My Last $100 On The Way Home From A Wedding

Lots of gas station snacks.

This past weekend, I was at a wedding on Martha’s Vineyard. It was beautiful and we almost didn’t make it off the island, because it was so windy that the ferries weren’t leaving. Thankfully, after much handwringing and running back and forth between houses while on hold with the ferry company, we got on a boat and made it back in time.

$12.89, beef jerky, seltzer and some sort of fancy pistachio almond mix at a rest stop in Branford, Connecticut. Never mind the fact that I had just eaten something approximating lunch. This was aboslutely necessary and was consumed while watching the rest of Argo on the DVD player that came with our rental van.

$18.00, a pair of black leggings at Target. Across the road from the place we stopped to check the tire pressure, a Target beckoned. “I need shampoo,” mused the driver of our van. And so we went to Target, where I purchased black leggings and resisted the lure of the beauty aisle, checking one thing off my mental Target list.

$8.28, a Son of Baconator meal at Wendy’s, with a Frosty. I have never made a better decision in my entire life. This meal was delicious.

$6.96, a KitKat and something else that eludes me. We stopped to check the tire pressure and I woke up from my car nap and bought a KitKat bar and something that I cannot remember.

$20, breakfast at the Slice of Life Cafe in Oaks Bluffs, the morning after the wedding. We woke up to the news that all the ferries leaving the island were cancelled because of the wind, swift and brisk and stirring up chop on the water. We could see tiny whitecaps from the street where our house was, looking towards the ocean. So we ate breakfast instead and considered our new lives as commune members, trapped on the island forever.

$20, for tampons and a pack of cigarettes purchased at a gas station. A friend and I did the flowers for the wedding and without the help of the bride’s sister-in-law, we would probably still be there, stuffing plumosa into mason jars and fluffing dahlias, debating ferns and color placements. However, the flowers left me no time to purchase these two items, so a friend was dispatched to the gas station and everything was all right.

$14 for a breakfast burrito and a giant iced coffee, purchased prior to my crash course in floral arrangements. I burned my tongue on the burrito and stained my new sweatshirt with salsa. I expected nothing less.

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