Photo Prompts: The top 20, Photo #3

~For all freewriting-based blog posts, see the tag #Wells Of Thought: Notions and Expositions. 

Here's prompt #3: 2014-A

2014

     This was a picture from when Dad was teaching us kids how to change the oil in the car. Of course, it was nice having a car lift in the shop back home, but since I'm moved out now and I don't have a car lift, I've gone and paid to have my oil changed.

     We all had to take pictures to illustrate how to change the oil, and the idea was that we would then take each photo and make a caption for it, and thus create our own instructional slideshow to use for later. I started working on the captions, but I really needed help with it. I was trying to remember the list of instructions from looking at the pictures I took, and I had so many that I was pretty overwhelmed with the thought of writing the directions from memory. 

     There were no consequences for not completing the slideshow, but I always wished that I'd been able to do something to lock that lesson into my memory, since the suggested method didn't work out. 

     This makes me think about my previously undiagnosed ADD, and how I used to view unfinished projects and unfulfilled promises like this one. I thought that I struggled to complete stuff sometimes because I was lazy; I thought that my dreams of doing something else were wrong, and that I should fight against my instinctual reluctance to do things the way I was told. 

     I was really interested in knowing how to change the oil in the car. Dad always told us how much money he saved by doing the maintenance on our vehicles himself, and in our house, saving money was the highest of virtues. Saving money on things was right up next to obeying your parents and studying the Bible and telling people about Jesus. It kind of stresses me out just to think about it. 

     I completely understand why my parents placed such a big emphasis on that, though. Just like I wrote about the other day, they received their income not in a salary related to their performance, but in donations from churches, friends, and family who supported us so that we could do God's work. So it was God's money. And we couldn't spend it however we wanted, but we were under the pressure to spend our limited funds the way God wanted. I grew up knowing that my parents couldn't buy us Nutella at the store from the imported German chocolate section because they were saving up and only buying the minimum that they could budget for food. 

     Not buying Nutella must have been a thing, because that's what I always think of as the golden standard.... If you buy Nutella, you must be rich. Because if you're budgeting, you don't buy Nutella. If you can't decide whether something at the store is okay to buy on a budget or not, you just ask yourself, "Is this as frivolous as Nutella?" And if it is, you don't buy it. 

     These days, I'm having to budget for myself. It's hard! I've made some mistakes. But in the end, I've discovered some pretty cool tips.

     Did you know that you can get two medium, 2-topping pizzas for cheaper than one large, 5-topping pizza at Domino's? They don't even have a large, 2-topping deal going right now. I ate off of those two medium, 2-topping pizzas for a week, including when Alex came over for dinner one night. That's pretty good for $5.99 each. 

     Did you know that buying a whole chicken is cheaper than buying the same weight of meat in thighs or chicken breasts? But you also have to have the time to chop it up. So guess who bought the cheapest thing of chicken breasts for her chicken noodle soup the other night? :P 

     Did you know that buying a half-gallon at $.49 is exactly half the price of a gallon of milk at $.98? That's good news for me, as I like getting both whole milk and 2%, and can't possibly drink a gallon of either by the expiration date.

     Did you know that the powdered form of Carnation breakfast drinks vs the bottled form is cheaper? The 12-pack of 8-oz bottles is $14.98 (at $1.24 a serving), but the powder value pack with 22 8-oz servings only costs $9.98 (at $.45 a serving)? I finally figured that one out when I was shopping with Alex a few weeks ago.  

     Anyway. I took a break from writing this post and now I don't know what I was going to say next. But tonight I have to clean up my apartment (which will be fun) and wash the dishes (which will not be fun because I'll want to be done already but there are SO MANY dishes) for when a couple of friends come over. I have ingredients to make a lot of things, but recently I've made chicken noodle soup, and it was yummy. I think I should make that again, but I'd need more chicken stock! 

     I took another break. 

     I just said goodbye to both of the girls, we had dinner and played Uno for almost two hours, and it was so much fun. The timeline wasn't what I thought it was going to be exactly, but it worked out anyway: I got off work later than expected, stopped at Walmart for chicken stock and a stock pot on my way home, realized I left my phone at work and just got my stuff and came home, started cooking the chicken, made great progress on the food as I hurriedly cleaned up everything, hid my dirty dishes in a laundry basket in my closet, washed bowls and utensils for cooking the meal, and then the girls arrived after I'd been home for just enough time to not be embarrassed by the mess that was left. They liked the chicken noodle soup (and it was almost done by the time they arrived, too). 

     To bring it back around to the photo prompt, my dad (and both of my parents) worked really hard to prepare me for living on my own. Whatever things I was able to retain, I use daily, and I'm so grateful for the strong sense of the need for a good work ethic they imparted to me, among many other things. I work every day to live up to that work ethic, and honestly, Adderall has been helping me to achieve it. It's really something.

--ACS, July 18, 2018