The cost of doing business

I'm sure everybody has noticed the cost of most everything has risen greatly in recent years. Many reasons for that, not just any one in particular, and it's something we have to find a way to deal with. Fuel will drop eventually, always does, but it seems like the cost of food and general goods never returns to previous lows, so coping will be a long term road. Why it's happened, or why we "think" it's happened is relatively unimportant, learning to live with it, and discovering how to thrive in spite of it, is far more important. And, sometimes what you perceive to be a thorn in your side, is actually a blessing in disguise. 

The diesel prices here in our new town are currently $5.99 - $6.09 a gallon, while the price in our old Montana town is at $4.78. In Montana our place was pretty much done, and that left me with a considerable amount of free time to do other things. Our house was 5 miles out of town, so if I needed anything it was a minimum of a 10 mile round trip to get there, and the first half mile was over what was always a horrible wash boarded dirt road, and that caused a great deal of wear and tear over time. At our new Oregon location there is a never ended supply of projects to do in order to bring the house and property back up to what we consider to be a respectable condition. The work elves have been on strike, so that means my happy butt gets to do the work, and as slow as I move these days, projects take quite some time to finish. That means I'm at the house working all the time.

The other side of the coin here is our location, and the close proximity to cheaper  goods than we had in Montana. Our house sits about 2 miles from Winco, Costco, and other places to buy things. In Montana, our tiny town of 850 people had a really nice store, and I was always very thankful for it, but obviously the food was more expensive. We had a good hardware store, and a good lumber yard, but if you wanted/needed much else, it required a trip to Bozeman, and that was an hour away. The closeness of everything means far shorter, and much quicker, trips to get anything. We went to Winco yesterday and did a bunch of shopping. We completely restocked the pantry/kitchen, spent under $300, and were there and back in under an hour. Since much of my time is occupied working on the house, I'm doing far less driving, and I believe that last time I put fuel in the tank was over 3 weeks ago: since then I've used less than 1/2 tank of fuel. All of that together means I've spent less money overall.

Now, don't think that I'm all rainbows and unicorns about this...I struggle with the thought of being in Oregon, rather than Montana, on a daily basis. All I'm doing is trying to "look at the bright side" of things and understand that, "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." It's what I have to hold on to right now, so that's what I'll do, and I'll continue to "hope to cope". We'll see.