Her tones,” I said, straight-faced. The host froze up, devoid of one-liners. We won, obviously. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="NcatkG">
<p id="wFKEWk">Antoinette and I met in April 2009, after the lead organizer of the mentoring program I volunteered for asked me to pick up the new mentor, a Brooklynite studying Africana studies and communications at SUNY Albany, speeding toward her bachelor’s in three years. </p>
<p id="co758N">We cruised through the city in my blue Saturn as I fumbled over icebreakers: Where’re you from? What’re you studying?</p>
<p id="w2Oe8c">Luckily for me, Antoinette was more skilled at the conversation thing. She dug through my CDs, pointing out that she also loved Maxwell and Amy Winehouse. </p>
<p id="onBwD4">From then on, every week we drove around discussing race and religion and swapping book recommendations. I learned that, right before we met, Antoinette had left her ex-fiancé. To mark a new beginning, she pierced her nose and went in for the big chop, cutting off any chemically treated hair, and rocked an afro puff. I adored her positive energy, so when she mentioned she wanted to get her driver’s license, I volunteered my car for practice. </p>
<p id="LyEaOM">We spent afternoons circling parking lots and gently bumping cars while parallel parking. When she scored her license, I came up with more excuses to hang out. After six months of being friends, she dropped the bomb, asking me via text: “Do you like me?” My hands shaking, I typed “yes.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="Yliraw"><q>I knew a life with Antoinette was what was best for me. I just feared it wasn’t best for her.</q></aside></div>
<p id="2sFfrY">Soon, I introduced her to my small, close-knit Ashkenazi Jewish family, and she welcomed me into her large but distant Nigerian and Jamaican crew. I loved how close she was to her mom, how she planned to have an intergenerational household. She appreciated how I was best friends/nearly twins with my little sister, how my big sister and her husband set my #couplegoals. Together we cooked salt fish latkes. </p>
<p id="g2QAKz">When Antoinette and I met, I was 28 and three years sober. I had spent most of my early 20s dropping in and out of college, spending time behind the locked double doors of St. Peter’s Hospital detox unit, failing out of their rehab. In the first few years of my sobriety, I spent my days chilling on the stoop outside 12-step meetings on the corner of Lexington, working an entry-level respite position at a local social work agency. </p>
<p id="sTdnu1">I liked my life in early recovery. I liked the room I rented in a two-bedroom on Morris St. Liked making meetings whenever I wanted. Liked volunteering to make myself feel good. My life felt safe. But four years after we started dating, Antoinette was tired of my inertia. She wanted marriage, a house, and a family (with seven kids, she used to joke). </p>
<p id="RoVk8i">As terrified of change as I was, I feared losing her more. I stalled for another year, but I finally popped the question over a bucket of seafood in a booth at our favorite Times Square eatery, Bubba Gump’s. </p>
<p id="M8EUKv">Then I talked her into delaying the ceremony another year.</p>
<p id="BfM8cH">I knew I loved and adored her, but I didn’t have faith in myself. I had never envisioned a future for me that involved anything more than hitting up meetings and remaining stagnant at the same social work agency. Starting a family felt unfathomable. During my hazy years, I stopped attempting to get sober because I figured I would just relapse. Once sober, I wouldn’t push myself to take any additional risks — whether it be a better job or a marriage — expecting that I’d mess everything up. Proposing was terrifying, but, beneath my distress, I knew a life with Antoinette was what was best for me. I just feared it wasn’t best for her.</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="smmRIx">
<p id="GKnyH7">I remember reading a study that said <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/the-divorce-proof-marriage/381401/">the more you spend on your wedding, the more likely it will end in divorce</a>. Every time Antoinette brought up ideas for venues, my mind spiraled. Neither of us made tons of money and neither was great at saving. To me, spending excessively on a wedding made no sense, but to Antoinette, money could always be made and was to be enjoyed. The tradition meant a lot to her so she wanted the perfect wedding ceremony, but, in truth, it probably meant more to me. A wedding made things absolute. I would either succeed at being a good partner forever or destroy her life. The more we spent, the more I felt the pressure mounting. Still, I pushed myself to brave forward with whatever Antoinette wished for. </p>
<p id="yxkmeI">To afford the wedding, I focused on our day-to-day bills — rent, car insurance, internet, groceries — while Antoinette saved for the ceremony. We quickly put a deposit down on the fourth floor of the New York State Museum, claiming Antoinette’s dream location. The setting included a sick view of the Empire State Plaza and Capitol building. It was the perfect Albany landmark for a romance that bloomed across its streets. </p>
<p id="Ezhn0D">The wedding was scheduled for a Sunday because we kinda-sorta kept Shabbat, and I used the odd day as leverage to haggle down prices. We locked in Mallozzi’s, one of the capital’s ritziest caterers, as well as DJ Trumastr, Albany’s hottest DJ, who prepped a setlist consisting of Paul Simon, Lynxxx, and Beres Hammond, representing our diverse backgrounds. The affair came out to $26,112.86. </p>
<p id="YBGAQ0">To be clear, we didn’t pay it all ourselves. Her dad handled the photographer and the balance for the venue, and her mom took care of the honeymoon and wedding dress, and she financed transportation for nearly her entire extended family (after the wedding, my parents gifted us a $10,000 check, to start our life together — that promptly went toward debt). The more our family invested in our stock, the more I panicked it would all go belly up. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="wMN0kw">
<p id="sTfV8L">Four months before our scheduled wedding date, my fears of failure turned catastrophic as my family fell into disarray. </p>
<p id="fupPLI">Just weeks before my youngest sister’s wedding — which I already struggled with because it felt like our relationship was changing — my brother-in-law walked out on my older sister. He had been my role model, my biggest male influence. He gave me my first beer, taught me all his comedy routines. I told myself that if my big sister’s marriage went sour, my relationship with Antoinette would, too. </p>
<div><aside id="CnnTQr"><q>We posed for pictures, smiling before the carousel, but the emotions were staged</q></aside></div>
<p id="HhU8mK">I was unable to send the wedding invites. Every time I postponed, Antoinette grew more frustrated, to the point where we were sleeping in separate rooms. I broke up with her, three times, assuring myself she’d be better off without me, but she continued to talk me into staying. Two months before the ceremony, I dropped the invites into the mailbox, but the stabbing thoughts intensified. I had dreams of her happy with someone else, starting a family with a guy who wasn’t as mentally ill as I was. I had nightmares of us getting married, having kids, then me turning into my brother-in-law, leaving the family I loved to suffer the repercussions. A week before the ceremony, I broke up with her for the final time, promising myself I wouldn’t budge. </p>
<p id="1W6PyI">Tears dampening her face, Antoinette smooshed her cheek into mine and whispered, “Just be with me for one day. Not all the future. Just a day.” </p>
<p id="erZiDv">At that moment, I decided to stay. To give it my best shot, just for that day. I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t my family, that I wasn’t the person I used to be. I decided I didn’t like myself at that moment, but I wanted to get better. I wanted to be the best person I could be, and the best person I could be was beside Antoinette, supporting her and celebrating her and growing with her. </p>
<p id="gsOT3g">The day of the wedding, Antoinette half-expected I wouldn’t show. Even though we did the I-dos, she despised me for what I put her through, and I was frustrated with her for not having empathy during my crash. We threw the greatest party most of our guests had ever been to — impressing even my Nigerian ambassador father-in-law — but every kiss was strained. We posed for pictures, smiling before the carousel, but the emotions were staged. When we cruised off on our <em>Newlywed Game</em>-knockoff honeymoon, we were barely speaking. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="SvEYur">
<p id="qcxTk2">In the months that followed, we dedicated ourselves to couples therapy, determined to make our relationship work. We both realized that we struggled with communicating: Antoinette often shut down, while I turned overly emotional. We had to learn new ways to speak to each other. We focused on each other’s strengths, recognizing that we each brought something special to the table that the other lacked. I took responsibility for spiraling out of control, nearly ruining our wedding, and she worked to be empathetic to my anxiety. I realized how desperately I wanted her to attain her every dream and how blessed I was that she chose me to be her partner in achieving them; she believed in me, and I began to believe in me, too. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="ZY4XEG"><q>We weren’t trying to show off — we just wanted to feed friends and family yummy food and spin in circles of joy</q></aside></div>
<p id="LRNCSY">For over a year, Antoinette had been meeting with our rabbi, taking classes, attending shul, moving toward converting to Judaism. We had always planned to have a second, intimate religious wedding after she formally converted. And so six months after the first wedding, my wife dunked herself into the mikvah, a ritual bath, completing the process, and we held a small ceremony in our Albany temple, costing $2,618: enough to rent the social hall, hire a klezmer band, contract a videographer, borrow a chuppah, and buy a crap ton of lox, bagels, and kugel. </p>
<p id="sQ38DW">The first wedding, we were trying to impress people, but this second wedding, we weren’t trying to show off — we just wanted to feed friends and family yummy food and spin in circles of joy. We didn’t even send invites. Instead, we handed out flyers and plastered them online, keeping the ceremony open to anyone who wanted to join. </p>
<p id="zZyVXa">I took pride in planning and paying for the second ceremony myself. Though the event was much cheaper, I didn’t settle for anything. The food was on point. So were our outfits. It felt like victory that every dollar spent was my own — I was investing in our future. </p>
<p id="S118m3">Under the chuppah, I crunched the glass and we jumped the broom. When we leaped, we did it together. The community lifted us aloft in chairs, and, as we floated above the crowd, each grasping the napkin connecting us, I realized I could do it. I could handle life’s changes. I could grow. My wife had been with me when I was at my lowest. I knew I’d do the same for her. We’d survived one of our toughest hurdles, and I had faith we could get through more. I was ready. Ready to create a home, ready to start a family, with faith, with Antoinette. </p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23020665/best-money-second-wedding-destroyed-first-ceremonyJay Deitcher2022-05-28T08:30:00-04:002022-05-28T08:30:00-04:00The best $17.59 I’ve ever spent: A totally normal alarm clock
<figure>
<img alt="Illustration of digital alarm clock displaying 10 o’clock." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sx0e-l48Wd3TSVTAYhXxcfvJvOA=/500x0:3500x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70920026/Clock_Radio.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>One writer’s journey to an unsexy and utilitarian alarm clock. | Dana Rodriguez for Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I figured that maybe I was hopeless, but my third try at being an alarm clock person actually worked. </p> <p id="lfrGkU">At the beginning of the movie <em>Freaky Friday </em>(2003), the mom character (Jamie Lee Curtis) pulls on the feet of her daughter (Lindsay Lohan) as she clings to the bars on her bed’s headboard. An alarm clock blares as they start their day with a battle of physical and mental wills. The bedside clock is small and black, with loud red digits. Its face reads 6:00 as it shrieks. </p>
<p id="Ggz9DE"> When I was in high school, I too engaged in a battle of wills each day with my mother and my alarm clock. My mom didn’t yank my feet, though. “I would put my face right down by your head and whisper in your ear and (try to) kiss your cheek,” she recalled in a recent text message. That annoyed me so much that I would eventually relent and get up. (I now find it sweet.) I remember lying in bed before school picturing this “Freaky Friday” scene, wondering what my life would be like if I had a headboard.</p>
<p id="YU4ER5">I have never loved waking up early. Though I recognize that it’s virtuous in some slices of our culture to wake up at dawn to rise and grind, I prefer not to do that. I famously slept through my last morning of high school. I generally strive to be responsible and on time, but waking up — especially when my apparently powerful internal clock tells me it’s not time — has historically been a challenge for me.</p>
<p id="3zxrL5">During the pandemic it became that much more challenging. My time became silky and slick, like an eel determined to elude my grasp. I had nowhere to be any day. I let myself sleep in later and later in the name of self-care. Each night, I went to bed early. Each morning, I woke up right before my workday needed to start. As time went on, I started to wonder if maybe I wasn’t being a little too kind to myself. Maybe I would feel better if I got up at a regular time each day and didn’t spend the 30+ minutes before and after sleep funneling blue light into my eye bulbs via my phone. </p>
<p id="VuzTdj">I recalled reading about how Arianna Huffington, a paragon of hustle culture, recommended tucking your phone into its own designated bed each night. Her company, Thrive, called this product a “<a href="https://medium.com/thrive-global/introducing-the-phone-bed-93bf6cd275be">family bed,</a>” as it can charge up to 10 devices at once. The phones, sleeping head to toe, resemble Charlie’s grandparents in <em>Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory</em>. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="vAfofm"><q>My time became silky and slick, like an eel determined to elude my grasp</q></aside></div>
<p id="aCE9Nt">The phone bed <a href="https://thrivephonebed.com/products/phone-bed">can be purchased</a> for $65 — down from its original price of $100 — on Thrive’s website. It is mini and made of wood, with white sheets and velvet and satin lining. A couple months into the pandemic, I was almost tempted to get one. I had started to dread my weekly Screen Time updates. I shielded my eyes each Sunday from the unimpeachable evidence of my minutes and hours squandered. If a calm night of sleep away from the chaos of the phone could be bought, who was I to say no?</p>
<p id="ieZXVJ">In the end, I could not justify the phone bed. I realized I could just put my phone in a drawer for free. And while the phone bed sort of solved one problem, it didn’t solve the more immediate one: that I would need a device to wake me up if I actually wanted to sleep away from my phone. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="cdZGeU">
<p id="O5c9ef">In May of 2020, my boyfriend kindly bought me a more straightforward solution: a normal alarm clock. I started plugging in my phone in the living room each night, setting the alarm in my room, and waking up to a hideous screeching blare each morning. I felt good!</p>
<p id="cz911g">After about a year, this clock sort of stopped working. Either that, or my body again became too powerful. I started sleeping through the alarm, once waking up disoriented at 8:58 before a 9 am meeting. I brought my phone back into my room as a backup alarm, which sort of defeated the purpose of the whole enterprise. </p>
<p id="Qp2k9A">I decided to try again with a new, nicer alarm clock. I splurged on a fancy Swiss quartz clock with excellent reviews. I found that this clock’s alarm was soft, elegant, and tasteful — and therefore useless to me. A delicate chime does not rouse me from my reverie. I require a screech. I brought my phone back into my room. </p>
<p id="IdUXd5">After that second failure, I figured that maybe I was hopeless. I had already made two earnest attempts at — and spent some money on — trying to be an alarm clock person. Maybe, I thought, I should resign myself to blue light and scrolling. </p>
<p id="ar0Faj">I sheepishly set up stricter screen time limits on my iPhone — in a moment of ambition and/or delusion, I set my Twitter limit to 15 minutes a day. As I scrolled in bed, the hourglass would pop up on my screen as an on-the-nose reminder of the passage of time, of my one wild and precious life slipping away from me in 15-minute intervals. (Apple apparently resisted using the hourglass image for a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/why-apple-screen-time-mostly-makes-things-worse/597397/">long time</a> because they thought users wouldn’t know what it meant. I know what it means! I can waste all the time I want and the sands will keep flowing.)</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="Vwxuxu"><q>The prospect of hearing more of its beeps before coffee is a true deterrent. I love it.</q></aside></div>
<p id="7TmNec">As the months dragged on without an alarm clock and I waded deeper into my phone each night — into Instagram highlights of random people’s moms and Wikipedia rabbit holes about the ex-husbands of various celebrities — the more I felt I needed to give an alarm clock at least one more try. </p>
<p id="nvQtRI">So last September, I took myself to my local hardware store and asked the sales clerk at the front if I could “see” the clock radio above the register. She didn’t know what I was talking about. I pointed to it. She said that she had never seen anyone buy one, but she got it down for me. I took it from her and went, “Hmm.” She said that I could always return it later if I didn’t like it. </p>
<p id="5wxZf6">I bought it! For $17.59 I had a new, normal alarm clock radio. It has a little black AM/FM cable that reminds me of a rat tail, a removable power cord, and loud, red digits that tell me the time.</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="49kE7H">
<p id="kDLzpl">My third clock is assertively not the Wirecutter recommended pick. It’s unsexy and utilitarian. It has two alarm settings. I can make a beep go off on AL-1, then get a local radio station blasting via AL-2 a few minutes later. I can snooze it many times — though I find I wish to less and less lately. The prospect of hearing more of its beeps before coffee is a true deterrent. I love it.</p>
<p id="Idvl2F">This object hasn’t been without its challenges. For the first few weeks I had it, I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the alarm. So I unplugged it each morning and reset it each night. I <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/09/23/toll-of-the-clock/">read recently</a> that, “Before electricity, London clockmakers used to send assistants to the Greenwich observatory with pocket watches to get the exact time and bring it back, like hot soup in a takeout container.” I felt like one of those soup assistants as I flipped between my phone clock and my new clock, trying to align the latter to the exact right time.</p>
<div><aside id="LAwtHM"><q>The clock keeps moving even if I don’t feel like it. It reflects a socially agreed-upon version of reality.</q></aside></div>
<p id="gjOVai">The constant resetting was a pain, but also an opportunity to reflect on the nature of time, and how I have ultimate power to control how it is distributed (via this clock) but not how it flows onward (everywhere else). I was tickled by the feeling that I got to decide what time it was. </p>
<p id="m5smtG">Time only moves one direction on my alarm clock, as in life. It is humbling to know that if I miss my target minute, I have to go all the way back through all the possible times again. The gulf between 2:59 and 3 is vast, as is that between 8:05 and 8:04. </p>
<p id="6Qy4Bl">As I unplug and reset, I contemplate time and what I know about it. Time is money. Time is up. A flat circle. Of the essence. It’s also an imposed system. An instrument of social control! A benchmark for productivity. A commodity. A social contract. A scourge. A metaphor. A philosophical conundrum. The bedrock of capitalism. “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Technics_and_Civilization/PU7PktesGUoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=key%20machine">The key-machine of the modern industrial age</a>.” It is both naturally occurring (see: the sun, “biological clock”) and constructed by humans. It flies when we’re having fun, and weirdly compresses and blooms and clusters and disperses when we are two years into a pandemic. </p>
<p id="7MTCZQ">My little clock holds all of this (sort of)! And I get to set it! That is a wonder to me. James Gleick, a science journalist, <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/09/23/toll-of-the-clock/">wrote</a> last year that “Far from anchoring us in time, clocks cast us loose from the past, dislocate us from our natural sensation of continuity.” To him, clocks make visible each moment replacing the prior. The clock keeps moving even if I don’t feel like it. It reflects a socially agreed-upon version of reality. I am glad to be an active participant. </p>
<p id="6KFAQJ">My alarm clock is rich: It is a locus of metaphor and dislocation and social history imbued with unique power. But it’s also just a cheap device from the hardware store. I’m happy that it wakes me up.</p>
<p id="VkeWfi">After weeks of resetting my clock, I eventually just read the paper instruction manual that came in the box. I learned how to operate the device properly. It was actually very simple. </p>
<p id="7xEcyP"><em>Lora Kelley is on the editorial staff of The New York Times Opinion section.</em></p>
<p id="06TtzY"> </p>
<p id="D0zqD8"> </p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23012031/best-money-normal-alarm-clockLora Kelley2022-05-14T08:00:00-04:002022-05-14T08:00:00-04:00The best $15 I ever spent: An audiobook subscription
<figure>
<img alt="illustration of headphones and a iPhone" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eDA1nFy0svzKIdDxzOjrd3qHKyg=/500x0:3500x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70868777/Audio_Book.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>In hindsight, it is ridiculous that it took years of desperation and depression before I was finally willing to reconsider my absurd refusal to try audiobooks. | Dana Rodriguez for Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After losing my ability to read for nearly five years, I needed a way to ease back into books.</p> <p id="lT6J36">Not long after I gave birth to my second child at age 40, I lost my ability to read. I don’t mean literally — I could still look at a sentence and know what it meant. I could read a menu. I could, unfortunately, still suffer through <em>The Big Book of Paw Patrol</em> on demand.</p>
<p id="P6OE55">But within the space of a year, I could no longer find my way to the end of a novel or a lengthy article. Anything more complex than a children’s book left my brain spinning in neutral. No matter the genre, no matter the time of day, the sentences I read and re-read remained fragments that I could not assemble into a comprehensible whole.</p>
<p id="bPJaWP">I began carrying a stack of books with me from room to room of our rowhouse, shuffling between options with growing desperation, searching for an opening in one of them. “Brain fog” — as if a light mist has temporarily settled on my brow — is too benign a phrase for the suffocating powerlessness of watching your cognition dissolve in real time. Every so often the cloud lifted to allow me a tantalizing moment of clarity. But in the main, for the first time in decades, I was no longer a reader.</p>
<p id="3RDDFT">This development would be unsettling for anyone. For a professional writer and editor, it was horrifying. The written word was my currency, my passion, my source of confidence. I needed words to make a living. I needed them to make a life. </p>
<p id="jwN6wW">In the beginning, I assumed that the change was temporary, a holdover from the hormonal stupor of pregnancy. Or maybe it was sleep deprivation — surely the fatigue inherent in raising two small children would impact any parent’s focus. Those were both pieces of the puzzle, but it would be years before I solved it.</p>
<p id="ZJtr1J">Instead, I was lost in my head. If I’d been grappling with a stabbing pain in my abdomen or loss of sight, I would have parked myself in a medical office and refused to budge without a diagnosis and treatment plan. But it wasn’t obvious to me that I had a physical ailment. Maybe I was losing my mind. Maybe I was lazy. Maybe, as one boss suggested during a particularly tense performance review, I just couldn’t hack working and raising small children at the same time. Looking around at all the other parents who held down demanding jobs, I worried that he was right.</p>
<p id="ZfViJ7">One year became two and then slid into more. Terror rose in my throat every time I took on new editing work or writing assignments, knowing there was a decent chance I wouldn’t be able to deliver. I couldn’t tell anyone because I didn’t know what was going on or if it would ever end. I was petrified to say the words out loud, to raise the possibility that I might never work in my field again. With each job, each promise, I needed to believe that this time it would be different. </p>
<p id="c4yPvq">It never was. I blew through deadlines, ghosted editors, and lost jobs. Shame and depression ganged up on me, and I dropped out of the workforce altogether.</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="M6A8xK">
<p id="28XBnD">I would ordinarily turn to books for solace and distraction in a time of crisis. With two teachers for parents, I was born into a family of readers. We unwrapped books on Christmas mornings, but any occasion was an excuse for a new book. They showed up on Easter and Valentine’s Day, birthdays and the first day of school. My sister and I spent long summer afternoons in our backyard reading books from the public library under a tent our mom set up by pinning quilts to the clothesline.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="3OMqw7"><q>This bookless existence was my nightmare</q></aside></div>
<p id="xEZffy">At some point before school began again, the four of us would squeeze into our Plymouth Horizon to drive from Michigan to the New England coast, stopping at the Dartmouth Bookstore in Hanover, New Hampshire, to load up on books. Once we each had a stack from that 140-year-old institution, we continued on to rocky beaches, where we read until everyone had one or two books remaining for the drive home. I looked forward to those trips like other kids dream about Disney World. Devouring my favorite authors, powered by squirt cheese and Faygo grape pop, I could not imagine a more perfect life.</p>
<p id="TNF87Y">By contrast, this bookless existence was my nightmare. One day I realized that whole shelves in our house were filled with titles I had never read. Having reveled in the experience of reading Marilynne Robinson’s <em>Gilead</em> and <em>Home</em> when they came out, I bought the subsequent books in that series and now grieved the idea that I might never read them. I felt in my bones what author William Styron once wrote about his depression, that it made him fear that “I would never recapture a lucidity that was slipping away from me with terrifying speed.”</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="i4TM6b">
<p id="kto1VZ">In hindsight, it is ridiculous that it took years of desperation and depression before I was finally willing to reconsider my absurd refusal to try audiobooks. I had always dismissed the format, snobbishly categorizing audiobook listeners as somehow a lesser class of book consumers. Audiobooks, my thinking went, were for people too lazy to read. They were a useful service for people who were visually impaired and they could be helpful in entertaining children on road trips. Audiobooks were emphatically not for me.</p>
<p id="PWmWE9">But as reading didn’t seem to be an option, it was time to get over myself. I purchased an Audible Premium subscription — which allows me one book each month — and tiptoed into the world of what I still anachronistically think of as “books on tape.”</p>
<div><aside id="4RhG3C"><q>I loved how the musicality of language often seemed heightened when words were isolated for my ears alone</q></aside></div>
<p id="Mx8Sro">My gateway listens were memoirs — Tara Westover’s <em>Educated</em>, Kiese Laymon’s <em>Heavy</em>, Maggie O’Farrell’s <em>I Am, I Am, I Am </em>— which allowed me to pretend a friend was simply telling me about her life. After a few months, I moved on to <em>Strangers Drowning</em>, Larissa MacFarquhar’s masterful chronicle of obsessive altruism, and felt a sense of accomplishment akin to making my way through several years’ worth of <em>New Yorker </em>back issues.</p>
<p id="tmGq4v">By the time I spent a weekend enthralled by Irish actor Andrew Scott’s reading of <em>Dubliners </em>— after a lifetime of avoiding James Joyce — I started to wonder why I’d ever spent much time straining my eyes with print.</p>
<p id="rB9X5b">Audiobooks weren’t just tolerable alternatives to wood-pulp-and-ink tomes. In many ways they actually expanded my enjoyment of books. Rather than listen curled up in an armchair, I could pop in earbuds, walk the mile from our house to Lake Michigan, and spend hours by the water with Colson Whitehead’s <em>The Nickel Boys</em> playing in my ears. There is an emotional heft to hearing Trevor Noah’s memoir in his own voice as he cycles through phrases in Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana, and other tribal languages that I would have lost on the page.</p>
<p id="Ecnryj">Native-speaking audio readers allowed me to more fully inhabit a writers’ world, making familiar Sri Lankan and Ugandan and Ethiopian names that I would have mangled in my head while reading. (I read the first two Harry Potter books before ever hearing the name “Hermione” and realizing that way I’d been pronouncing it was very different.) Likewise, hearing read aloud Anna Burns’ <em>Milkman</em>, with its experimental style and long, unbroken paragraphs, made the book infinitely more accessible and pleasurable. I loved how the musicality of language often seemed heightened when words were isolated for my ears alone.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="VCA1E1"><q>I pray that my ability to read is back for good, but whatever happens, I know that I need never again give up on books</q></aside></div>
<p id="MQLJn3">Nearly five years after reading disappeared from my life, I was pleased to finally learn that I hadn’t lost my mind. I’d just unknowingly white-knuckled my way through menopause in my mid-40s, not realizing that brain fog and exhaustion can be common symptoms. By the time a doctor actually listened to me and ran a blood panel, there was virtually no estrogen left in my system. I immediately started hormone therapy. </p>
<p id="o53wIJ">The speed with which my mind cleared was astonishing. I needed more time to get past the fury and resentment of knowing I’d lost years of productivity and inadvertently gaslit myself. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="EBsmbK">
<p id="4dukQr">When I felt ready to attempt an actual physical book again, I started with Tayari Jones’ <em>An American Marriage</em>, which sat atop the largest stack of optimistically purchased novels — and read until dawn. Closing the cover that next morning, I exhaled. And picked up another.</p>
<p id="TTeEhd">Now I’m reading book after book after book, sometimes feeling like Lucy and Ethel trying to keep pace in the chocolate factory. I’d forgotten the combined pleasure and wooziness of a reading hangover that comes from staying up far too late submerged in a book. Most weeks I juggle one book in print and another in audio, so I always have an excuse to leave the house for a long pandemic walk. My family members know to give me audio credits for birthdays. In 2021, I read 67 books, just a few years after I struggled to get to the end of one or two.</p>
<p id="vFYT7J">Modern medicine restored my concentration and banished the brain fog, but audiobooks were the first crucial phase of a regimen to regain my confidence and sense of identity. I pray that my ability to read is back for good, but whatever happens, I know that I need never again give up on books. (I am, however, switching over to Libro.fm, an audiobook service that supports local bookstores instead of the global Amazon megatron complex.) </p>
<p id="Yjf0zF">These days, when I find myself lost in a book, it’s not because my brain is stuck or throwing up obstacles. I’m happily lost in a world of words and images and I do not need rescuing. </p>
<p id="5cRo1x"><em>Amy Sullivan is a Chicago-based journalist who covers religion, politics, and culture. </em></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23011721/best-money-audible-premium-subscriptionAmy Sullivan2022-04-10T08:00:00-04:002022-04-10T08:00:00-04:00The best $3,000 I ever spent: Surgery for a cat I never wanted
<figure>
<img alt="An illustration of a medial pet cone and a buckled pet collar with a tag." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZLSxblDUFsq-bALYZUT0EAljWGY=/500x0:3500x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70732377/Collar.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>The veterinarian told us that even with surgery, Teddy still might not survive. | Dana Rodriguez for Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Cat lady” was a label I didn’t want after losing my husband. But Teddy changed everything.</p> <p id="93Y7lH">When people share that they are a “dog person” or a “cat person,” throughout my life I have had to apologetically admit that I was neither. I grew up with dogs, and I even owned several as an adult, but I never got that warm fuzzy feeling toward them, that special bond that others so often describe. As for cats, I learned by osmosis from my family that they were feral animals who used our garden beds as their litter boxes. I thought of them as aloof and disloyal animals who got their paws all over countertops and sunk their nails into furniture. I certainly never expected to spend almost $3,000 on a pandemic rescue cat.</p>
<p id="TdogBx"> When Covid-19 first disrupted the world, my fast-paced, busy schedule came to a screeching halt. I was four years into a different type of grief. My husband had unexpectedly passed away, leaving me a single mother to a 13-month-old, 3-year-old, and a 6-year-old. All of the things I used to seek comfort in during the years that followed — overscheduling, running away on trips, and the built-in company of my social networks — completely dried up. School became exclusively online, and as a high school government teacher, I struggled to teach my classes virtually while juggling solo parenting at home. I felt stranded on a desolate island, and being stuck at home left me feeling more alone than ever. As my despair deepened, I watched other people scramble to adopt pets to fill their own pandemic voids. My daughter seized this opportunity to push harder for the orange tabby kitten of her dreams. I never thought I would agree, but as the uncertainty of the times slowly drained me, somehow I said yes.</p>
<p id="rLqIip">But I was scared. I wasn’t an animal person, and I worried this would be another pet I would feel indifferent toward. It also felt unrealistic to take on more responsibility as an only parent. Not to mention the danger of the cat lady stigma: I already felt insecure about my relationship status, single-mother status, and almost-40 status. “Cat lady” was a label I did not want to add to this depressing resume. Yet there I was, filling out applications and chasing every possible lead during a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/4/28/21232763/dog-cat-adoption-foster-coronavirus-quarantine">competitive surge in pet adoptions</a>, until finally, a friend of a friend knew someone who had a rescue with an orange tabby kitten. We named him Teddy. </p>
<p id="9jFyfL">Any doubts I had dissolved the moment we picked him up. Teddy was friendly and social, destroying every preconceived notion I had about cats. He let my children carry him around, kiss him, and take naps with him. My no-cat-on-the-bed rule immediately went out the window. He slept with me every night and cuddled against one of us at all times. I taught my classes online with Teddy nearby. He kept a daily rotation of sleeping, stepping on my keyboard, and walking in front of my camera with his tail in my face. His presence had a calming effect during those anxious weeks and months when we had no idea what we were doing or where we were going. </p>
<p id="DzpYRp">It confused me how much I loved Teddy. I’d spent my entire life thinking I hated cats. I would scoff at people who treated their pets like their children; I could never wrap my mind around that kind of love. Now I was posting pictures of my cat on social media and buying cat-themed dish towels. I wondered how I could have gone so many years not knowing. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="08niOX">
<p id="EDij6M">One day, five months after we got Teddy, he began to throw up. I was still a nervous pet owner, but other people reassured me that it was probably nothing. I felt like a new parent, constantly checking to see if the baby was still breathing. When it continued for a few days, I knew it was serious. I worried about how much money an emergency visit would cost. I searched for an appointment, only to find that all the vets near us were booked out for days because of the pandemic pet explosion and safety precautions. It made for a perfect storm while Teddy became increasingly lethargic, no longer eating or drinking, and unable to even lift his head. The kids took turns checking on him, trying to coax him to take sips of water, and worrying that he was going to die. </p>
<p id="E640lR">We were finally able to get in at a vet across town with peeling advertisements, unkempt landscaping, and minimal Yelp reviews. It would not have been my first choice, but we were desperate. A vet tech took Teddy from us as we waited in the parking lot due to Covid-19 protocols.</p>
<div><aside id="glkxH3"><q>I wondered how I could have gone so many years not knowing</q></aside></div>
<p id="0lWr9e">It took two trips before a diagnosis: an obstruction in Teddy’s intestines. We were told it could be a hair tie or a rubber band that he may have swallowed. I thought about the number of things my children left out on a regular basis and I felt immediate guilt that I didn’t do a better job of picking them up. Teddy needed emergency surgery or he was going to die. The veterinarian told us that even with surgery, he still might not survive. </p>
<p id="dzln8y">I initially paid $289 for X-rays and a barium test. Surgery and recovery would be another $2,446. Almost $3,000 and no guarantees for a rescue cat we had known for five months. I had to give the office an answer.</p>
<p id="6TdRX2">“You need to put that cat down,” my dad said on the phone when he called to get an update.</p>
<p id="m3WL6G">I grew up in a household where animals had to be low-cost and low-maintenance. My parents were frugal people who didn’t believe in sinking money into their animals. There were no exceptions. If an animal violated any one of those rules, it either got re-homed or put down. Pet insurance wasn’t a thing I knew about or took seriously. </p>
<p id="rOOLYQ">I sat in my car in front of the veterinarian’s office crying as I tried to decide. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw my children’s faces. Their eyes brimmed with tears as they stared at me, searching for an answer in my expression. </p>
<p id="EkaK4Q">“It’s a lot of money,” I tried to explain, my stomach in knots. I knew the clock was ticking. One of the worst things about becoming an only parent is being responsible for everything. There was no other parent to bounce an idea off, and no one to share the blame for making the wrong decisions that might ruin everyone’s lives. </p>
<p id="JFXPbf">“Do we not have the money?” my daughter asked. </p>
<p id="KeD6Y0">“You can use all of my money,” my older son said. </p>
<p id="WncJ7e">My 5-year-old offered to make the surgery count toward all of their Christmas presents for the year. His siblings agreed, and even added their birthday presents too.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="E777ab"><q>If there was one thing losing my husband had taught me, it was that time is precious and fleeting and priceless</q></aside></div>
<p id="zuDS4z">The thing is, Teddy was so much more than a cat to me. He was even more than family. I never expected to love an animal the way I loved him. He gave me the gift of hope — a realization that my life still had so many happy discoveries to unearth, more joy to experience, and likely a lot more heartache too. It was all worth it. I think my mind was set before I even saw the price, back when I handed Teddy off and it felt like a piece of my heart was being given away. Subconsciously, I must have known that I was too far in love to consider any other option. If there was one thing losing my husband had taught me, it was that time is precious and fleeting and priceless. We don’t get to control a lot of things in life, but out of the choices we do get to make, we should choose the heck out of them. That is a gift I never want to take for granted. </p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="xv327E">
<p id="JWFM1w">The surgery went well. The veterinarian produced the culprit of the obstruction. He gave it to me in a clear zip bag: knotted, bloody green string from the new cat scratching post I bought earlier in the week. I felt more guilt, but Teddy eventually recovered with no complications. Sometimes we get our best-case scenarios.</p>
<p id="DWibND">My husband had been severely allergic to cats. It is not lost on me that we would have never gotten a cat if he were still alive or if this pandemic had never happened. Of course I would rather take a world where my husband was here and there was no Covid-19, but in lieu of those options, I get to live in this silver lining — a place where our household today has expanded to three cats, officially making me a full-blown cat lady. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="J3Lx3S">Death can have a way of hardening us. We can feel angry and punished for our circumstances; the loss and grief can be consuming. In the throes of raw grief, I did not think I would ever be happy again. I struggled to conceptualize a future with joyful new beginnings. I didn’t think I even wanted it. But loss can also have a way of softening us, opening our hearts to what is possible if we choose to let it.</p>
<p id="7VTNop"><em>Teresa Shimogawa is a civics teacher and writer trying to do good things in the world.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23010524/best-money-cat-surgery-emergency-vetTeresa Shimogawa2022-03-27T08:50:00-04:002022-03-27T08:50:00-04:00The best $0 I ever spent: Watching someone else shop
<figure>
<img alt="Illustration of a Walgreens receipt. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UhJJz_Lo_Hc9m9w70m6iGWvhO3Y=/500x0:3500x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70677410/Walgreens.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Dana Rodriguez for Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A small digital mishap made me feel connected to a stranger many brightly lit aisles away. </p> <p id="y1szV0">It all started in April 2021 with some children’s cherry cough syrup, a baby humidifier, and a 32-ounce box of Aunt Jemima pancake and waffle mix. That was the first receipt to hit my inbox from Walgreens store #3924 in El Paso, Texas. Total: $67.89 on a Visa debit card with 63 cents earned in Walgreens rewards.</p>
<p id="d0q6NB">The thing is, the receipt wasn’t mine; I live 2,000 miles away in New York. Whoever had signed up for the Walgreens’ loyalty program in El Paso had put down my email address and, in doing so, had primed my Gmail for a wacky collision course with American drugstore commerce. And ever since that fateful day, each time they buy something at Walgreens, I get an auto-generated receipt telling me all about it. </p>
<p id="fEVjv6">Under more normal circumstances, this would be a run-of-the-mill modern annoyance, a very specific and righteous itch that can only be scratched by hitting unsubscribe and never leaving feedback. But during the pre-vax, isolated days of the pandemic, as social circles shrank and political spheres spun even further apart, these insights into life beyond the two square miles around me were oddly fortifying. Over the next several months, I would get an unearned peek at a consumer life that fascinated me and made me feel connected to a stranger many, many brightly lit aisles away. In ways both unexpected and unlikely, these digital scraps would teach me about how people are getting by in a time of unmatched physical and social separation. </p>
<p id="yauiIK">Fortunately for everyone, what would ultimately keep this bit of digital voyeurism from veering even further into creepiness was the reality that the Walgreens receipts offered no identifying data about the shopper. Other than store location, items purchased, and method of payment, there would be no (legal) way to suss out who this shopper actually was. </p>
<p id="CXrOy8">And, as it turns out, it’s pretty tough to pin down a Walgreens customer anyway. According to the analytics firm Numerator, roughly two-thirds (!) of the American shopping public <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-walgreens-shopper-demographic-suburban-boomer-earning-80k-income-2021-9">patronizes</a> the drugstore chain. Its typical shopper is a white suburban boomer who makes $80,000 a year, drops in roughly once every three weeks, and spends about $22 each trip. My mystery shopper, however, lived in a mid-sized city and came back the very next afternoon, triggering another email.</p>
<p id="yEZw00">This time around, the shopping log included sleeves of 16-ounce clear plastic cups (70 for $7), 90 paper plates for $4, a six-pack refill of Dollar Shave Club disposable razors, and a bar of something called Duke Cannon Big American Bourbon Soap, which claims to be made with Buffalo Trace bourbon. The sniffly baby apparently still a concern, a RaZbaby-brand RaZberry Silicone Baby Teether Toy and some Zarbee’s Naturals Baby Gum Massage Gel were also procured. Total: $47.54 on a Visa debit card, 44 cents earned in Walgreens cash rewards. A mental picture of my shopper began to sharpen.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="oSOKMF"><q>Whatever socialized self-consciousness there may be about buying toilet paper in public disintegrates like discount one-ply</q></aside></div>
<p id="uqKral">The best and most surreal thing about drugstore shopping is that basically anything goes. Whatever socialized self-consciousness there may be about buying toilet paper in public disintegrates like discount one-ply. Judgment about someone else’s bunion pads or <a href="https://www.walgreens.com/store/c/nice!-circus-peanuts-soft-and-chewy-candy/ID=prod6108368-product">banana-flavored peanuts</a> is (generally) reserved. Buying Reese’s Minis at a 35 percent markup just to get another one at half price is the kind of bad deal that you make when you’re inside a chain drugstore. There’s something to all the shelves: They’re so irreducibly filled with reminders of our obligations and infirmities and mortality, they drive us to shop with our ids. </p>
<p id="pkUqu0">And so, when my mystery shopper ambled to the Walgreens counter at 2:57 pm on a Thursday to drop $69.73 on a 24-ounce tallboy of Modelo, two more bars of Duke Cannon soap (this time infused with Old Milwaukee beer), two bottles of Stella Rose blackberry-flavored wine, a pack of Camel Menthols, and a full pound of Oscar Mayer bologna in two 8-ounce packages, I knew we’d entered a new dimension. A higher truth about life.</p>
<p id="UREVU5">It was late April, 12 days after that first email. Over half of US adults had received their first Covid-19 shots and cases had dropped drastically in more than half of states. In my household back in New York, the contours of dinner invites and travel plans were nervously-but-optimistically being sketched up. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="w2LoIR"><q>A heady combination of booze and bologna</q></aside></div>
<p id="u9qxMp">I will never know what had prompted the El Paso shopper’s latest spree, but it definitely seemed celebratory. More than that, it felt normal. Sure, I wondered if not having ever bought a pound of bologna for $4 at Walgreens placed me inside or outside of the American mainstream, but this latest receipt presented proof that regular life was still happening. I didn’t even need to catch a whiff of the weird Mother’s Day scented candles in the store or hear the Vanessa Carlton lilting airily overhead to sense that things were finally steadying.</p>
<p id="2aGivk">This heady combination of booze and bologna also spoke of American resilience for historical reasons. One hundred years before, in the aftermath of another pandemic, Walgreens <a href="https://vinepair.com/wine-blog/walgreens-whiskey-prescriptions-prohibition/">had undertaken</a> a massive domestic expansion during Prohibition by way of selling alcohol — usually whiskey — that was medically prescribed for a litany of often dubious ailments. This (legal) gambit transformed Walgreens from a regional store with a few dozen outposts in the mid-1920s into a national chain of hundreds across 30 states in 1934. </p>
<p id="NuIMf8">By that time, Oscar Mayer had already been a fixture of deli-centered goodwill for decades because it had eschewed the unsanitary practices of other meat purveyors infamously outlined in muckraking tomes like <em>The Jungle</em>. If Walgreens and Oscar Mayer could thrive through troublesome years by being vigilant, maybe so could we.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="t9pywY"><q>Outside my email tabs, a giddy energy had begun to take hold</q></aside></div>
<p id="sQqoVH">It was nearly May. Outside my email tabs, a giddy energy had begun to take hold. Hot vax summer <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22410017/dating-post-vaccine-kinsey-relationships-hookups">was surely approaching</a>, threatening to let loose a flood tide of repressed horniness and good cheer. Sixty-four percent of the country <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/abc-news-biden-congress-divisions-2021">expressed optimism</a> about the coming year. By the month’s end, more than a half-million new jobs <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/04/business/economy-stock-market-news#biden-economy-jobs">would be logged</a> by the Labor Department.</p>
<p id="MRDgAw">Still, even the specter of normalcy has its limitations. After their late April spree, I didn’t hear from my novelty soap obsessive for over three weeks — roughly the statistical cadence for a normal Walgreens shopper. By the third week in May, they had switched to a newer store (#9173) about three miles west, next door to a Jack in the Box and across the street from a competing CVS. </p>
<p id="jfrrG5">They were making less splashy purchases, too — items absent of either mirth or malady. A gallon of whole milk, two 20-ounce Red Bulls, and another pack of Camels. At only eight cents of Walgreens cash rewards earned, they weren’t going to score a free pack of Hi-Chew anytime soon. </p>
<p id="D0zgow">Zooming out, it seemed fair to ask if there would be a cost to the return of regular routines. Would we shed our new habits and discard whatever perspective we’d gained? Would we lose a dangerous status quo just to simply slip back into a dysfunctional one? As if on cue, following that modest Walgreens run on the third Saturday in May, the El Paso shopper went totally dark.</p>
<p id="CDAeBd">One overarching irony of the pandemic is that, as consumers, many of us drift toward health as much as we drift toward comfort. One <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/47/3/373/5840732?redirectedFrom=fulltext">study</a> from <em>The</em> <em>Journal of Consumer Research</em> summed this up as a divide between Big Macs and kale salads, both of which have seen surges in popularity over the past two years. The dramatic loss of control with the pandemic means we seek out the familiar while also fending off death and disease with healthier practices. These impulses could just as easily explain why, as the delta variant descended, millions ultimately quit jobs that they didn’t like, that didn’t adequately protect them, or that just kind of seemed silly in the context of everything else. </p>
<p id="Zgb9Cy">I admit that not hearing from the El Paso shopper throughout the fizzle of our collective summer of redemption made me worry for them. It was heartening to see that, even as news from everywhere else dimmed, El Paso <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/13/coronavirus-texas-el-paso/">had managed</a> to avoid the worst of the delta surge. Like a Big Mac or a BOGO bag of Goldfish, the silver linings were a temporary interruption from the free-floating dread. </p>
<p id="3txGK6">Finally, in October, the El Paso shopper (inadvertently) dropped me a line. After shopping exclusively in northwest El Paso, they’d moved on to a Walgreens outpost on the east side of town. Around 10 pm on a Monday, they’d dropped in for a pack of Peanut M&Ms, two boxes of Raisinets, a box of Milk Duds, a Snickers bar, a theater-sized box of Reese’s Pieces, and four pouches of Welch’s Berries ’n Cherries fruit snacks. This time they paid the $7.50 in cash. </p>
<p id="VwhgCp">The following Tuesday night, they came back for two packs of Peanut M&Ms, an Almond Joy, and more Raisinets and Milk Duds. From afar, I imagined that an irresistible coupon had been the culprit in bringing them back again. Still, I was pleased to know our Walgreens membership had saved us 51 cents. </p>
<p id="3P0gF3">In another meaningful development, I noticed that Walgreens had also redesigned the format of its emails since the ones I’d received in the spring. The receipts were now warmer and less spartan, studded with colored icons that looked a bit like emojis: A shopping bag, a blue megaphone announcing Member Savings, and a banner above a bar code to emphasize the ease of making a return. The email footer also now contained a link to unsubscribe from digital receipts. I would never click it.</p>
<p id="Ytg57j"><em>Adam Chandler is a journalist and author who lives in New York. </em></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22967724/best-money-walgreens-receipt-strangerAdam Chandler