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A View From The Ridge, Part 8

There have been moments in the life of this project when I’ve encountered what I now call a view from the ridge.  These are instances in which you get a sense that you’ve emerged from the thickets of daily family life – appointments, events, stuff – and find yourself at a juncture where you can suddenly assess where you’re at and where you’re going.  This late August morning is such a time.  When the first View note – linked above – was written seven years ago, Eldest was entering high school, Middle was entering his last year of elementary school and Youngest was finishing first grade and discovering a love for baseball.

This morning’s instance was the awakening to the fact that Eldest is now officially out of the household.  I awoke early and padded down the hallway, entering a closed door to a room that was now empty except for a single bed.  All of the remaining furniture and clothing was gone, packed up and moved out several days previously.  Such a process is slowly occurring in Middle’s room, now in college; it’s become clear that this past summer was his last at home as his own studies and professional development will require that he pursue opportunities in major urban areas.  All of the furniture is still there, but that which gives it personality – that which makes you understand that it’s Middle’s room – is partially gone to his new college digs.  Youngest’s room is still clustered there with his siblings’ rooms but he is now entering high school himself and gearing up for a Fall/Winter run at making the school baseball team, a far cry from the T-ball year when I started writing. 

In the other direction, the elder generation is finally settled after a lengthy period in which I sometimes wondered whether the sandwich in the term sandwich generation was actually a panini, hard pressed.  There are still rough patches ahead as age and disease process continue, but a look backwards is revealing for the thicketed woods through which we’ve come. What hasn’t changed through this is the presence of my Better Half, a person about whom I’ve largely been silent in the writings.  BH is my companion and love, a person with gifts at which I still marvel and without whom the thickets would be far more difficult.  And perhaps that’s the one of the biggest surprises as I sit here mulling what to write…that as the kids grow and move out into the world, you again find the time and energy to rediscover that one person with whom you began to travel the road.  Make the effort to step back from the day-to-day occasionally to apprise where you are and take stock of what you’ve come through, where you’re going and most importantly, who you’re with.

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PracticalDad Price Index – August 2016

PracticalDad note:  The process of writing in the past year has slowed appreciably and has actually come to a stop within the past three months.  There are certainly still things to be written because the situations, observations and conversations with the kids have continued nonetheless, but the process of being sandwiched has risen to impressive levels.  But it is beginning to resolve and my hope is that life will right itself enough that I can get back to this.  That said, I at least managed to get the pricing for the Price Index done.

The prices for the August 2016 edition of the PracticalDad Price Index have been noted and the results calculated and they are, as they were in July, continuing to bounce around at the levels they were when the Index began in November 2010.  The full marketbasket of 47 items actually rose over half a point in August to 100.19 from July’s result of 99.51 (November 2010 = 100) while the 37 item foodstuff only Sub-Index rose almost three quarters of a basis point to 99.74 from July’s result of 99.01 (again, November 2010 = 100).  Certainly there are items that are more expensive than they were at the outset of the project almost six years ago, but enough items have been offset enough in prices to actually bring the average cost of the marketbasket back to a point at which it stood back in November of 2010.

What is notable about this month? 

  • There is yet another product that is being dropped from the shelves by grocers because it apparently doesn’t generate enough revenue to justify its continuance on the shelves.  This store-brand item is still available at a single grocer but even that item was noted to have undergone stealth inflation as the container size dropped from 12.8 ounces to 12 ounces.
  • There continue to be instances in which the shelving is empty at different parts of the store.  There were several instances this month in which the sampled items were absent from the shelves and it was only by locating the shelf label that I could verify whether or not it continued to be even offered.
  • There is yet another instance of stealth deflation as one of the grocers returned it’s packaging to the original size.  The cost is higher than it was with the smaller packaging, but on a per-ounce, price-adjusted basis, it is less expensive.