Really, there's no polite way to say this, so I'll just spit it out: I am a tightwad.

Oh, sure, I could toss around words such as thrifty or money conscious but really, who would I be fooling?

My thoughts, exactly.

Mostly, this manifests itself in harmless ways. If you open our cupboards you will see that almost everything bears an orange sale sticker because I am obsessive about never paying full price for the things we use constantly. I regard it as a sort of failure if I don't score enough laundry soap, hand soap, toothpaste, shampoo, cat food etc. etc. to hold us until the next time our brand goes on sale.

Even when I'm stocking up on non-perishables to get us through the winter, I wait until each item goes on sale. You can well imagine the bemusement on the cashier's face when I pull up with a shopping cart laden with a winter's worth of sale-priced kitty litter. I'm sure she must believe I'm one of those weird women with 432 cats or something.

Fooled her!

I'm one of those weird women with just three cats but an obsession with buying things on sale. Much, much saner.

Oh be quiet.

This goes beyond our cupboards. Our freezer is full of meat with orange stickers, too. I secretly gloat when I see people throwing chicken breasts into their cart at $4.59 a pound when I stocked up on them a few weeks earlier at $2.99 a pound. Fools! Wastrels! It's all I can do not to dance up to them and say, "Neener, neener, neener."

As you can well imagine, if I can actually buy something on sale AND use a coupon to further pare the price I come very close to conniptions. It's all I can do not to grab that mike the cashiers use to page clerks for price checks and announce my mad shopping skillz to the whole store. Occasionally, though, my bargain hunting gets me in over my head.

A few weeks ago our local grocery store had these boxes that hold 1/3 bushels of McIntosh apples on sale for $2.99. Two Dollars And Ninety Nine Cents! OMIGAWD, THAT'S LIKE PENNIES A POUND!

So of course I immediately dropped one in my cart, gloating all the way home. I proudly displayed my shopping triumph to the spousal unit who gently pointed out that we are but two people and there were about 4,521 apples in that box.

Uh oh.

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, then the spousal unit and I probably won't be having any medical issues for the next few decades. We Have Eaten Many Apples. Many, Many Apples. And yet, through some freakish law of physics I do not understand, the level of the apples in the box barely dropped.

This weekend is our small community's fall harvest supper, a meal that raises money to underwrite activities for the kids who live here. The spousal unit and I always pitch in food and work in the kitchen as well. This year I was asked for desserts.

At last! A way to deal with the apple scourge! I resolved to make two enormous apple crisps. Enormous? Did I say enormous? What I meant to say was Mutant Apple Crisps, apple crisps the like of which have never been seen before. To that end, yesterday I bought two disposable aluminum lasagna pans.

Now the thing with apple crisp is that you have to allow for the fact that the raw apples will cook down to about half their volume. That means that if you fill a pan three inches high with apple, when it's done cooking the apple will only be 1 1/2 inches high. I think we can all agree that you need at least that much apple goodness in an apple crisp.

In order to fill a lasagna pan three inches high with apple you have to peel, core and slice insane numbers of apples. For what seems like hours. That only fills ONE pan. I had TWO pans. It came this close to completely sapping my will to live. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that every apple that went into a mutant apple crisp was one less apple I would have to eat myself.

As I write this, one mutant apple crisp is cooling on the counter, the other is almost baked. The house is full of the smell of cinnamon, nutmeg and apples. It is divine.

AND I ONLY PAID PENNIES A POUND FOR THE APPLES!

Oh be quiet. A bargain is a bargain, even if it does almost sap your will to live.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 475.75 miles (765.6 kilometers)

Goal for 2003: 500 miles - 804.5 kilometers