I have arrived at that point in my life when a splurge looks like microwave lunches.

When I was in college, a splurge was a cup of coffee (nothing with espresso, just a $1.06 drip coffee with some low-fat milk, no sugar) and an apple scone from Slo Baked (which, sadly, is now out of business, but which got me through some Cal Poly moments).

When my kids were in the crying-in-the-rear-facing-car-seat stage, my splurge was to drive through McDonald’s for fries, which I did not share.

When I was in the throes of homeschooling in those early elementary years, complete with field trips and messy science experiments and All The Things, I loved to eat their leftover mac and cheese for lunch.

And here we are. I’m now in the phase where I homeschool older kids who mainly teach themselves and don’t come out of their rooms except to eat, which is always at an odd hour like 11 pm. Or 10:32am. Or right after they didn’t eat the lunch I made. Or the breakfast I made. Or the dinner my husband made. My biggest treat is to not have to make any food. Just open the freezer, take out some Amy’s frozen enchiladas or cheesy mac and kale (which is actually called three cheese kale bake, which sounds awful but isn’t.)

This time of year, I have a second splurge. I love, love, love Castle Kitchen vegan hot chocolate, only available on Amazon as far as I can tell. I drink a cup of that on the cold mornings (that aren’t actually that cold if you think about it, but which feel dreadfully dark and dreary compared to the majority of the year, where the temps are in the 100s and you don’t see a cloud for months on end).

So you can imagine my disappointment when I ordered a shipment of vegan hot chocolate, and right around the time I started wondering where it was (which is saying a lot because usually when the Amazon boxes arrive, I’m like, “Huh, I wonder what I ordered.” I’m not sure if I should be embarrassed by this first-world problem or by the fact that my brain is so addled that I just don’t know what I’m doing, even when I’m spending money and waiting for fun things to arrive on my doorstep.) In any case, I was wondering where my vegan hot chocolate was, and I got a message from Amazon saying it was “undeliverable,” which I found (in a very first-world problem sort of way) rather disheartening. I was much more depressed by this unfortunate event than the event warranted.

I ordered again, this time from another seller (just in case–because, I mean, who wants to go through all THAT again?) The hot chocolate arrived in record time. It came so fast that I remembered what the package was when I found it on my mat. I told my family, “Oh, that’s for me! That’s my vegan hot chocolate.” (And who even remembers how I even got started on vegan hot chocolate? Why vegan?) So I put the hot chocolate in the cabinet and promptly FORGOT it was there for three days. There was even a perfectly overcast day with low clouds and cool temps, and I was like, “Maybe I’ll stop at Starbucks today” (I didn’t), but not once did I say to myself, “Oh, I should make some vegan hot chocolate, which I already have.”

Which all goes to show that I really don’t know what I am doing. I am just bumbling along and making everything up as I go.