One Weekend in Vermont 🍁

how much money I spent last weekend and why

Friday, October 28th

I wake up anxious as hell, which in my body feels like a headache, stiff muscles, and the energy drink-feeling of being wired and exhausted at the time. I sit in bed with my laptop for a few hours, but I keep looking at the news out of Gaza and can’t write. I decide to quit and try again tomorrow—I have a lot of strategies for getting past creative blocks, but none of them work when I feel this bad.

Liz and I moved to Vermont in August. We live in a village in the middle of the state, which is very rural and not tourist-y at all, so our life is quite different from the last diary-type post I wrote, when we lived in Boston and ate pupusas every night. Namely, I didn’t own a car in Boston and now I have to drive almost everywhere. Today I’m going to the gym, which is in the nearest “big“ town, meaning there are such amenities as two grocery stores, a dispensary, and an Indian restaurant. I was hesitant to join this gym because 35 minutes seemed too far to drive (there are some twisty highway interchanges that I’m afraid to do at night) and I had this idealized vision of myself as an intrepid granola woman who’s like, “The mountains are my gym.” Alas, I do not have the willpower to move my own body. I need to be put to work by a fitness professional.

This yoga class ends up being extremely gentle—we do cat cows and hang out in ragdoll for an hour. I feel much calmer afterwards. My classmates are all people in their 70s and beyond. There are not many young people around here. My partner and I are usually the youngest people in a given restaurant or public space, besides the people working. (*Carrie Bradshaw voice* I couldn’t help but wonder, are millennials the Gen Z of rural New England?) On my way back to my car, I hold the door for a lady and she says, “I need to get to work in my garden! No more excuses!!“ I guess we are all at the gym to escape. (My gym membership is $102 and I go at least 12 times a month, so let’s price this visit at $8.)

I stop at Dunkin for an afternoon breakfast sandwich and a medium iced PSL—one pump of vanilla, one pump of p spice. PSLs are very primal for me and I honestly feel a little giddy going through a drive-thru. There’s nowhere to buy coffee or a sandwich anywhere close to my house, so I usually don’t spend money on little treats during the week. $11.74

Next, I stop at the co-op in search of ECOS laundry sheets and deals. I’m very loyal to this co-op. Other co-ops will choose one single variety of salt-free corn chips and mark them 10% off, but this place is teaming with discounts. Even the stuff in their gift section goes on sale, so there are always bins of frog-shaped beeswax candles and rustic baby gear to rifle through. I’m genuinely, truly thrilled to discover that ECOS sheets are on sale for $11. Normally I would stock up, but one box lasts forever. I also buy chicken breasts, cereal, canned beans, multi-vitamins, and a brie. There’s a BOGO on crushed tomatoes, so I get four. The brie tastes like pure ammonia and at the time of writing this, I still need to return it. I spend $80.47 and put everything in my car cooler, which is essential when you live in the country and have a big dog who’s capable of slithering into the back and eating all your shit.

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I’ve been driving around with a trunk full of dirty laundry for days and I’m finally ready to face the laundromat. This laundromat is straight out of the 70s—it’s painted bright orange and covered in demonic drawings of customers breaking the rules by sitting on machines and using too much soap. The last time I was here, I washed a blanket covered in dog vomit and the machine smelled ungodly when I took it out. I thought the chunks would drain away, but reader, they did not. No one saw it happen, but I’m still worried about being in trouble, banned for life, etc.

Lucky for me and my baseless anxieties, it’s empty inside except for one really friendly person who says, “Wow! You got a lot of laundry!“ Indeed, I am carrying four large bags of dirty clothes. It’s laundry day.

I always go for the biggest possible washing machines because it’s cheaper and less annoying than using multiple small machines. I turn my cash into quarters and pay $6.50 for a 50-pound washing machine and $4.50 for a 20-pound machine. A lot of businesses in Vermont are cash-only (tax fraud), so I’m working on always having cash or blank checks on-hand (there’s never an ATM and service can be spotty, so you can’t depend on Venmo). A lady with wild energy comes in. She tells me to be careful: the washing machines don’t spin out fully because the owner wants me to spend more money on driers. She’s right and I believe her. (I’m not paying close attention to my quarters, but I probably spend $30. This is by far the cheapest laundromat around. Anywhere else I would have paid $40 to $50.)

I drive home, unload my spoils, and talk to a friend on the phone for over an hour. By the time Liz gets home from work, I am feeling functional again. I change into clean pants and revel in an abundance of clean underwear.

Now that we live in a place with a true dearth of places to go/stuff to do, Liz and I are SO SERIOUS about Friday date night. We drive into town and eat at a cocktail-centric, farm-to-table restaurant that just opened. It’s small plates, some of which are okay, like the smashed potatoes and a ricotta-crostini number. The rest is unsatisfying and odd, imagine: mushy peanut noodles and a bratwurst bread pudding that I ordered because I was like, “This sounds gross, so it must be good!“ but then it actually was gross, like a giant chunk of stuffing. Even my can of Diet Coke is flat. We take the check with a full hour to kill before the movie, so we go to the other restaurant in town and order dessert to kill time. (Liz and I go back and forth paying for stuff, and it was her turn to pay. More and more, I think we’re both feeling like it doesn’t make sense to have separate finances, but we’re unsure of how and when to merge.)

Next, we show up a half hour early to Killers of the Flower Moon. There aren’t any movie theaters in our area, just a few different community arts organizations that show movies. The one we’re going to used to be a playhouse. The screen is at least 4x bigger than my TV at home, so that’s something. Last weekend, we drove to The Nugget in Hanover, NH to see the Eras movie. I’m not not a Taylor Swift fan, her music mostly feels inevitable to me and I am forever curious about art that makes money and is popular. Anyways, this was a “real“ movie theater and it was still wildly depressing—like palettes of soda everywhere and flickering bulbs, plus the stalest, saltiest popcorn experience of my life (It should be illegal for movie theaters to fuck up popcorn, like how André is a criminal offense in Europe.)

animals don’t deserve this

You should read an Osage perspective on Killers of the Flower Moon, but I felt this film so deeply, especially the in-world critique of true crime/murdertainment, in which Scorsese implicates himself and us. Also the FBI shows up like 2 hours into the bloodbath and nothing they do is depicted as difficult or inventive. They just ask basic questions and exploit easy divisions between disloyal, self-interested men. I think Lily Gladstone should live forever. The popcorn at this theater was impeccable. (Tickets were $20 and popcorn and can of soda were another $6.)

On Saturday morning, I loll in bed and get a little writing done. Then we drive down to Brattleboro. Liz grew up in Brattleboro and always has friends to see or a farmstand to check in on. I have an electrolysis appointment. If you’re not aware, electrolysis is a method of permanent hair removal where each hair follicle is cauterized over and over with a tiny needle until the hair stops growing. It’s painful and takes forever (like writing, amirite?) This is my 18th session. I have been going every other week since March. Most of the hair on my jawline and upper lip is gone now, but the hair that remains is especially, um, bold. Thicker, courser hairs are harder to kill, but I will win in the end.

My electrologist in Boston was a Hindi-language realtor who was always taking these wild business calls during my sessions, while my Vermont person is an empath who almost quit electrologist school because she hates hurting other women. I’m always reassuring her that I welcome the pain and I’m just grateful that I can finally afford this. I understand how tattoo people feel when they make a permanent change to their bodies. (One hour of zapping is $90 with tip, which is about $30 less than I paid in Boston. It’s a wash when you factor in gas. I refueled on the way down for $57.)

Next, we drop off some Kleenex and groceries for our friends who got Covid at a non-binary wedding. We let the dogs off leash in some nearby nature and within seconds, they find something dead and disgusting and refuse to come down from a very steep, overgrown embankment. Louis is 7 and Weezy is 13, so it’s rare that we have to deal with this level of bad dog behavior. The plus side is that after their escapade, they pass out in the car and sleep for the rest of the day.

they had to share a bed one time this weekend and they were so indignant

We stop at Taco Bell for a desperate dinner. I get 3 soft shell tacos and a Diet Coke. I always opt for the regular tacos, since Taco Bell is it’s own unique thing and I don’t need to upgrade the experience. Liz gets a Crunch Wrap supreme and 2 crunchy tacos. $19.78

We kill some time driving around and show up early to a Halloween party. It’s freakishly warm for the end of October, like 80 degrees. The heat felt disconcerting during the day, but the night is dry and balmy. We sit on the ground and watch performances that I can’t find words for—there is clown stuff, but also death. In one performance, we throw dried flowers at a black blob who represents unprocessed grief and generational trauma. It’s beautiful and I’m very moved to be experiencing art outdoors and in community :’) Afterwards there’s a big potluck dinner and I eat some magic banana bread while someone talks to me about the dangers of Red 40, which is very Vermont.

On Sunday, I send Liz $825—my half of the rent and internet. A lot of my friends and family assume that it’s cheap to live in the country and while it’s true that our Somerville rent was significantly more than our Vermont rent (we paid $2500 for a one bedroom), there’s an affordable housing crisis here as well. Most people I know who are my age live with their parents or on someone else’s land in a tiny house or trailer. We live in a converted garage on a country highway that we found by sending an email blast to everyone we knew in the state — Liz grew up in Vermont and lived here in her 20s, and I don’t think we would have found a place to live without her connections. There’s also a severe shortage of dentists, doctors, veterinarians, plumbers, etc. and if I could do things differently, I would have started to book appointments as soon as I knew we were moving.

While I’m living large, I throw $150 at my student loans. I graduated from Bryn Mawr in 2013 with $28,000 in debt, which I paid off in fits and starts and finally put to bed in 2021. When Biden announced the $10,000 student loan forgiveness in August 2022, I was automatically refunded all the payments I made during the pandemic. Then when the Supreme Court ruled against Biden’s debt forgiveness plan (boooo), I was re-assigned all the money I was refunded as debt with a new service provider. I didn’t make very much money last year and I’m transitioning from being carless to extremely car dependent, so it feels more prudent to keep that cash on-hand in case my check engine light comes on or gremlins chew off my tires. The interest rate is only 3.6%

I have a lot of feelings about my debt, mostly I’m grateful it’s not more. There’s definitely a universe where I spent 6 figures on undergrad or went to an unfunded grad program. I’m also a rare person who had a really transformative, sexually fun time in college—so dealing with my debt feels like opening the check after going nuts on drinks and apps at dinner. I’m annoyed, but I can’t be mad about it. (Altogether with interest, I will pay about $34,400 for a degree I received over 10 years ago.)

Next I make a freakin tamale pie because The Gilded Age is back, baby. There’s a scene in season one where the cast gathers to watch a lightbulb turn on (to be fair, it’s an entire house and it’s the first time any of these people have seen electric lighting) and that is how I feel watching this show—nothing happens, just Mr. Peanut mofos exclaiming stuff and gasping in the gayest way possible. As of writing this, I still haven’t seen the second episode so DON’T FUCKING RUIN IT FOR ME.

And that’s it! That was my weekend! I spent $1297.99, mostly on rent and life-improving commodities like college and Taco Bell. If you like my work, it would mean a lot if you became my fire, the one desire a paid subscriber. Check out all my past money diaries, food diaries, and TV recaps here.

see you next time :)