Today is an improvement over yesterday: I left the house. After realizing that, when you have a stomach bug, eating one of those fancy bowl dishes full of tuna, beans, rice, sweet potatoes, and about 80 other ingredients isn’t the best idea — no matter how healthy and tasty they usually are — I decided to get some good old pretzels from the bakery next door.
While I was ogling the display in the somewhat dizzy state one is constantly in when sick, I understood I had a choice: Get the regular, plain pretzels for 95 cents and add the butter myself, or pay a whopping 65 cents more to get them fully furnished with a nice heaping of golden taste-enhancer.
There was no reason why I couldn’t save the money. I have butter. I have a big knife with which to neatly slice pretzels in half. And I know perfectly well how to spread butter on a pretzel. And yet…
Maybe it was the sickness. Maybe it was laziness. Maybe it was the worry that I’d cut my finger, or that I wouldn’t manage to make a pretzel as nicely prepared as the ones right in front of me. Regardless, I walked out of that bakery with two buttered pretzels. Total extra damage: 1 Euro and 30 cents.
Sometimes, you just have to treat yourself. Whether it’s as a relief from pain or as a reward for doing well doesn’t matter. There are days when 65 cents more for a little bit of butter are totally worth it, and on those days, you should spend and don’t look back. You just have to know which ones they are.