This happened a few years ago, and I just remembered it, so I thought it important to get it down before I forget permanently.

One of the best laughs i got over my kids--and there have been many--was the time the kids went to one of those arcade places where you save up your tickets and get pieces of trash prizes which thrill the kids until it breaks.

Anyway, they chose those creepy false teeth that make you look like you have purple vampire teeth. They were walking around in them all evening.

Later in the evening, I was checking up on my son, and what do you know? Right there on his dresser near his bed, was a cup of water with his teeth resting in it, denture style.

CHANGES I HAVE MADE IN MY LIFE DUE OF THE ECONOMY:

I consider myself pretty creative, although not as creative as our elected officials (see previous post) at cutting corners and saving money and I always have been, so there is a limit to what I can change - I did manage to find some more things to cut.

~I have not had a cleaning lady in over two months. I really hate cleaning, but since business is very slow I do have some extra time on my hands, so I have been cleaning myself*. My place is not as clean though. Too bad. The sad part is that I am only saving a grand total of $20 a week, since I only had two hours a week. Not a huge savings.
~NO more yogurt and lebens. they are over a dollar now.
~More comparison shopping: coop versus local grocery.
~Cereal is WAY cheaper in Walmart.
~Milk is 2.49 in the COOP, which is 40-50 cents cheaper than the local grocery.
~Chanuka vacation we did not go anywhere- we took some balls to the park and played ball. We actually had a really good time, no one was complaining.
~baking more, rather than buying cookies. also baking rolls and challah in the bread machine,
which saves the price of challah for shabbos. Although shabbos doesnt cost, so I am not sure this counts, but I am saving on laying out the money...
~chocolate chips have gone up tremendously - can anyone tell me why a bag of chocolate chips is 2.79 when you can get Swiss chocolate bars for less than that? In Walmart you can get a bag for 1.50, only it's chalav stam. Why should kosher brand be that much more? So today I bought a bar of bittersweet chocolate and I am going to break it up the next time I make chocolate chip cookies.
~No more bags of cabbage for cole slaw, which are around $3.00 for a 1 lb bag. I bought a head of purple cabbage, (you dont have to check it for bugs) it costs .49 a lb. I put it thru the shredder on the food processer, which is out anyway for potato kugel. It makes a two week supply, and we are cole slaw people- cant have shabbos without cole slaw. Tastes the same, and it looks even prettier on the plate.
* NOT I am cleaning myself, I am doing the house cleaning myself.

DUH!
I left something critical out of my last post, re the creative taxes. KUDOS to *sort-of Governor David Paterson, who wants to put an obesity tax on soda of the non-diet variety. You know that a tax on donuts is next. Then candy bars... There is no end to where this one can go, what with all the delicious fat laden foods out there. What a genius. Imagine how much this could fill their coffers...
For the record, I never eat or buy anything DIET, cuz I am of the opinion that I would rather eat sugar - a known "enemy" which after all is a natural product, than aspartame or any of the other sugar substitutes ,(and we dont fully know the long term effects of these) which after a few years on the market, always end up being found to cause cancer or other nasty diseases.

*by sort of Governor, I am referring to the fact that nobody actually elected this guy as their Governor. Which brings me to another ironic thought. Here we have a Sort of Governor in the position of appointing a sort of Senator. I wonder how often such a scenario has happened in history. My opinion, he will probably appoint Caroline Kennedy, who although she seems like a nice lady - based on the fact that every time I see a picture of her, she is smiling- is outdoing even Hillary in her carpetbagging shtick; going from average citizen to a Senator in one easy jump without **even having to endure the rigors of a campaign. A least our buddy Hillary was elected by the people of NY state in a legitimate election.

** I am aware that this is a run on sentence.

Admiring Creativity (not) I always admire creativity and it would be remiss of me to not give a nod to some of the most obnoxious yet creative ways some politicians have cooked up to tax their citizens out of yet more of their hard earned money. Our esteemed governor, Jon Corzine, while a prolific taxer, hasnt mastered the art of Creative Taxation. He just raises sales tax and tolls and stuff like that. Booorrringg!! Look at our neighboring state, Michael Bloomberg who comes up with Creative Taxation. He wants to charge a six cent tax on plastic shopping bags. Every shopping bag you walk out with at the grocery will cost you six cents. I wonder how they will enforce this. Will the city have to hire an army of bag counters, who will stand at the exit of supermarkets, etc. and count bags?

"So, what do you do for a living?"
" I am a B.C., a bag counter, and i belong to Local Union of Bag Counters NO 168. No one gets past me- yesterday I counted 1, 145 bags!"

And here is another idea, which aside from its creativity (ten points) also scores high on the obnoxiousness scale (an easy ten points) and is also extremely dangerous to our civic liberties
and in fact, although I am no lawyer, I cannot imagine how this can be legal.

Someone in Seattle is proposing a new idea - they want to tax people on the miles they drive. every car will get a sort of GPS type device installed in their vehicle, and they will count how many miles you drive and tax you per mile. If this is not the most horrific idea that impinges on personal liberty to come and go, I dont know what is. This is so much worse than anything the KGB could ever come up with. Where are we headed as a country???