The day my breakfast nearly destroyed the world

I have this ambition that some day soon I will move out of my rent-free bedroom in my parents' house and suddenly 90% of my income will be devoted to rent, groceries, student loans, and the essentials to make me feel better about the fact that I'm broke all the time (such as brightly coloured hair dye). And maybe I'll put the last 10% into a savings account, if I'm smart. In order to prepare for this moment, I've been trying to train myself to be broke all the time already, by giving 90% of my income to my student loans officers and clinging to the rest like my life depends on it*.

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 I am also training myself to be independent by apartment-sitting rent-free for a friend of mine, which has brought up all sorts of fun questions, as I am a naiive house-raised girl. Questions like, is it easy to blow a kitchen fuse in an apartment the same way I do back home? It is? Where is the fuse box? Do apartments have fuse boxes? Where are they hiding it? Seriously, where is it? Why are all the lights out? Oh good Lord.

If you are excited to see how these two events (the brokeness and the fuses) are connected, just keep reading. I'll get there eventually.

See, I'm pretty good at being broke, and by that I mean I'm very good at spending my money until I have none left. For instance,this week I had to go back to my parents' house to break open my change jar and scrape together $4 in nickels and pennies, which is now all I have to last me to my next pay cheque**. How romantic.

This is why this morning, instead of going to my favourite coffee shop to spend 50% of my savings for the week on a coffee, I decided to content myself with tea from the people whose apartment I'm living in (luckily they are also well-stocked in food, so I haven't quite achieved Starving Artist status yet). Believe it or not, this was harder than it sounds. Overpriced coffeeshop beverages are a rather addictive luxury for me.

I had already blown a fuse in the kitchen trying to microwave an egg and toast some bread at the same time, and was now preparing breakfast in the semi-darkness that results from being unable to locate a fuse box in an apartment. The tea was going to be the hot beverage I would pair with a meal of cold bread and semi-cooked eggs. I was convinced a nice hot coffee would go better with the meal.

So I gave myself a stern talking-to. "Amy, you are completely broke. You have $4 in your wallet. Most of it is in pennies. That is all you have, entirely and completely, to live off of for a week. You cannot go get a coffee."

and then I had to give myself a pep-talk. "This Medicinal Ginger Oolong tea that is the only thing they have in their cupboards must be very good for you and will surely take the edge off your coffee craving, and it is sure to go well with cold bread and runny eggs, so you enjoy it. And look! It's even fair-trade!"

and then, when I plugged the electric kettle in to one of the working outlets, I had to congratulate myself. "Look at you! Saving money like a real adult! Your independently living future-self will thank you for training yourself out of this strange coffee addiction. Boil, kettle! Boil!".

This was when the second fuse blew, and I was left in semi-darkness, with no clue where the fuse box was and the vague knowledge that now all the sunlight lamps that keep all their vegetable seedlings alive were off as well, and soon the seedlings would starve to death, and when my friends returned to their apartment they would find they had no power and no vegetables to eat for the rest of the summer.

So I gave up, emptied my wallet, and went to Second Cup, where I drank a blissfully hot coffee and watched a man in a hybrid car gaze longingly at the porche stopped next to him at the light. I'm sure I'll make an excellent adult someday.

*Ah, the life of rent-free ex-students. Everything is a game to us, isn't it?
**I avoided admitting this to my mother, as it would make her worry. I figured she'd feel way better about it if she found out through my blog.