Nine lives to feed

Sometimes budgets can really get in the way of things. For example, my half of the groceries was only $45 this week, leaving me $45 for everything else. Quite often that is plenty of money. Wait - it's never plenty of money. But it's usually enough money to scrape by and fit in something fun along the way. The trick is that you need to do all the scraping before you have any fun. If that makes sense.

So this morning the boyfriend and I met another quartet for brunch. It was a much-belated birthday brunch for one of the girls...although, I don't think we ever mentioned her birthday... Oops. Happy birthday!

Anyway, it was the perfect kind of brunch morning, because it was brilliantly sunny after yesterday's apocalyptic winter storm. Plus I was visiting with people who I don't get to see often enough. I had a moderately priced brunch at $15, still leaving me $30 for the week.

However, I have to get a prescription filled before Thursday. (I dropped ONE pill from last month's pack down the drain, meaning I had to steal one from this month's pack, leaving this month's pack completely useless. Very annoying.) That's going to cost about $12 in dispensing fees. Leaving me with about $18, which would also be fine.

Except the cat is almost out of food. And I do not have a run-of-the-mill cat. I have a cat who eats expensive diet food from the vet. Food that costs around $35. Which is more than $18. Which is the problem. (And considering the cat's previous health issues, it would be far more expensive in the long run to start feeding her cheap food.)

I can't borrow from next week's budget because a) It's a paycheck week, so I won't even have that money until Friday, and b) I have a friend coming in from out of town for her birthday next week, so I need all my extra money for the few little things we have planned.

So I probably should have had breakfast at home this morning and then enjoyed a cup of tea while visiting with everyone. I should have scraped before I had any fun. Thankfully my omelet was incredibly tasty and filling or I would have been angry with myself.

Alas, I think the difference needed for the kitty food is going to have to go on the credit card, which is once again at pretty low levels post dental adventures. It should all be paid off again, even after my permanent crown on Wednesday, within a week or so. And then I'm taking it out of my wallet. No more getting sidetracked with an accessible form of credit. It's not real money!!

But I just can't let this animal go hungry:

Total debt: $9920 and a bit

Spent today: $15