Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

by Barbara Ehrenreich

This is not, all things considered, my finest hour. If I could just surrender to my increasingly aqueous condition and wait out the weekend with a novel, things would be looking up. But home in this instance is not a restful place; it’s more like what is known in the military as a “situation.” When I am home, Budgie wants to be out of his cage, a desire he makes known by squawking or, what is far worse, by pacing dementedly. When he is out of his cage, he wants to sit on my head and worry my hair and my glasses frames. To minimize the damage, I don’t let him out unless I am wearing my hooded sweatshirt, tied up tight enough to cover my hair and most of my face, and still I am constantly having to move him from his favorite face-to-face perch on my shoulder to, say, my forearm, from which he will work his way ineluctably back to my face. This is what anyone coming to the door would encounter: a cringing figure, glasses peering out the porthole of her sweatshirt, topped by a large, crested—and, I can only imagine, quite pleased with its dominant position—exotic white bird. But I cannot incarcerate him nearly as much as I would like to. It’s my job—isn’t it?—my way of earning my shelter, to be this creature’s friend and surrogate flock.