Next week is Thanksgiving! I can hardly believe it. My checking account can hardly believe it. I went grocery shopping today (for a regular order, and also for the Thanksgiving dinner order), needless to say, and I’m honestly appalled at how expensive some foods are. $5.59 for McCormick poultry seasoning? Do you know what’s even in that stuff? I’ll give you a hint: you probably have all of the ingredients* right there in your cabinet to make your own poultry seasoning, but yet McCormick wants to charge almost six dollars for a teeny, tiny canister of stuff you can do on your own. Thanks, McCormick. Thanks for taking advantage of those who can hardly think straight, let alone budget properly, this time of year.

I went in with a fixed number in my head (even though I’d taken out a bit more from the bank “just in case”) and marked down the price of every item that I’d purchased, rounding up each time. And it would have worked. Seriously. The numbers would have totally worked, except for the fact that I brought my husband and my four-year-old with me, and shopping with others is akin to shopping when you’re hungry: all sorts of random things end up in the grocery basket, whee!

Needless to say, I took out just enough, bemoan eleven dollars and fifty-nine cents, which will probably go to pricey coffees I don’t need to spend money on. The upside? We spent so much that lights flashed off and on, balloons dropped from the ceiling and Ed McMahon appeared out of the men’s room holding a … gas card for $25.00. I’m kidding. At least about everything except for the gas card part. That really happened, but there was no big fanfare. The cashier looked at me in a pitying way, folding up my thirty-six-inch-long receipt and told me to take it over to the courtesy desk to claim My Courtesy Gas Card. I was excited. It was like I’d saved that money, since I won’t have to take it out of my budget now. Amazing how that works, eh?

In short, the week’s revolved planning for Thanksgiving and, oh, right, my baby shower’s the same weekend. You remember, that horrible custom where the pregnant woman is poked and prodded and forced to open gifts she should have bought herself in front of people who really don’t care just how tiny those onesies are. It’s going to be a big week, folks; one for the books.

How are you spending your holiday?

*Right, here’s the “recipe” for homemade poultry seasoning that might not break the bank (unless, of course, you don’t have any of these herbs and/or spices, either, and then you might be better off splurging the six bucks on McCormick’s devil delicacy): thyme, sage, marjoram, rosemary, black pepper, nutmeg. That’s all. Pretty simple, eh?