I didn’t live through the Depression, but sometimes you’d think I did.

I think it must come from the fact that my parents did.  Or maybe it’s because my mom comes from Scotch blood, and the Scottish have always been held out as penny-pinchers.

Or maybe it’s because I went through my college years poor as a church mouse, with a checking account that got down to a balance of one dollar on a regular basis.  Like many college kids, my friends and I were ecstatic when parents arrived to take us out to eat, and shared clothes instead of buying anything new.

In any case, I drive myself crazy sometimes.

Take lipstick, for instance.  I just can’t stand the fact that there is a good half-inch of lipstick still in the tube when you get down to where it looks like it’s all gone.  I’ll spend twenty dollars on a cream that promises to make me look younger and doesn’t, but I can’t throw away a used-up tube of lipstick.

So I bought a lipstick brush.  Now I dab down inside the tube and use it until there is nothing left except metal and plastic.  Gosh, I must be saving pennies a week.

I used to save pantyhose with runs in one leg.  I’d cut off the leg that was bad, and wear two pairs with one leg each.  I’m happy to report I don’t do that anymore. 

One pair of pantyhose is tight enough.  Two is enough to suck the lifeblood out of you.

I do save rubber gloves, though.  If one of my rubber gloves gets a hole in it, I throw it away, but keep the good one.  I have a whole stash of left gloves.  I keep thinking that someday they’ll come in handy when I start getting holes in the left hand first, but I know that’ll never happen. 

When they start decomposing into a sticky mess, I finally throw them out.

If there is half-a-bowl’s worth of cereal left in the box, I can’t throw it away.  I tell myself that we can mix half a bowl of this with half a bowl of that, and it will be great.  I know deep down that nobody is going to eat it.

So I do.  It’s not great.  Still can’t throw it away, though.

Any kind of leftovers are the same way.  I save every little dab of this and that, and throw it all in a pot and call it dinner.  My kids call it “Mom’s Depression Stew”. 

One time I had saved some fried cheese sticks, and threw those in, too.  The cheese melted out of them, and left these yucky clumps of fried stuff floating around.  Even I have to admit it was pretty gross, but I had to sit there and eat it, and pretend it was delicious.

I just can’t throw it away.  I even feel better if I can feed the stuff to the dog. But now she has developed a sensitive stomach and the vet told me to lay off feeding her leftovers.

Now my family is trying to get the vet to write them notes, too.