How I was almost on Oprah

When I say almost, I mean almost like I had phone interviews with a producer and had to send in paperwork, almost.

So remember when I posted about watching the show about the economy with Suze Orman? Well, after that I started doing some reading on Oprah's site about finances etc. So I noticed a little link at the bottom of one of the pages I was reading that said, "Did you watch the Suze Orman show on the Economy? Do you have a question for Suze?"

In fact I did.

It was about buying a house. Actually it was, "Is it a good time to buy a house with the crazy economy? and if so, should we buy a foreclosure etc." And so I emailed it.

And the next day I got a call from the Oprah show. The woman actually said, "Hi this is Julie, I am calling from the Oprah show." I saved the voice mail. Its probably the closest I'll ever get to Oprah. Anyway, I had to agree that me and Trav would be willing to appear on the show and we exchanged some paperwork, but in the end, they chose a more interesting financial example. It turns out we are kind of boring.

Financially speaking that is. Cause outside of that we are wild.

But that is not the point of this post. The point of this post is that for a few weeks, I lived in sheer terror, that Suze Orman might yell at me on national television.

And that fear affected the way that I spent money. And it was kind of a wake-up call. I analyzed every purchase, thinking, "Would Suze approve?" Do we really need that picture frame? Do we really need those Biore Pore Perfect strips?

And I made a conscious effort to just not spend unnecessary money. And its amazing how many things end up being unnecessary.

Gifts were hand made.

Dinners were eaten in.

Clothes were not bought, and therefore I did not have to drive back to the store to return them. (I seem to end up returning almost everything I buy in terms of clothes).

Which gave me a little more time to do things like blog, and sew, play with Avery, and dream.

I dreamt about the day when I would have a little house, with a little yard, where my little family would reside. (I also dreamt a little bit about what the curtains would look like hanging above my little clawfoot tub...but that is just getting gratuitous.)

And Suze Orman would approve.

The show we were going to maybe be on aired yesterday. It was called, "Can I Afford This", and people asked Suze questions about things they wanted to buy. In our case it would have been a house. The girl who got to ask that question was actually single and wanted to adopt. Suze denied her (buying the house...not the adoption). And after she was done, I swear they starting talking about stuff that was verbatim from my email.

It's cool Oprah...you can use my material. I once dressed up like you for, "Night of the Notables" in sixth grade. I actually painted my face with brown watercolors. We're even.

Anyway, I was slightly sad when I found out that we were not going to be on the show, but I hope I can keep up my spending-with-the-fear-of-a-Suze-smack-down ways.

And sorry if you get a lame Christmas present from me. Suze made me do it.