The freezer inventory said I had too much chicken. I had so much chicken that when it went on sale on Harris Teeter, I did not buy any. How much chicken did I have? More than twenty pounds of boneless skinless breasts. Also a couple of individual packs and a whole fryer. Chicken chicken chicken.
So I went to the internet to look at chicken section and pick out something I could make with chicken and the other things on my inventory. I settled on Sweet and Sour Chicken, seeing it as a good opportunity to expand my Chinese food repetoire. I prepped all the ingredients so it would all be ready to cook up when Josh got home. He was at the recording studio.
I also had a pot of mulled cider on the stove. Or I guess I had a pot of cider mulling, so that later it would be mulled. I suppose that makes me a muller. Ever since the wassail at Christmas, hot spiced beverages have been my new Saturday night thing. This one didn't even have any booze in it.
My sweet musician got home a little after nine, and I asked him to help with the chicken. Per the recipe, we heated a pan on the stove until it was VERY HOT. And then we added a tablespoon or so of sesame oil. Suddenly, there was a fire leaping a foot out of the pan. We both stared at it dumbstruck for a second. Fire? What? That was not in the instructions.
Josh picked up the pan by the handle, which seemed like a good idea, considering the kind of height the flames were getting. Except now he had a pan full of fire in his hand. He headed toward the sink, and my brain finally decided to help by pulling information from somewhere deep inside. "No! You don't put water on grease fires." He nodded and backed away. The fire burned on, not caring at all about us.
Well, it was great that my brain decided to remember that you're not supposed to put water on a grease fire. Just in the nick of time, too! But then I couldn't quite recall what it was you were supposed to do. Josh kneeled down on the floor, bringing the burning pan down low. "Don't put it on the floor!" was my next suggestion. I had a roommate in college who couldn't remember what you were supposed to do with a grease fire, and her solution was to put the burning pan down on the floor. We had a big black ring on the linoleum as a result. I'm not sure that he was actually considering putting the pan on the floor or if he was just trying to keep the flames from touching the ceiling. All I knew was that I did not want a big black ring on my hardwoods.
Smother! That's what you're supposed to do. I grabbed a thick kitchen rug off the floor and threw it over the pan. Something hot splashed onto my foot and I saw a puddle of clear liquid on the floor. Now that I think about it, the rug could have been a really stupid plan. Kitchen rugs are generally pretty flammable. It would have been better to have used the lid that went with the pan, but we've already established that my brain was being a little slow. This particular rug had a really tight weave, and I guess that saved us. The fire went out, and then the smoke alarm went off. Josh took the rug-covered pan outside while I fanned the smoke alarm with a cutting board.
It all happened in the course of maybe thirty seconds, but geez. It was the most action-packed half minute I had experienced in a long time.
Josh came back inside, leaving the door open to allow the smoke to disappate. I continued to fan, thinking that having a little kitchen fire every week or so would allow me to build up some nice arm muscles. I have a love/hate relationships with smoke alarms. My only experience with them has been to be annoyed by them, either because they want more batteries in the middle of the night or they are alerting me to a problem I already know about. I was glad it hadn't gone off during the actual fire. That would have been just one more thing to distract my brain from finding the right information.
I was a little concerned about my foot. I knew that hot grease was a bad, bad thing to have touch your skin. My foot didn't really hurt, though. It felt a little warm, but mostly just wet. I know the grease had been really freaking hot, but maybe I had some kind of super foot that was resilient to burns.
The smoke alarm finally finished telling us what we had already known. We closed the back door and reconvened at the scene of the action. I carefully touched the puddle on the floor that had formed at the same time that my super foot had gotten wet. It was too watery to be cooking oil. What the heck was it?
The answer: it was cider. The cider pot had been sitting on the counter when I had thrown the rug over the fire. I guess I had hit it. On top of everything, it was sort of a perfect comic disaster. We had a grease fire and we dumped mulled apple cider on the floor.
The events all caught up with Josh and he suddenly enveloped me in a tight hug. Josh is good in a crisis. He can hold a pan full of fire and not panic. Then once the crisis is over, it all catches up with him and he seems to realize all that was at stake. I learned this about him after he changed my tire on the shoulder of I-40. He'd never changed a tire before, but he did it perfectly, with eighteen-wheelers whizzing by only a few feet away. Then we drove to the nearest gas station to check everything out at a safer location, and he smoked cigarettes with shaky hands.
This was like that, only I guess he'd had enough smoke, so he decided he needed a hug instead. It was sweet, though I don't think that I had been in actual danger. There was potential for real disaster here. We could have burned down the neighborhood. But me? I have legs, capable of getting me away from the fire. The house does not have legs. I was freaked out about my beautiful house.
It was scary, but we handled it. That seems to be a good description of my experience with adulthood so far.
The next night, I went to Lowes and bought two household fire extinguishers. Josh said we needed one for his library, too. We are suddenly very concerned about fire safety.
1.19.2011
1.18.2011
inventory.
A long, long time ago, I used to make a list on New Year's as a way of determining whether the previous year had been a good year or a bad year. I would make a list of all the major events that had happened in my life, and then I would rate them with a smiley face, a frowny face, or a tilda, which meant that the event had been neutral. Then at the end, I would tally it all up, and if I had more smileys than frownies, it had been a good year.
There are all sorts of problems with this system, of course, the main one being the assumption that each thing has the same weight. But to be honest, I had a pretty good childhood, so the bad events weren't ever all that bad. Let's just bag up the years from 1982 to 2001 and stamp a smiley on them. 2002? Big ole frowny.
For whatever reason, I stopped making that list sometime in my teens. Maybe I realized that it wasn't a particularly accurate or useful way to take stock of a year. Or maybe I had a bad year and I didn't want to think about it. I wouldn't even know how to make a list like that anymore. I'd feel obligated to try and weigh everything, like this thing was two frownies and this other thing, which was great, was seventeen smileys. It's possible that twenty-eight is too old to be thinking about a whole year's worth of living in terms of smileys and frownies.
I did take inventory on New Year's, though. Of my freezer.
My CraigsList freezer was starting to show signs of its age. Now that I've had a freezer for two years, there is no going back. So I bought a brand new one. Maybe this is surprising to you, because you think I never pay more than a buck-fifty for anything. I decided to buy new for a couple of reasons. Freezers last a long, long time, so the cost spread out over the years is not that much. There is something to be said for reliability. Also, new freezers are much more energy efficient than the old ones, so I'm saving money that way, too. I don't have to justify my appliance purchases to you anyway.
When moving stuff from the old freezer to the new, I found a lot of food that I did not realize that I had. Some of it was thrown right out. I generally consider expiration dates to be recommendations rather than hard and fast rules, but there was stuff in there that was capital-E Expired. I was still holding on to a free pork tenderloin I'd been given when the restaurant where I worked closed down. You know, when I was in college. Five years ago. And there were lots of other things like that. While it does not bother me to take something to Goodwill, I hate throwing away food. I know people who are wasteful with food, and I want to give them a good shaking whilst lecturing about all those starving children. It was a hard hit to my ego to see my trash brimming full of food that was perfectly good a couple of years ago.
See, I think of myself as a smart shopper. I was trained from a very young age to stock up on a product when it's on sale. That's why I have a freezer in the first place. Seeing those trash bags full of food showed me that I'm not quite as smart as I'd like to think. Maybe I spent only one dollar instead of two for something, but if I never use it, then it's still a dollar wasted. It's not just about finding the best price and stocking up. It's knowing how much you can actually use and then making sure that you use it. Otherwise, in your effort to save money, you've thrown it away.
It was hard for me to clean out my freezer so ruthlessly, but I had some inspiration. About a month ago, Josh and I watched an episode of Hoarders on Netflix instant viewing. I'd been wanting to see this show for a couple reasons. One, because I've definitely been to yard sales of people who were hoarders. Two, I have some of my own magpie tendencies. Three, I just like looking at other people's stuff, okay? I really had no idea what we were in for. The episode we watched dealt with two cases - a small family with a stuff problem and an old lady with a food problem. The stuff problem was that the wife was a compulsive shopper and the husband couldn't bear to part with anything, even if it was broken or otherwise no longer useful to them. The food problem was that the old woman bought things when they were on sale and then could not eat all of it. That lady had rotten pumpkins in her living room.
We watched the show because we were interested, but it changed our whole outlook with one episode. When we were going through the house to purge before Christmas, it lit a fire under me. And then when I was going through the old freezer (and the fridge and the pantry), I was pretty unforgiving when it came to expiration dates, because all I could think about was the lady with the rotten pumpkin in her living room. Some of that stuff was probably still good, even though the dates indicated they were best by sometime in 2009. But you have to draw the line somewhere, so I did. I felt terrible doing it. But the solution is not to push the boundaries of expiration dates. The solution is to manage my stock better so that it gets used before I have to worry about the date at all.
What was not thrown out (and there was plenty that was still perfectly fine, too) went into the new freezer. I also made a long list of every single thing I had. Then I reorganized this list into subcategories and made a little spreadsheet for myself. I printed out several blank spreadsheets and wrote down everything I had. Those sheets now stick to the new freezer, where I can see at a glance what I have and how old it is. It has been enormously helpful already. Two weeks ago, there was Italian sausage at a good price. I cook with sausage frequently, so I wrote it down on my shopping list for the week. But then I looked at my inventory and realized that I had four and a half pounds of the stuff already. What I needed to be doing was using it up, not buying more. So I made a lasagna, being sure to mark off the sausage that went into it.
Every day since then, I've been using the inventory to guide my decision as to what to make for dinner. Previously, I would decide what I wanted first and then just get what I needed. Most of the things that I cook rely on pantry staples anyway, so it's not as if I was going to the grocery store every evening to pick up exotic ingredients like kumquats. It's darned convenient living a half mile from the store, but that doesn't mean I should be relying on that.
You could call this a New Year's Resolution, I guess. I am attempting to make a change in the way I live my daily life, and this change did start at the beginning of 2011. I see it more as a part of a constant growth in myself as, for lack of a better word, a homemaker. A household manager. Whatever. When I was bagging up all the food I'd wasted, I was reassessing my own skills. It occurred to me how much harder it would be for me to figure all this out as I go if I had youngins at my feet. I have some time to get really good at this stuff before I have to start feeding more people.
In any case, I have high hopes for my new system. On January 1, 2012, I would like to be able to write down "New Inventory System" and put a couple of smileys next to it.
There are all sorts of problems with this system, of course, the main one being the assumption that each thing has the same weight. But to be honest, I had a pretty good childhood, so the bad events weren't ever all that bad. Let's just bag up the years from 1982 to 2001 and stamp a smiley on them. 2002? Big ole frowny.
For whatever reason, I stopped making that list sometime in my teens. Maybe I realized that it wasn't a particularly accurate or useful way to take stock of a year. Or maybe I had a bad year and I didn't want to think about it. I wouldn't even know how to make a list like that anymore. I'd feel obligated to try and weigh everything, like this thing was two frownies and this other thing, which was great, was seventeen smileys. It's possible that twenty-eight is too old to be thinking about a whole year's worth of living in terms of smileys and frownies.
I did take inventory on New Year's, though. Of my freezer.
My CraigsList freezer was starting to show signs of its age. Now that I've had a freezer for two years, there is no going back. So I bought a brand new one. Maybe this is surprising to you, because you think I never pay more than a buck-fifty for anything. I decided to buy new for a couple of reasons. Freezers last a long, long time, so the cost spread out over the years is not that much. There is something to be said for reliability. Also, new freezers are much more energy efficient than the old ones, so I'm saving money that way, too. I don't have to justify my appliance purchases to you anyway.
When moving stuff from the old freezer to the new, I found a lot of food that I did not realize that I had. Some of it was thrown right out. I generally consider expiration dates to be recommendations rather than hard and fast rules, but there was stuff in there that was capital-E Expired. I was still holding on to a free pork tenderloin I'd been given when the restaurant where I worked closed down. You know, when I was in college. Five years ago. And there were lots of other things like that. While it does not bother me to take something to Goodwill, I hate throwing away food. I know people who are wasteful with food, and I want to give them a good shaking whilst lecturing about all those starving children. It was a hard hit to my ego to see my trash brimming full of food that was perfectly good a couple of years ago.
See, I think of myself as a smart shopper. I was trained from a very young age to stock up on a product when it's on sale. That's why I have a freezer in the first place. Seeing those trash bags full of food showed me that I'm not quite as smart as I'd like to think. Maybe I spent only one dollar instead of two for something, but if I never use it, then it's still a dollar wasted. It's not just about finding the best price and stocking up. It's knowing how much you can actually use and then making sure that you use it. Otherwise, in your effort to save money, you've thrown it away.
It was hard for me to clean out my freezer so ruthlessly, but I had some inspiration. About a month ago, Josh and I watched an episode of Hoarders on Netflix instant viewing. I'd been wanting to see this show for a couple reasons. One, because I've definitely been to yard sales of people who were hoarders. Two, I have some of my own magpie tendencies. Three, I just like looking at other people's stuff, okay? I really had no idea what we were in for. The episode we watched dealt with two cases - a small family with a stuff problem and an old lady with a food problem. The stuff problem was that the wife was a compulsive shopper and the husband couldn't bear to part with anything, even if it was broken or otherwise no longer useful to them. The food problem was that the old woman bought things when they were on sale and then could not eat all of it. That lady had rotten pumpkins in her living room.
We watched the show because we were interested, but it changed our whole outlook with one episode. When we were going through the house to purge before Christmas, it lit a fire under me. And then when I was going through the old freezer (and the fridge and the pantry), I was pretty unforgiving when it came to expiration dates, because all I could think about was the lady with the rotten pumpkin in her living room. Some of that stuff was probably still good, even though the dates indicated they were best by sometime in 2009. But you have to draw the line somewhere, so I did. I felt terrible doing it. But the solution is not to push the boundaries of expiration dates. The solution is to manage my stock better so that it gets used before I have to worry about the date at all.
What was not thrown out (and there was plenty that was still perfectly fine, too) went into the new freezer. I also made a long list of every single thing I had. Then I reorganized this list into subcategories and made a little spreadsheet for myself. I printed out several blank spreadsheets and wrote down everything I had. Those sheets now stick to the new freezer, where I can see at a glance what I have and how old it is. It has been enormously helpful already. Two weeks ago, there was Italian sausage at a good price. I cook with sausage frequently, so I wrote it down on my shopping list for the week. But then I looked at my inventory and realized that I had four and a half pounds of the stuff already. What I needed to be doing was using it up, not buying more. So I made a lasagna, being sure to mark off the sausage that went into it.
Every day since then, I've been using the inventory to guide my decision as to what to make for dinner. Previously, I would decide what I wanted first and then just get what I needed. Most of the things that I cook rely on pantry staples anyway, so it's not as if I was going to the grocery store every evening to pick up exotic ingredients like kumquats. It's darned convenient living a half mile from the store, but that doesn't mean I should be relying on that.
You could call this a New Year's Resolution, I guess. I am attempting to make a change in the way I live my daily life, and this change did start at the beginning of 2011. I see it more as a part of a constant growth in myself as, for lack of a better word, a homemaker. A household manager. Whatever. When I was bagging up all the food I'd wasted, I was reassessing my own skills. It occurred to me how much harder it would be for me to figure all this out as I go if I had youngins at my feet. I have some time to get really good at this stuff before I have to start feeding more people.
In any case, I have high hopes for my new system. On January 1, 2012, I would like to be able to write down "New Inventory System" and put a couple of smileys next to it.
1.13.2011
warm fuzzies.
I know that you are all incredibly sick of Christmas entries right now. I'm a little sick of writing them. If I'd had any sense at all, I would have posted them during the last week of December. Or if I'd been really smart, I would have written them now and then saved them for December of this year, when we're all feeling more Christmasy. But hey, what follows is the last part of the story. I should be able to write about New Years by February.
Back to the story of the Christmas with two trees, already in progress.
Sometime in early December, Josh and I began discussing the possibility that his dad might want to bring his new girlfriend, Carol, to Christmas. We had already met her and liked her, but we felt a little weird about having her over for a family holiday. We were still getting used to the idea of the divorce. But we couldn't say no, because, well, that would be mean. I told Josh that if it came up, he could tell his dad that she was more than welcome, but that he personally had some concerns about his dad's decision-making as of late.
A few days later, his dad asked the very question we'd been discussing, and Josh said sure. There was nothing more to it. I can't tell if that's a guy thing or a Josh and his dad thing. If this had been my family, you can believe there would have been a Conversation. My family lets me know when they are concerned about my decision-making.
In any case, we were expecting three guests for Christmas, four if you count Josh's brother's dog. You might as well, since we bought him a gift. It was a stuffed Mario, just the right size for a rottweiler to rip to pieces. I found it serendipitously at a thrift store for $1.50. I did not tell the nice lady cashier that I was buying just so it could be destroyed.
A far more difficult problem was what to give Carol. I suddenly became very sympathetic to the mothers of the men in my dating history (both of them). Maybe this should have been obvious, but it's hard to buy something for someone you don't know. I take gift-giving pretty seriously, and I like to give unique and personal presents. However, I knew a total of two things about Carol: she was a deer hunter, and she used to raise goats. That's it. I went to every antique store in town to find something suitable and came up empty-handed. Every time I thought I had a winner, I began to wonder if I was just picking out things for myself. Yes, I like this cute silver flying pig bank, but is she the kind of person that would enjoy it? And then it'll just take up room in her house and she'll feel guilty for wanting to get rid of it.
Maybe given enough time, I could have found something really awesome, but in the end, we made a half-hearted attempt. Josh came up with the idea of a journal, and I decided to include some homemade goods - our own lemon liqueur and hot sauce (not together). I felt pathetic. I think I'm some hot-shot gift-giver, and I was pretty much shopping out of my own fridge. Even if she didn't like them, we hoped that the gifts at least seemed personal. It was the best we could do. If it is the thought that counts, then we thought about it a lot. We would have thought even more, and maybe one of them would have been the thought that contained the definitive answer, but all of a sudden they were on our doorstep, ready for Christmas Eve dinner.
Dinner went great. We had crab legs, and everyone liked it. We all ate too much and then had chocolate pie and homemade truffles while watching The Muppet Christmas Carol. The truffles were made by Carol, who also brought venison stew and homemade wassail. They were all awesome, but I have to say that I can really put away the wassail, which is probably something you never knew about me. I never even knew it about myself. I was still working on the wassail when the older generation went to bed. Us twenty-somethings stayed up and watched Christmas episodes of South Park.
The next morning, I made two Quiche Lorraines for five people. Why two? I don't know. I remember complaining when Susan used to make too much food and then send it home with us, as if Josh and I could eat our way through a whole cake. But it's better to have too much than too little, and I was able to freeze the extra quiche. I sent the remainder of the first one home with Trevor, because I am a hypocrite (and he asked for it - ha!). We also had biscuits with apple butter that Carol had brought.
And then, presents! That part of it seemed sort of anti-climatic this year, perhaps because I was focusing on stuffing everyone with egg pie. At some point in all the unwrapping, I looked over at Carol. It was obvious that she was really, really touched. Guess what? She keeps journals, and, if you couldn't tell by now, she is a huge fan of homemade goods. She told me that she took up the mantle of making apple butter for her family, since her grandmother had died and no one else seemed interested in doing it. She is frequently discouraged by how few people make things themselves anymore. So, slam dunk on the gifts, basically.
They left around noon to go see her family. They hugged us several times, and Carol got a little choked up. I wonder if she had been dreading it, fearful of how we would receive her. That's probably why she brought so many contributions. She just wanted us to like her. Sometimes I get really mystified by other people's behavior, and I can't figure out where they are coming from at all. A lot of the time, people just want to be liked.
I'd known from the beginning that we were a bit required had to let Carol come. I knew that not welcoming her would be a jerk move, but I didn't even think of the flip side - what a really good thing it would be to open up our home to her. They were both just so happy to be there. All this divorce stuff is really complicated, but it's not our divorce. All we have to do is be nice people. Done.
Our guests gone, Josh and I turned the futon into a bed, where we snuggled, ate chocolate pie, and watched Christmas videos. Even aside from that foolproof recipe for contentedness, I was full of the warm fuzzies. We had done a good thing. I was basking in the warm glow of the happiness that I had helped create in others. You know, I like making other people happy so much that I'm considering doing it more often.
Back to the story of the Christmas with two trees, already in progress.
Sometime in early December, Josh and I began discussing the possibility that his dad might want to bring his new girlfriend, Carol, to Christmas. We had already met her and liked her, but we felt a little weird about having her over for a family holiday. We were still getting used to the idea of the divorce. But we couldn't say no, because, well, that would be mean. I told Josh that if it came up, he could tell his dad that she was more than welcome, but that he personally had some concerns about his dad's decision-making as of late.
A few days later, his dad asked the very question we'd been discussing, and Josh said sure. There was nothing more to it. I can't tell if that's a guy thing or a Josh and his dad thing. If this had been my family, you can believe there would have been a Conversation. My family lets me know when they are concerned about my decision-making.
In any case, we were expecting three guests for Christmas, four if you count Josh's brother's dog. You might as well, since we bought him a gift. It was a stuffed Mario, just the right size for a rottweiler to rip to pieces. I found it serendipitously at a thrift store for $1.50. I did not tell the nice lady cashier that I was buying just so it could be destroyed.
A far more difficult problem was what to give Carol. I suddenly became very sympathetic to the mothers of the men in my dating history (both of them). Maybe this should have been obvious, but it's hard to buy something for someone you don't know. I take gift-giving pretty seriously, and I like to give unique and personal presents. However, I knew a total of two things about Carol: she was a deer hunter, and she used to raise goats. That's it. I went to every antique store in town to find something suitable and came up empty-handed. Every time I thought I had a winner, I began to wonder if I was just picking out things for myself. Yes, I like this cute silver flying pig bank, but is she the kind of person that would enjoy it? And then it'll just take up room in her house and she'll feel guilty for wanting to get rid of it.
Maybe given enough time, I could have found something really awesome, but in the end, we made a half-hearted attempt. Josh came up with the idea of a journal, and I decided to include some homemade goods - our own lemon liqueur and hot sauce (not together). I felt pathetic. I think I'm some hot-shot gift-giver, and I was pretty much shopping out of my own fridge. Even if she didn't like them, we hoped that the gifts at least seemed personal. It was the best we could do. If it is the thought that counts, then we thought about it a lot. We would have thought even more, and maybe one of them would have been the thought that contained the definitive answer, but all of a sudden they were on our doorstep, ready for Christmas Eve dinner.
Dinner went great. We had crab legs, and everyone liked it. We all ate too much and then had chocolate pie and homemade truffles while watching The Muppet Christmas Carol. The truffles were made by Carol, who also brought venison stew and homemade wassail. They were all awesome, but I have to say that I can really put away the wassail, which is probably something you never knew about me. I never even knew it about myself. I was still working on the wassail when the older generation went to bed. Us twenty-somethings stayed up and watched Christmas episodes of South Park.
The next morning, I made two Quiche Lorraines for five people. Why two? I don't know. I remember complaining when Susan used to make too much food and then send it home with us, as if Josh and I could eat our way through a whole cake. But it's better to have too much than too little, and I was able to freeze the extra quiche. I sent the remainder of the first one home with Trevor, because I am a hypocrite (and he asked for it - ha!). We also had biscuits with apple butter that Carol had brought.
And then, presents! That part of it seemed sort of anti-climatic this year, perhaps because I was focusing on stuffing everyone with egg pie. At some point in all the unwrapping, I looked over at Carol. It was obvious that she was really, really touched. Guess what? She keeps journals, and, if you couldn't tell by now, she is a huge fan of homemade goods. She told me that she took up the mantle of making apple butter for her family, since her grandmother had died and no one else seemed interested in doing it. She is frequently discouraged by how few people make things themselves anymore. So, slam dunk on the gifts, basically.
They left around noon to go see her family. They hugged us several times, and Carol got a little choked up. I wonder if she had been dreading it, fearful of how we would receive her. That's probably why she brought so many contributions. She just wanted us to like her. Sometimes I get really mystified by other people's behavior, and I can't figure out where they are coming from at all. A lot of the time, people just want to be liked.
I'd known from the beginning that we were a bit required had to let Carol come. I knew that not welcoming her would be a jerk move, but I didn't even think of the flip side - what a really good thing it would be to open up our home to her. They were both just so happy to be there. All this divorce stuff is really complicated, but it's not our divorce. All we have to do is be nice people. Done.
Our guests gone, Josh and I turned the futon into a bed, where we snuggled, ate chocolate pie, and watched Christmas videos. Even aside from that foolproof recipe for contentedness, I was full of the warm fuzzies. We had done a good thing. I was basking in the warm glow of the happiness that I had helped create in others. You know, I like making other people happy so much that I'm considering doing it more often.
1.11.2011
christmas china.
Sometime in November, Josh asked me if I wanted a set of Christmas china. His dad and step-mom were splitting up, and neither one wanted their set. I did not even have to think about it, the answer was no. Do I want something that takes up a lot of space and that I can only use once a year? Nope. I don't want any kind of china, much less a set whose pattern limits its use. What marketing genius invented Christmas china? Bah humbug.
Christmas china, and really china in general, lives in that area of domesticity that I just don't get. It lives there with matching silverware and an immaculate house. I wasn't raised by a domestic goddess and I didn't grow up to be one. Sometimes I feel self-conscious about it, that and all the other ways in which I seem to fail at being a woman (see Shaving, Legs). I am mostly secure in the knowledge that Josh knows this about me, expects it to be that way forever, and still loves me. However, the prospect of being the hostess of a major family holiday gathering, with everyone's enjoyment of said holiday depending on my woman skills, was causing me some stress. This stress was made worse by the fact that Josh's ex-step-mom, Susan, totally rocks at hostessing. When we went to Christmas at her house, every detail was perfect and amazing. How was I supposed to live up to that kind of precedent?
If I had a low point during this holiday season, it was the tree skirt incident. See, last year I made our own personalized stockings. They turned out beautifully, if a little homemade. Emboldened by my success, my next idea was to make a tree skirt, so we wouldn't have to use an old bedsheet. But then Susan gave me a tree skirt, the most beautiful item of clothing that any evergreen could ever wear. It had appliqué and embroidery and little button embellishments, just a little bit classy and a little bit whimsical. It was made of white wool and blue felt and red cotton. I was honored to own such a lovely thing, yet also sort of depressed. I had been planning on making my own, but there was no way that I could ever make anything as nice as the tree skirt we had been given.
And then, in the process of trying to put up our ridiculous eight-foot tree, the skirt got dirty. I wasn't sure if it was washable, but I figured it was probably okay as long as I didn't put it in the dryer. Guess what? WRONG. Not only did the fabric get all misshapen, the red cotton bled all into the white wool to become that unmistakeable shade of incompetence pink. I had ruined Susan's tree skirt. I sat down in the floor and threw myself a pity party right there in front of my washing machine.
What was wrong with me? Isn't this stuff supposed to come naturally to me? This is why we can't have nice things. One more reason not to take the Christmas china; I would just ruin it.
A couple weeks after I gave an unequivocal no to the offer of free Christmas china, Josh asked again if I wanted it. See, if a member of my family had done that, I would have figured that they had forgotten that they asked in the first place. We're forgetful like that. Luckily for us and any future children we might want to have, Josh and I are not related. So the fact that he asked again indicated that maybe he wanted the china, but he was a man and not supposed to want things like fancy dishes. Perhaps he had been counting on the fact that I am a woman and would of course accept them immediately. Ha! I told him that if he wanted it, then I would be more than happy to make room for it. Okay, I might not have been that gracious about it, but the gist was the same. It was probably more like "If you are attached to those silly useless plates, then I will find some dark cabinet to stash them during the 364 days of the year that we don't use them, BUT ONLY BECAUSE I LOVE YOU. Also, you will have to wash them, not me."
He looked the plates up on the internet to show me. They had a traditional Christmas tree in the middle, and a green border. For Christmas china, they were pretty enough, so I made my peace with them. We met up with Josh's dad in Winston, and he loaded a giant Rubbermaid container full of breakables into the trunk of my car. The next morning, Josh found some space in a kitchen cabinet. He unpacked the first dish from its newspaper wrapping and said, "What is this?"
See, it wasn't the china with the tree and the green border after all. This one had a wreath trim, with rocking horses and trains. I looked at it and thought to myself that this china would be more difficult for me to make peace with. I had to save cabinet space for this?
This is the part of the blog entry where I interrupt my own story to try and make nice with the people that I am about to offend, in this case, people who like the rocking horse china. There are people that I like and care about who liked that Christmas china enough to buy a whole dang set of it. But can we agree as adults that part of the beauty in this world is in its variety? It's a big world, with room for lots of different kinds of Christmas china patterns. Not everyone can like the same thing, of course. Different plates for different mates...or something. So if you happen to really love some china that I myself do not care for, please don't take my opinion personally, even if I write about it at length and post it on the internet.
The point is, I didn't like the plates at all. Neither did Josh. The green border plates that he was thinking of are the ones that his mother has. Maybe we'll inherit those someday. I will still probably say "no" the first time.
I guess I should have been relieved, because now Josh didn't want to keep the dishes either. We decided that we would use them for this Christmas and then get rid of them. Take them to Replacements, Ltd. and exchange them for a pattern that we actually liked. Or just take the money and spend it on another sarcophagus, because we hate having useless objects like fancy dishes taking up space in the house.
Our guests were scheduled to arrive at 4:30 on Christmas Eve. At 4, we were pretty much ready. The house was cleaner than it had been since we moved in. The gifts were wrapped, the stockings were hung on the mantel with yarn, the hostess was dressed in an immaculatecocktail dress t-shirt and jeans. I asked Josh to set the table. As recently as the day before, the kitchen table had been piled high with laundry, but today it was clean and covered in a deep green tablecloth that I had randomly found among my fabric scraps.
"Hey, let's not use the Christmas china," Josh said suddenly.
"Huh?"
"Let's not use it."
"What are we going to use?"
"Our regular dishes. The mismatched Corelle dishes."
"But I thought we were going to use the china once and then get rid of it."
"Nah. Unless you want to."
"I guess I don't care."
"The Christmas china is a symbol of a broken marriage, and we don't even like it. Why would we use it?"
When he's right, he's right. That china was both literal and figurative baggage, and we don't have to have it on our table.
I had been focussed on making Christmas awesome for everybody. Somehow I had come to believe that "awesome" meant "just like Susan did it." What I needed to realize (or what I needed to be told) was that there is no one way to do Christmas. The reason that I don't worry about my failures in domesticity most of the time is because I don't think that stuff matters. And the reason that Josh is okay with these limitations of mine is because he feels that way, too. Christmas is not about dishes or tree skirts.
So that's what we did. He set the table with my hodgepodge, dishwasher-safe, dishes. We have matching silverware, but he didn't use it. He was going out of his way to be weird, as a way of celebrating the way we actually are without even trying. He was saying "This is us and this is what Christmas is like at our house. Feel free to notice how happy and loving it is." In the midst of my hosting-induced stress, I kinda needed that. I needed to be told that throwing a wonderful Christmas was not in conflict with my haphazard domestic practices, so relax and be yourself, you silly woman. He's a very remarkable and lovable man. Kind of a weirdo, though.
We had dinner, it was yummy, no one said anything at all about the dishes. Frankly, I can't help but think that there were others who were perfectly okay with not being served crab legs on a piece of figurative baggage.
Christmas china, and really china in general, lives in that area of domesticity that I just don't get. It lives there with matching silverware and an immaculate house. I wasn't raised by a domestic goddess and I didn't grow up to be one. Sometimes I feel self-conscious about it, that and all the other ways in which I seem to fail at being a woman (see Shaving, Legs). I am mostly secure in the knowledge that Josh knows this about me, expects it to be that way forever, and still loves me. However, the prospect of being the hostess of a major family holiday gathering, with everyone's enjoyment of said holiday depending on my woman skills, was causing me some stress. This stress was made worse by the fact that Josh's ex-step-mom, Susan, totally rocks at hostessing. When we went to Christmas at her house, every detail was perfect and amazing. How was I supposed to live up to that kind of precedent?
If I had a low point during this holiday season, it was the tree skirt incident. See, last year I made our own personalized stockings. They turned out beautifully, if a little homemade. Emboldened by my success, my next idea was to make a tree skirt, so we wouldn't have to use an old bedsheet. But then Susan gave me a tree skirt, the most beautiful item of clothing that any evergreen could ever wear. It had appliqué and embroidery and little button embellishments, just a little bit classy and a little bit whimsical. It was made of white wool and blue felt and red cotton. I was honored to own such a lovely thing, yet also sort of depressed. I had been planning on making my own, but there was no way that I could ever make anything as nice as the tree skirt we had been given.
And then, in the process of trying to put up our ridiculous eight-foot tree, the skirt got dirty. I wasn't sure if it was washable, but I figured it was probably okay as long as I didn't put it in the dryer. Guess what? WRONG. Not only did the fabric get all misshapen, the red cotton bled all into the white wool to become that unmistakeable shade of incompetence pink. I had ruined Susan's tree skirt. I sat down in the floor and threw myself a pity party right there in front of my washing machine.
What was wrong with me? Isn't this stuff supposed to come naturally to me? This is why we can't have nice things. One more reason not to take the Christmas china; I would just ruin it.
A couple weeks after I gave an unequivocal no to the offer of free Christmas china, Josh asked again if I wanted it. See, if a member of my family had done that, I would have figured that they had forgotten that they asked in the first place. We're forgetful like that. Luckily for us and any future children we might want to have, Josh and I are not related. So the fact that he asked again indicated that maybe he wanted the china, but he was a man and not supposed to want things like fancy dishes. Perhaps he had been counting on the fact that I am a woman and would of course accept them immediately. Ha! I told him that if he wanted it, then I would be more than happy to make room for it. Okay, I might not have been that gracious about it, but the gist was the same. It was probably more like "If you are attached to those silly useless plates, then I will find some dark cabinet to stash them during the 364 days of the year that we don't use them, BUT ONLY BECAUSE I LOVE YOU. Also, you will have to wash them, not me."
He looked the plates up on the internet to show me. They had a traditional Christmas tree in the middle, and a green border. For Christmas china, they were pretty enough, so I made my peace with them. We met up with Josh's dad in Winston, and he loaded a giant Rubbermaid container full of breakables into the trunk of my car. The next morning, Josh found some space in a kitchen cabinet. He unpacked the first dish from its newspaper wrapping and said, "What is this?"
See, it wasn't the china with the tree and the green border after all. This one had a wreath trim, with rocking horses and trains. I looked at it and thought to myself that this china would be more difficult for me to make peace with. I had to save cabinet space for this?
This is the part of the blog entry where I interrupt my own story to try and make nice with the people that I am about to offend, in this case, people who like the rocking horse china. There are people that I like and care about who liked that Christmas china enough to buy a whole dang set of it. But can we agree as adults that part of the beauty in this world is in its variety? It's a big world, with room for lots of different kinds of Christmas china patterns. Not everyone can like the same thing, of course. Different plates for different mates...or something. So if you happen to really love some china that I myself do not care for, please don't take my opinion personally, even if I write about it at length and post it on the internet.
The point is, I didn't like the plates at all. Neither did Josh. The green border plates that he was thinking of are the ones that his mother has. Maybe we'll inherit those someday. I will still probably say "no" the first time.
I guess I should have been relieved, because now Josh didn't want to keep the dishes either. We decided that we would use them for this Christmas and then get rid of them. Take them to Replacements, Ltd. and exchange them for a pattern that we actually liked. Or just take the money and spend it on another sarcophagus, because we hate having useless objects like fancy dishes taking up space in the house.
Our guests were scheduled to arrive at 4:30 on Christmas Eve. At 4, we were pretty much ready. The house was cleaner than it had been since we moved in. The gifts were wrapped, the stockings were hung on the mantel with yarn, the hostess was dressed in an immaculate
"Hey, let's not use the Christmas china," Josh said suddenly.
"Huh?"
"Let's not use it."
"What are we going to use?"
"Our regular dishes. The mismatched Corelle dishes."
"But I thought we were going to use the china once and then get rid of it."
"Nah. Unless you want to."
"I guess I don't care."
"The Christmas china is a symbol of a broken marriage, and we don't even like it. Why would we use it?"
When he's right, he's right. That china was both literal and figurative baggage, and we don't have to have it on our table.
I had been focussed on making Christmas awesome for everybody. Somehow I had come to believe that "awesome" meant "just like Susan did it." What I needed to realize (or what I needed to be told) was that there is no one way to do Christmas. The reason that I don't worry about my failures in domesticity most of the time is because I don't think that stuff matters. And the reason that Josh is okay with these limitations of mine is because he feels that way, too. Christmas is not about dishes or tree skirts.
So that's what we did. He set the table with my hodgepodge, dishwasher-safe, dishes. We have matching silverware, but he didn't use it. He was going out of his way to be weird, as a way of celebrating the way we actually are without even trying. He was saying "This is us and this is what Christmas is like at our house. Feel free to notice how happy and loving it is." In the midst of my hosting-induced stress, I kinda needed that. I needed to be told that throwing a wonderful Christmas was not in conflict with my haphazard domestic practices, so relax and be yourself, you silly woman. He's a very remarkable and lovable man. Kind of a weirdo, though.
We had dinner, it was yummy, no one said anything at all about the dishes. Frankly, I can't help but think that there were others who were perfectly okay with not being served crab legs on a piece of figurative baggage.
1.09.2011
christmas feelings.
I may be well on my way to being a crazy tree person, but there is a reason behind it. I admit that I wanted a giant, impressive tree because I had people to impress. We hosted Christmas this year. In the month leading up to the holiday, several people asked what I was doing for the holidays, and that is what I told them: We are hosting Christmas. They would say, oh, that's nice, and then talk about themselves, which always disappointed me. I was bursting to talk about it, because it was pretty much all I thought about for a month or so. But then again, even if someone had given me room to talk about myself and my Christmas feelings, I would have changed the subject or made a joke. And that's why I have a blog.
So the story didn't start with Drag Bingo at all, but back in October, when Josh had a really crappy weekend. It was crappy because we had planned a trip to Washington, D.C. to see Cinematic Titanic. We had reservations in a super nice downtown hotel and we were also going to see a Romanian puppet show. But then he couldn't get off work and I scrambled to find a girlfriend who could go at the last minute. Oh yeah, and while he was sitting at home alone, missing our trip, he also found out that his dad was getting divorced.
Our holiday schedule has been to visit his dad for Christmas Eve and then his mom for Christmas morning. It is this way because a long, long time ago, that was the agreement that Josh's parents came to when they themselves divorced. His dad could have Christmas Eve, and his mom had Christmas day. That schedule was threatened, since we weren't even sure where his dad would be living come the holidays.
Well, heck. We have a house. It's got high ceilings.
It seemed like a holiday emergency. We didn't, and still don't, know anything about the divorce. But we do know that years of not seeing his sons on Christmas day has made Josh's dad very sentimental about the holidays. I imagine him doing his best to throw the most memorable Christmas Eve possible for his boys, and then watching Christmas movies alone the whole next day. So Josh and I decided that this year, we would miss Christmas breakfast at his mom's for the sake of being family for his dad.
This is my first experience with hosting a family holiday get-together. It's also my very first experience with divorce. The first one is kinda fun; the second pretty much sucks.
Honestly, I feel bad for having any feelings about it at all. They're not my parents, and it's not bringing up any painful childhood memories for me. In fact, it's highlighting what a carefree childhood I had. But I was having feelings. I was having so many feelings that they threatened to spill out all over the place anytime some poor unsuspecting soul asked what I was doing for the holidays. You have to be careful about feelings, you know. They're quite messy.
But it's safe here, so let me tell you about my feelings: I miss Susan, Josh's (ex?) step-mom, and I am confused about what my relationship is to her anymore. I want her to still be in our lives, but I don't know how that works. Obviously, we will continue to have a relationship with his dad, but will that conflict with having contact with Susan? Do we have to pick, because that's not fair. We didn't break up with Susan. Also, Josh's dad has a new girlfriend. I'm not sure if that's a wise idea, not that it's any of my business at all. I've hung out with her a few times, and I really like her. She's smart and interesting. She raises goats! Yet every time I think about how much I like her, I feel like I'm betraying Susan. And then I think that I'm much too old for these tired stereotypical child-of-divorce feelings. These are not even my parents.
I simply cannot imagine going through this when I was six. I would have had the same feelings without the ability to process them. It makes me want to go back in time and give little boy Joshua a hug, which would have been inappropriate and weird and not really a very good use of a time machine.
We made our offer to host Christmas, and it was gratefully accepted. I can't speak for Josh's dad, but I imagine that he was pretty proud of his son. I was, anyway. That's one way to measure your success as a parent - when the time comes, can your kids step up and take care of you? Hosting a holiday gathering is a pretty minor thing in terms of the many things that adult children have to do for their parents. Compared to sponge baths and picking out coffins, it's downright fun. But it is something to say, hey, Dad, you've got a lot on your plate right now, let me do this one thing for you. That's what family is for.
That's really what we wanted the holiday season to be about. It would have been easy to focus on the divorce, but we decided to make it about being family. In the years to come, we don't want to refer to it as the Christmas after Dad and Susan split. We want to call it the first Christmas in Raleigh or the Christmas that it snowed four inches. Remember 2010? It was the Christmas with two trees.
So the story didn't start with Drag Bingo at all, but back in October, when Josh had a really crappy weekend. It was crappy because we had planned a trip to Washington, D.C. to see Cinematic Titanic. We had reservations in a super nice downtown hotel and we were also going to see a Romanian puppet show. But then he couldn't get off work and I scrambled to find a girlfriend who could go at the last minute. Oh yeah, and while he was sitting at home alone, missing our trip, he also found out that his dad was getting divorced.
Our holiday schedule has been to visit his dad for Christmas Eve and then his mom for Christmas morning. It is this way because a long, long time ago, that was the agreement that Josh's parents came to when they themselves divorced. His dad could have Christmas Eve, and his mom had Christmas day. That schedule was threatened, since we weren't even sure where his dad would be living come the holidays.
Well, heck. We have a house. It's got high ceilings.
It seemed like a holiday emergency. We didn't, and still don't, know anything about the divorce. But we do know that years of not seeing his sons on Christmas day has made Josh's dad very sentimental about the holidays. I imagine him doing his best to throw the most memorable Christmas Eve possible for his boys, and then watching Christmas movies alone the whole next day. So Josh and I decided that this year, we would miss Christmas breakfast at his mom's for the sake of being family for his dad.
This is my first experience with hosting a family holiday get-together. It's also my very first experience with divorce. The first one is kinda fun; the second pretty much sucks.
Honestly, I feel bad for having any feelings about it at all. They're not my parents, and it's not bringing up any painful childhood memories for me. In fact, it's highlighting what a carefree childhood I had. But I was having feelings. I was having so many feelings that they threatened to spill out all over the place anytime some poor unsuspecting soul asked what I was doing for the holidays. You have to be careful about feelings, you know. They're quite messy.
But it's safe here, so let me tell you about my feelings: I miss Susan, Josh's (ex?) step-mom, and I am confused about what my relationship is to her anymore. I want her to still be in our lives, but I don't know how that works. Obviously, we will continue to have a relationship with his dad, but will that conflict with having contact with Susan? Do we have to pick, because that's not fair. We didn't break up with Susan. Also, Josh's dad has a new girlfriend. I'm not sure if that's a wise idea, not that it's any of my business at all. I've hung out with her a few times, and I really like her. She's smart and interesting. She raises goats! Yet every time I think about how much I like her, I feel like I'm betraying Susan. And then I think that I'm much too old for these tired stereotypical child-of-divorce feelings. These are not even my parents.
I simply cannot imagine going through this when I was six. I would have had the same feelings without the ability to process them. It makes me want to go back in time and give little boy Joshua a hug, which would have been inappropriate and weird and not really a very good use of a time machine.
We made our offer to host Christmas, and it was gratefully accepted. I can't speak for Josh's dad, but I imagine that he was pretty proud of his son. I was, anyway. That's one way to measure your success as a parent - when the time comes, can your kids step up and take care of you? Hosting a holiday gathering is a pretty minor thing in terms of the many things that adult children have to do for their parents. Compared to sponge baths and picking out coffins, it's downright fun. But it is something to say, hey, Dad, you've got a lot on your plate right now, let me do this one thing for you. That's what family is for.
That's really what we wanted the holiday season to be about. It would have been easy to focus on the divorce, but we decided to make it about being family. In the years to come, we don't want to refer to it as the Christmas after Dad and Susan split. We want to call it the first Christmas in Raleigh or the Christmas that it snowed four inches. Remember 2010? It was the Christmas with two trees.
1.08.2011
crazy tree person.
Christmas miracle or not, I was a little dissatisfied with my Drag Bingo tree. I mean, it was a very nice tree. Real fir, grown in the North Carolina mountains, full and thick. And it came ready-made with a terrific backstory. Why, yes, this is my Drag Bingo tree. But it wasn't even six feet tall. I'm sure that was the point. Not knowing who would end up with it, they wanted to give away a tree that someone in limited living space could still use. They didn't know that the person who would win it had very nice, high ceilings indeed.
My house is one-and-a-half stories tall. That means that there is a second floor, but it only covers half of the first floor. So the ceiling of my living room slopes up with the roof, going all the way up to a open balcony hallway upstairs. We have a lot of headroom for an awesome Christmas tree. Is it shallow of me to want one? It's okay. You can say yes.
We had planned to get a tree the day after Drag Bingo. So we did anyway. It was a terrible day for it - cold and a bit rainy. We were on our way back from the grocery store and we just decided to swing by the tree lot at the Citgo. There are multiple tree lots between my house and the grocery store, but this was the one we liked. It was held by a family farm up in Ashe County. The people were incredibly nice. I mean, I'm used to southern hospitality, but these guys were taking niceness to new levels. They offered to bring a parade of trees in under the tent so we wouldn't have to be in the weather, and then when we insisted on walking around ourselves, they offered us rain slickers.
I had been looking forward to this, I admit it. Last year, Josh did it himself. I just came home from work one day and there was a tree in my living room. I'm still not altogether used to the real tree concept. I mean, there's a tree. In the house! It looks like it's growing out of the floor, like dandelions that pop up in sidewalk cracks, except rather than spray it with poison, we put ornaments on it. It's really no wonder that it took me so long to appreciate Christmas - it's freaking weird. This year, eager to soak up as much Christmas as possible, I asked if I could go pick out a tree with him.
I picked out a tree that was the height that I wanted. It didn't look so tall, maybe like seven feet. Once I'd settled on a height that I wanted, I asked Josh to pick the right tree. He did. I confess, it's not the one I would have picked, but I'm really new at this Christmas stuff.
Once the tree had been picked, the nice people trimmed off the bottom limbs and tied it up for transport. We talked to the tree lady while the tree men were at work. Josh told her that we actually already had a tree that I had won the night before at bingo. I didn't tell her what kind of bingo, in case she disapproved. Or in case she wondered whether I was actually a man in disguise. We told her that we were going to try and give away the little tree to someone who lived in an apartment. She said that the only thing better than one Christmas tree was two. I dismissed this as the talk of a crazy tree person. We might have a sarcophagus in our hallway, but two Christmas trees? That's just silly.
Since we lived so close, they delivered the tree for us. Luckily, we had two tree bases. There is an unsung advantage in having magpie tendencies - you frequently already have what you need. Last year, we had bought a new plastic one from Lowes. Then Josh had found one of those old red and green metal ones at the thrift store, which we preferred. We'd been scowling at the plastic one all year long, since it represented wasted money at the retail store. However, it turned out to be a good thing we had it - the metal one did not fit on our big tree. I guess people back then had more sense then to buy eight-and-a-half foot Christmas trees.
Because that's what it was. They look so much smaller on the lot, out in the open air, but when you get a tree into your one-and-a-half story home, you realize how big it really is. We bit off more than we could chew with this one. The funny thing is that Josh knew how big it was. If he had his doubts, he ignored them, figuring that I knew what I was doing. That'll learn him. I'm a little worried that this massive tree will set a precedent for us. After all, in picking out an approximate tree height, I was only trying to match what we had last year. Now that we've had one oversized tree, we may find that we like them that way.
We set it up and dug the box of ornaments out of the closet. After years of ignoring Christmas decorations at yard sales, I've spent the last year paying special attention to them. Between the ones his dad gave us last year and what I managed to accumulate this year, we had a respectable showing. We also had some "filler" ornaments, ones that I'd bought retail last year when I realized we didn't have any. As we were decorating, I could tell which ones we liked best, because we put them on first. We wanted to make sure they had good visibility. It's true that there the decorations are a little widely-spaced, but that's because some doofus picked out an eight foot tree. We spent two late nights threading popcorn garlands to fill in the blanks.
I got the garland idea from my sister. A while back, when I wrote about my Christmas history, she left a comment about the kind of Christmases they had before I was born or old enough to remember. They cut their own tree down and decorated it with homemade ornaments, because they didn't have the money to spend on frivolity. I suggested making garlands to Josh, who took to it immediately with an enthusiasm that surprised me. We like it because we're being true to our roots - between my parents and his grandparents, we know a lot of dollar-stretching tricks. Yet, it felt a little weird, as if we were glorifying poverty. Plus, we were wrapping these garlands around a tree that we had spent $70 on, even after we already had a perfectly serviceable, if small, drag bingo tree. But hey, screw it, it's Christmas.
I had sort of forgotten how nice it is to have a Christmas tree around. It was the first thing that we turned on when we got home, as if it were a lamp. If I left the house for a short trip to the grocery store, I even left it on, just so I could see it in the window when I got back. I felt a sort of childish delight with it and caught myself gazing at it, seeking out my favorite ornaments. Like I said, it's not the one I would have picked at the lot, but once it was taking up half my living room, I was in love with it. Josh clearly knows what he's doing in the tree-picking department.
The giant tree wiped us out in terms of decorations, which is sort of sad, because we still had the other tree. We offered the little one to a couple of friends, but they either already had trees or didn't want one. So we had two Christmas trees. It was the Christmas of two trees. Maybe I should be worried about the kind of precedent we're setting there. Maybe that is only the first step in becoming a crazy tree person.
My house is one-and-a-half stories tall. That means that there is a second floor, but it only covers half of the first floor. So the ceiling of my living room slopes up with the roof, going all the way up to a open balcony hallway upstairs. We have a lot of headroom for an awesome Christmas tree. Is it shallow of me to want one? It's okay. You can say yes.
We had planned to get a tree the day after Drag Bingo. So we did anyway. It was a terrible day for it - cold and a bit rainy. We were on our way back from the grocery store and we just decided to swing by the tree lot at the Citgo. There are multiple tree lots between my house and the grocery store, but this was the one we liked. It was held by a family farm up in Ashe County. The people were incredibly nice. I mean, I'm used to southern hospitality, but these guys were taking niceness to new levels. They offered to bring a parade of trees in under the tent so we wouldn't have to be in the weather, and then when we insisted on walking around ourselves, they offered us rain slickers.
I had been looking forward to this, I admit it. Last year, Josh did it himself. I just came home from work one day and there was a tree in my living room. I'm still not altogether used to the real tree concept. I mean, there's a tree. In the house! It looks like it's growing out of the floor, like dandelions that pop up in sidewalk cracks, except rather than spray it with poison, we put ornaments on it. It's really no wonder that it took me so long to appreciate Christmas - it's freaking weird. This year, eager to soak up as much Christmas as possible, I asked if I could go pick out a tree with him.
I picked out a tree that was the height that I wanted. It didn't look so tall, maybe like seven feet. Once I'd settled on a height that I wanted, I asked Josh to pick the right tree. He did. I confess, it's not the one I would have picked, but I'm really new at this Christmas stuff.
Once the tree had been picked, the nice people trimmed off the bottom limbs and tied it up for transport. We talked to the tree lady while the tree men were at work. Josh told her that we actually already had a tree that I had won the night before at bingo. I didn't tell her what kind of bingo, in case she disapproved. Or in case she wondered whether I was actually a man in disguise. We told her that we were going to try and give away the little tree to someone who lived in an apartment. She said that the only thing better than one Christmas tree was two. I dismissed this as the talk of a crazy tree person. We might have a sarcophagus in our hallway, but two Christmas trees? That's just silly.
Since we lived so close, they delivered the tree for us. Luckily, we had two tree bases. There is an unsung advantage in having magpie tendencies - you frequently already have what you need. Last year, we had bought a new plastic one from Lowes. Then Josh had found one of those old red and green metal ones at the thrift store, which we preferred. We'd been scowling at the plastic one all year long, since it represented wasted money at the retail store. However, it turned out to be a good thing we had it - the metal one did not fit on our big tree. I guess people back then had more sense then to buy eight-and-a-half foot Christmas trees.
Because that's what it was. They look so much smaller on the lot, out in the open air, but when you get a tree into your one-and-a-half story home, you realize how big it really is. We bit off more than we could chew with this one. The funny thing is that Josh knew how big it was. If he had his doubts, he ignored them, figuring that I knew what I was doing. That'll learn him. I'm a little worried that this massive tree will set a precedent for us. After all, in picking out an approximate tree height, I was only trying to match what we had last year. Now that we've had one oversized tree, we may find that we like them that way.
We set it up and dug the box of ornaments out of the closet. After years of ignoring Christmas decorations at yard sales, I've spent the last year paying special attention to them. Between the ones his dad gave us last year and what I managed to accumulate this year, we had a respectable showing. We also had some "filler" ornaments, ones that I'd bought retail last year when I realized we didn't have any. As we were decorating, I could tell which ones we liked best, because we put them on first. We wanted to make sure they had good visibility. It's true that there the decorations are a little widely-spaced, but that's because some doofus picked out an eight foot tree. We spent two late nights threading popcorn garlands to fill in the blanks.
I got the garland idea from my sister. A while back, when I wrote about my Christmas history, she left a comment about the kind of Christmases they had before I was born or old enough to remember. They cut their own tree down and decorated it with homemade ornaments, because they didn't have the money to spend on frivolity. I suggested making garlands to Josh, who took to it immediately with an enthusiasm that surprised me. We like it because we're being true to our roots - between my parents and his grandparents, we know a lot of dollar-stretching tricks. Yet, it felt a little weird, as if we were glorifying poverty. Plus, we were wrapping these garlands around a tree that we had spent $70 on, even after we already had a perfectly serviceable, if small, drag bingo tree. But hey, screw it, it's Christmas.
I had sort of forgotten how nice it is to have a Christmas tree around. It was the first thing that we turned on when we got home, as if it were a lamp. If I left the house for a short trip to the grocery store, I even left it on, just so I could see it in the window when I got back. I felt a sort of childish delight with it and caught myself gazing at it, seeking out my favorite ornaments. Like I said, it's not the one I would have picked at the lot, but once it was taking up half my living room, I was in love with it. Josh clearly knows what he's doing in the tree-picking department.
The giant tree wiped us out in terms of decorations, which is sort of sad, because we still had the other tree. We offered the little one to a couple of friends, but they either already had trees or didn't want one. So we had two Christmas trees. It was the Christmas of two trees. Maybe I should be worried about the kind of precedent we're setting there. Maybe that is only the first step in becoming a crazy tree person.
1.07.2011
christmas bingo.
I suppose it all started with Drag Bingo.
There is a charity based in Durham that provides services and assistance to those living with HIV and AIDs. To raise money, they periodically hold Drag Bingo, which is pretty much what it sounds like, but I'll explain it anyway. It's bingo with drag queens. See? Pretty much what it sounds like. We all went to the Durham Armory, which had been set up with long tables. The tables had those ink stamper bottles set up at each seat. I learned that those are called "bingo daubers." You could buy hot dogs or veggie burger meals, which came with chips, a drink, and a homemade baked good.
We played bingo. The game was run by a guy in a Santa suit and another guy in a Mrs. Santa suit, who referred to herself as Mary Claus. The game was a little hard to follow, as Mr. and Mrs. Claus bantered back and forth in between calling out numbers. It led one to suspect that maybe the evening was not about bingo. I found this frustrating. You may not know this about me, but I really like bingo. And my favorite bingo of all is Christmas bingo.
When I was a kid, the local fire department used to hold a bingo Christmas party. We went because my dad was on the fire department board or maybe it was because he was just an upstanding citizen in the community. In any case, we all would meet down at the middle school. There was food, and lots of it. And then we played bingo for a couple of hours, until all the prizes, which were donated by local businesses, were gone. Seems like I won something once in a kid's only round. It was only a plastic jumbo candy cane filled with M&Ms, but winning anything was thrilling. I looked forward to that party every year. I haven't gone to that fire department party in years, and I don't even know if they still have it. The last time I went was in college. They had it at the fire department itself rather than at the middle school. It must have been just after 9/11, because they gave everyone patriotic travel coffee mugs.
So as far as I was concerned, Drag Bingo was going to be just like Small Town Fire Department Bingo. And to be honest, Mary Claus looked to be about the same size and shape of the fire chief back in my home town. After the first game, which I did not win, Mary Claus announced that our first performer was Janette. And I guess that is where drag bingo really started earning its name and differentiating itself from Fire Department Bingo. Janette, whose real name is probably something like Larry, came out and lip-synched "Santa Baby."
And that's how the evening went. We played bingo and then a man dressed as a woman came out and lip-synched. As the night went on, the performances got better and better. One of them, a HUGE person, did "Hava Nagila," so it was an interfaith celebration. The final performer did a medley of songs and managed to do a couple of jumps landing in splits. And the crowd went wild!
My more conservative readers are probably looking on all of this with more than a little disapproval. I don't pretend to understand drag. It's fun, but is it just fun? After all, this is something a little more than the football team donning short skirts during the Powderpuff game. This seems to be a lifestyle. These men like to dress up as women and dance. They're not pretending to be women, so I don't know if they want to actually be women or if they just think it's unfair that us girls get to wear all the sparkly stuff. I'm not even sure if they are all even necessarily gay. Maybe they have wives at home. Very understanding wives.
It's all very confusing. Adding to my confusion was the fact that one of the drag queens was a woman, a seventy-one-year-old woman to be precise. She just liked dressing up, too, and she didn't think the fact that she was a woman should stop her. Considering how it hadn't stopped the men, it was hard to argue with her.
But there is a lot to like about Drag Bingo. What I like most about it is how it's this elaborate game of dress-up. No one actually believes that the queens are anything more than men. Sure, they wear dresses and wigs and makeup. But they don't shave their chest hair. They don't disguise their voices. They wear four-inch heels to highlight their manly heights. And they are shaped like men, beer guts and all. It's all a little weird if you're not used to it, but you can't help but notice that they are all just having a great time. They look ridiculous, and they don't care. There, that's what I like about it. I like it when people feel free to be ridiculous because it makes them happy.
There were several more rounds of bingo where I did not win anything. About midway through, there was a raffle. We'd all filled out the back of our tickets to get in and handed them to one of the drag queens that wandered around all evening between costume changes (one of them wore four different outfits throughout the course of the evening). The raffle was for a real, live Christmas tree, donated by one of the sponsors of the evening.
It was pretty weird when they called my name. My girlfriends at the table with me went nuts.
Santa, who had taken off his wig and beard by then, carried my tree out to me. He asked where I wanted it, and I told him to put it on the table. There it sat, bundled up in netting while we played out the rest of the night's rounds of bingo. You can trust me, because I have been there: a tree is a weird thing to win. A girl asked if I needed a tree, and I told her that we had been planning to go out and get one the next day. She proclaimed it to be a Christmas miracle.
After the last performance, the one with the jumps landing in splits, we bundled ourselves up and headed out. One of the girls offered to carry my tree. I think she liked the attention. It was only about five and a half feet tall, so it fit easily in the hatchback. Driving home, I could see where they got the idea for those little tree-shaped car air fresheners.
There is a charity based in Durham that provides services and assistance to those living with HIV and AIDs. To raise money, they periodically hold Drag Bingo, which is pretty much what it sounds like, but I'll explain it anyway. It's bingo with drag queens. See? Pretty much what it sounds like. We all went to the Durham Armory, which had been set up with long tables. The tables had those ink stamper bottles set up at each seat. I learned that those are called "bingo daubers." You could buy hot dogs or veggie burger meals, which came with chips, a drink, and a homemade baked good.
We played bingo. The game was run by a guy in a Santa suit and another guy in a Mrs. Santa suit, who referred to herself as Mary Claus. The game was a little hard to follow, as Mr. and Mrs. Claus bantered back and forth in between calling out numbers. It led one to suspect that maybe the evening was not about bingo. I found this frustrating. You may not know this about me, but I really like bingo. And my favorite bingo of all is Christmas bingo.
When I was a kid, the local fire department used to hold a bingo Christmas party. We went because my dad was on the fire department board or maybe it was because he was just an upstanding citizen in the community. In any case, we all would meet down at the middle school. There was food, and lots of it. And then we played bingo for a couple of hours, until all the prizes, which were donated by local businesses, were gone. Seems like I won something once in a kid's only round. It was only a plastic jumbo candy cane filled with M&Ms, but winning anything was thrilling. I looked forward to that party every year. I haven't gone to that fire department party in years, and I don't even know if they still have it. The last time I went was in college. They had it at the fire department itself rather than at the middle school. It must have been just after 9/11, because they gave everyone patriotic travel coffee mugs.
So as far as I was concerned, Drag Bingo was going to be just like Small Town Fire Department Bingo. And to be honest, Mary Claus looked to be about the same size and shape of the fire chief back in my home town. After the first game, which I did not win, Mary Claus announced that our first performer was Janette. And I guess that is where drag bingo really started earning its name and differentiating itself from Fire Department Bingo. Janette, whose real name is probably something like Larry, came out and lip-synched "Santa Baby."
And that's how the evening went. We played bingo and then a man dressed as a woman came out and lip-synched. As the night went on, the performances got better and better. One of them, a HUGE person, did "Hava Nagila," so it was an interfaith celebration. The final performer did a medley of songs and managed to do a couple of jumps landing in splits. And the crowd went wild!
My more conservative readers are probably looking on all of this with more than a little disapproval. I don't pretend to understand drag. It's fun, but is it just fun? After all, this is something a little more than the football team donning short skirts during the Powderpuff game. This seems to be a lifestyle. These men like to dress up as women and dance. They're not pretending to be women, so I don't know if they want to actually be women or if they just think it's unfair that us girls get to wear all the sparkly stuff. I'm not even sure if they are all even necessarily gay. Maybe they have wives at home. Very understanding wives.
It's all very confusing. Adding to my confusion was the fact that one of the drag queens was a woman, a seventy-one-year-old woman to be precise. She just liked dressing up, too, and she didn't think the fact that she was a woman should stop her. Considering how it hadn't stopped the men, it was hard to argue with her.
But there is a lot to like about Drag Bingo. What I like most about it is how it's this elaborate game of dress-up. No one actually believes that the queens are anything more than men. Sure, they wear dresses and wigs and makeup. But they don't shave their chest hair. They don't disguise their voices. They wear four-inch heels to highlight their manly heights. And they are shaped like men, beer guts and all. It's all a little weird if you're not used to it, but you can't help but notice that they are all just having a great time. They look ridiculous, and they don't care. There, that's what I like about it. I like it when people feel free to be ridiculous because it makes them happy.
There were several more rounds of bingo where I did not win anything. About midway through, there was a raffle. We'd all filled out the back of our tickets to get in and handed them to one of the drag queens that wandered around all evening between costume changes (one of them wore four different outfits throughout the course of the evening). The raffle was for a real, live Christmas tree, donated by one of the sponsors of the evening.
It was pretty weird when they called my name. My girlfriends at the table with me went nuts.
Santa, who had taken off his wig and beard by then, carried my tree out to me. He asked where I wanted it, and I told him to put it on the table. There it sat, bundled up in netting while we played out the rest of the night's rounds of bingo. You can trust me, because I have been there: a tree is a weird thing to win. A girl asked if I needed a tree, and I told her that we had been planning to go out and get one the next day. She proclaimed it to be a Christmas miracle.
After the last performance, the one with the jumps landing in splits, we bundled ourselves up and headed out. One of the girls offered to carry my tree. I think she liked the attention. It was only about five and a half feet tall, so it fit easily in the hatchback. Driving home, I could see where they got the idea for those little tree-shaped car air fresheners.
12.26.2010
down upon your wretched bed.
Thing 1: Sweetums
I happened to be looking at Muppet things on Amazon one day, just like everyone else probably does from time to time. I ran across this action figure of Sweetums and was a little bit smitten. I might have shrieked with glee. Josh asked if I wanted a Sweetums action figure for Christmas and I told him absolutely not. I am, after all, a grownup.
Y'all know Sweetums, right? Big guy? Kinda raggedy? Very susceptible to lullabies?
You know, this guy!
Thing 2: The snow
For the first time in many, many years, Raleigh had a white Christmas. Which, you know, is not really a big deal. It's just a particular weather event that happens on a particular day. But people get excited, including me.
Thing 3: Merry Christmas
I happened to be looking at Muppet things on Amazon one day, just like everyone else probably does from time to time. I ran across this action figure of Sweetums and was a little bit smitten. I might have shrieked with glee. Josh asked if I wanted a Sweetums action figure for Christmas and I told him absolutely not. I am, after all, a grownup.
Y'all know Sweetums, right? Big guy? Kinda raggedy? Very susceptible to lullabies?
You know, this guy!
Thing 2: The snow
For the first time in many, many years, Raleigh had a white Christmas. Which, you know, is not really a big deal. It's just a particular weather event that happens on a particular day. But people get excited, including me.
Thing 3: Merry Christmas
12.24.2010
stuff romantic.
A friend of mine stayed a few days at my house recently. The spare bedroom is also the room where a lot of my yard sale purchases end up. My stationery collection is in there, as well as random crafting things, a collection of pictures that need to hung on the wall, and, well, just a bunch of mismatched crap. My general policy with stuff is to get it, and then figure out what to do with it later. My friend called sleeping in this room like sleeping at Grandma's house, because Grandmas have had a lifetime of collecting all manner of random crap. And that's why I like estate sales.
Now, that's a pretty funny story, and I've since adopted the name "Grandma's Room" to refer to that particular bedroom. But it's a little weird, too. I have kind of a lot of stuff. Sometimes I'm not sure what that indicates about me.
Upstairs from Grandma's room, there is a small blip of a room. It's set under the slope of the roof, and you can't stand upright in a third of the space. The last owners used it as a nursery, but it is now Josh's library. The twenty-first century called to say that books are on the way out, but Josh did not get the message. If anything, he took it as a sign of the apocalypse and decided that he needed to be prepared to be the last man standing against the tide of digitalization. He is trying to get all the books into his attic before the Germans came knocking. He probably brings home an average of ten books from a morning of yard sales, though twenty is not uncommon. He is constantly on the lookout for shelves, because most of the ones we now have are stacked two deep.
He has a library, and I have Grandma's Room. We are both comfortable in our self-made clutter. We don't necessarily understand or appreciate the other person's clutter, but we realize that to complain would be hypocritical. Even so, we can both see that the situation as it is is not sustainable. We can't keep taking on more stuff at the rate we have been. Aside from the fact that our house is only so big, we might actually want to have children someday. Sorry, Mama, no grandkids from this daughter, there's no room among the bookshelves, and besides, a kid would just break the Pyrex.
So. What to do?
I'm going to take a slight detour and talk about why I love secondhand stuff. Because I have no idea if you get it at all. Maybe some of you do, and maybe some of you think I'm capital-n Nuts. We could sit here and come up with a lot of reasons for my love affair with stuff, most of them not very flattering to me. We could call me a hoarder, an elitist, a shopaholic, a material girl, a miserly spinster (getting nasty in here). You know, it's probably a lot of those things, too. I collect like a magpie. I think that a mere glance at my living room full of spectacularly cool stuff would convince anyone that I am spectacularly cool myself. I spend hours shopping every week of the year and I work my schedule around my Saturday morning shopping frenzy. I never feel like I have too much stuff. And I will haggle anyone for fifty cents.
I started thrifting for the practicality of getting equal quality for less money, and then all that other stuff came later. Including the romantic aspect of secondhand, which is where I am now. Rather than all those nasty other terms I offered, let's be generous and call me a romantic, a Stuff Romantic. Used things come with a story. They have a past. Now, these are not necessarily exciting histories. I do have some things which probably have incredibly interesting histories. We have a dummy WWII cartridge. That's not just a find, that's a freaking artifact. We bought it from an electrician who found it in someone else's crawlspace. Even the purchasing story is more interesting than usual. However, most stories are excruciatingly boring. They are so ordinary, so everyday, like that guy who tells you everything he had to eat that day. Boring. I have some chairs in my living room that reek of the seventies (figuratively). They sat in someone's finished basement for thirty years before I bought them. That is their story - sitting in the basement for thirty years. It's not a particularly thrilling tale. It could use some pirates maybe, or at the very least some political intrigue.
Most stuff is boring. Just look around your house at all the stuff you see every day. That cup holds your toothbrush. You bought that blanket in college. Your kid gave you that magnet on the fridge. These are little, daily, unimportant things, and yet they make up the bulk of our lives. More of our existence is spent in the basement sitting in an ugly orange chair than it is with pirates. These objects are real life as we know it. And just like people, they carry their stories with them. Sometimes I ask the seller to tell me everything they can about what I'm buying: how old it is, how was it used, who owned it, any of those memories that come to mind when you see your toothbrush cup. Sometimes they volunteer that information out of nostalgia and Southern friendliness. But even if nothing is communicated, I saw the house and the people who owned it before. Later, when I see the thing in my own house, I can picture where I first saw it and how it came to be mine. I can feel the history.
Now. You think I've snapped the tether because I'm talking about magical mystical auras of past lives floating around toothbrush cups. I know that these objects are in actuality no different than the similar objects on the shelf at Kohl's. They are no different than they were decades ago when they were on the shelf at Woolworth's. However, I personally feel different when I look at them. I get a sense of that history. I know that feeling is coming from inside my own head, rather than anything the object itself is actually giving off. But you know what? That counts. Therefore, by the perception is reality principle, I have just proved that there are magical mystical auras of past lives floating around toothbrush cups.
So. That's my attempt to explain the romantic side of it. To get back to the practical aspect of it, what am I going to do with all this stuff?
Buy less, obviously. You might be surprised to find out that I do. When I was new to thrifting, I bought most everything that ever caught my fancy. It was all so cool and so cheap. But then I grew out of that, and I became more selective. Just think: those weekly entries where I describe the ridiculous amount of stuff I acquired in four short hours - that is me being selective.
That is only a partial solution, and it's not a very fun one. A real solution would be to stop going to sales at all. But I don't see that as a solution at all. It is the anorexia of solutions. I'd rather have the sensible diet and exercise of solutions, one where I can still have this hobby that I love, but I won't be found dead in my house one day, suffocated by vintage clocks. I could go to sales and then not buy anything. There is a lot of fun in just looking, and I often am excited by the things that I had the rare opportunity to even see. I don't think I could do that, though. First I would buy just one thing, then two, and then pretty soon I have a fully stocked Grandma's room.
Right now, I'm using more of a bulimia solution. I purge regularly, taking carloads of stuff to Goodwill. Some of them are going back to the very Goodwill I bought them from. Some things are easy to get rid of, like if I've already bought another thing that serves the same purpose that I like better. But sometimes something will live for a long time in Grandma's room before I have to give up on the idea of ever finding any good use for it. However, my purges are never as great or as often as my binges.
I have noticed that I find it much easier to get rid of stuff when I can give it away to someone I know. There are things I've been holding onto for years for no good reason, but if someone mentioned that they had use for that thing, I would offer it in a heartbeat. I would like to claim that I just have a very generous nature, but I'm not really into talking about my qualities here. I'd much rather use this blog for exploring my flaws in the hope that airing them out will make them easier to overcome until I'm finally a Good Person.
So I don't think of it as being generous, because I get a warm fuzzy out of giving stuff away. And if I'm doing something for the warm fuzzies, no matter if someone else is benefiting, then my motivations are selfish.
So this got me thinking. What if I expanded the circle of people who are able to receive my surplus of goods? And what if I started charging a finder's fee?
There are people who do this. There are antique dealers and consignment shops, and those have been around a long time. I see those people at yard sales. More recently, there are online dealers. The internet has opened up the market such that anyone who has some junk can sell it online. I read some of their blogs, and I recognize them as kindreds. They are people who love to treasure hunt, who really believe that secondhand stuff is way better for all kinds of financial, environmental, community, and awesomeness reasons. They write posts showing off their latest finds, and I am excited with them, just like I am when Josh shows me his new first edition Hemingway.
I have been very, very resistant to the idea of reselling. I read reseller blogs, and I know that I could do what they do. I see the exact same things at sales that they are selling. Even reading those entries makes me look at things differently at sales. I look at a pile of linens, and I'm partially looking for some new kitchen towels, but I'm also keeping half an eye out for the little ladybug brand name, because I know those are collector's items.
And that change in perspective is precisely why I've decided not to resell. Right now, I go to yard sales, and just looking through the piles and piles of stuff is a kind of labor of love. I can pick things up, admire them, file their uniqueness away in my mental filing cabinet. Then I can buy them or put them down, solely on the basis of whether I want to own them. I don't have to think about whether they are secretly valuable, or what I could possibly get for them. I just have to decide if I like them enough to pay what the seller is asking. Later, I can do research to find out the history, and if it turns out that people regularly pay $50 on eBay for them, then that is just gravy.
I don't want to start seeing stuff as commodities, rather than as stuff. If I started reselling, I would see price tags, not the past stories and potential future stories that I see now. I don't want to be like that. I get a lot of joy out of this goofy hobby.
And yet, and yet. I can't buy all the stuff that I see, and I can't keep all the stuff that I buy. I either need to find some new friends that would appreciate the kinds of gifts I've got to offer, or I need to sell some of this crap.
It is fair to say that I have an unfairly low opinion about resellers. I come in contact with them in their stores, and I see them at sales. Neither encounter makes me like them at all.
First, let's talk about their stores. I've talked about vintage stores before, and how they make me so angry. They are like a cruel joke, and they trick me every time. I look in the window, and I see a plethora of amazing old stuff: the prettiest Pyrex, the funkiest lamps, the softest faded linens, the most beautiful stationery. Then I go inside, and there is even more than I could have imagined. It's like the most amazing yard sale ever, where every table is covered in fantastic finds, rather than three piles of baby clothes covering one pretty good find. But then inevitably, I look at the price tag and my happy illusion comes crashing down. This is not a yard sale. It's a vintage store, where people are trying to sell me stuff that I could have found myself. Those aren't finds at all, because the store people put them on the table for me to see. I never buy anything at these stores, because I know I will find something just as good eventually. I refuse to pay a finder's fee.
It's the same thing as online dealers. The Pyrex on eBay is prettier than mine. But it's more expensive, and I wouldn't get the experience of finding it. Entering a couple of words into a search box is easier than digging through crusty boxes of old dishware. I earned my Pyrex. Also, if the appeal of secondhand items is that magical mystical aura of past lives, having a middleman between me and the previous owner breaks that connection. The purchasing experience seems sterile and lifeless, which colors my ownership experience. Might as well have gone to Kohl's.
So I go to their stores, and I leave angry. What about when I see them at sales? You can tell them from the casual buyers, because they have a sort of no-nonsense air about them as they poke through a sale. And then there are the scanners.
You can buy a small hand-held device that will scan a barcode and then bring up information about the item you scanned. Book resellers use them to find out how much they could possibly sell a book for, so they can decide whether the profit margin is big enough to justify the purchase of the book. I try to be generous with my feelings towards scanners, but the truth is that when I see one, I kinda want to kick them in the shins, just a little bit. For one thing, they are in the way, and I want to look at the books. Plus, they are buying books solely on a monetary basis. They might be buying books that I actually want to read, and they don't intend to read them at all. They just want to make money off of them. They are book pimps. And they are in my way.
But see, that's not fair to these people at all. This is a way that they make money. It may be their only job, or it may be a little side job that they do to have some extra cash. In all likelihood, they love books, too. Why else would you resell books unless you actually loved them? If I met someone who owned an actual, brick and mortar used book store, I would immediately assume that they were raging bibliophiles. In fact, I would instantly like that person. I would not assume that they were using books just to make money and I would never call them book pimps. For the same reason, I should not feel so cheated and angry at those who resell stuff from Grandma's room. Who would go to the trouble of accumulating this stuff if they did not have their own little love affair with it? These are the people who did not have to read the explanation about why I thrift. They already get it. I read their blogs, and I like them. I see their pictures of great finds, and I am happy for them. The fact that they then sell those finds doesn't make me like them less. It actually makes me like them more, because they are spreading the Gospel of Secondhand.
So, given the fact that I have just logically determined that my bias against resellers was completely unjustified, could I become one of them? If I imagine my potential buyers as fellow stuff romantics, then I could compare myself to someone who works at an animal shelter, rather than to a pimp. I'm just trying to find a good home for some pieces of daily human history.
I just want to say, for the benefit of my mother, that reselling is not something that I am seriously considering as a career option. I'm not going to quit my software job and hunt Pyrex full time (but, oh man, doesn't that sound really awesome?). It's just something that I've been thinking about lately, and when I think about something, I usually end up writing about it. Honestly, the thought of dealing with the shipping aspect of it sort of makes me all tired inside. But I dunno, maybe on a small level, it is the kind of solution I'm looking for - one where I get to keep doing the goofy hobby that I love.
Now, that's a pretty funny story, and I've since adopted the name "Grandma's Room" to refer to that particular bedroom. But it's a little weird, too. I have kind of a lot of stuff. Sometimes I'm not sure what that indicates about me.
Upstairs from Grandma's room, there is a small blip of a room. It's set under the slope of the roof, and you can't stand upright in a third of the space. The last owners used it as a nursery, but it is now Josh's library. The twenty-first century called to say that books are on the way out, but Josh did not get the message. If anything, he took it as a sign of the apocalypse and decided that he needed to be prepared to be the last man standing against the tide of digitalization. He is trying to get all the books into his attic before the Germans came knocking. He probably brings home an average of ten books from a morning of yard sales, though twenty is not uncommon. He is constantly on the lookout for shelves, because most of the ones we now have are stacked two deep.
He has a library, and I have Grandma's Room. We are both comfortable in our self-made clutter. We don't necessarily understand or appreciate the other person's clutter, but we realize that to complain would be hypocritical. Even so, we can both see that the situation as it is is not sustainable. We can't keep taking on more stuff at the rate we have been. Aside from the fact that our house is only so big, we might actually want to have children someday. Sorry, Mama, no grandkids from this daughter, there's no room among the bookshelves, and besides, a kid would just break the Pyrex.
So. What to do?
I'm going to take a slight detour and talk about why I love secondhand stuff. Because I have no idea if you get it at all. Maybe some of you do, and maybe some of you think I'm capital-n Nuts. We could sit here and come up with a lot of reasons for my love affair with stuff, most of them not very flattering to me. We could call me a hoarder, an elitist, a shopaholic, a material girl, a miserly spinster (getting nasty in here). You know, it's probably a lot of those things, too. I collect like a magpie. I think that a mere glance at my living room full of spectacularly cool stuff would convince anyone that I am spectacularly cool myself. I spend hours shopping every week of the year and I work my schedule around my Saturday morning shopping frenzy. I never feel like I have too much stuff. And I will haggle anyone for fifty cents.
I started thrifting for the practicality of getting equal quality for less money, and then all that other stuff came later. Including the romantic aspect of secondhand, which is where I am now. Rather than all those nasty other terms I offered, let's be generous and call me a romantic, a Stuff Romantic. Used things come with a story. They have a past. Now, these are not necessarily exciting histories. I do have some things which probably have incredibly interesting histories. We have a dummy WWII cartridge. That's not just a find, that's a freaking artifact. We bought it from an electrician who found it in someone else's crawlspace. Even the purchasing story is more interesting than usual. However, most stories are excruciatingly boring. They are so ordinary, so everyday, like that guy who tells you everything he had to eat that day. Boring. I have some chairs in my living room that reek of the seventies (figuratively). They sat in someone's finished basement for thirty years before I bought them. That is their story - sitting in the basement for thirty years. It's not a particularly thrilling tale. It could use some pirates maybe, or at the very least some political intrigue.
Most stuff is boring. Just look around your house at all the stuff you see every day. That cup holds your toothbrush. You bought that blanket in college. Your kid gave you that magnet on the fridge. These are little, daily, unimportant things, and yet they make up the bulk of our lives. More of our existence is spent in the basement sitting in an ugly orange chair than it is with pirates. These objects are real life as we know it. And just like people, they carry their stories with them. Sometimes I ask the seller to tell me everything they can about what I'm buying: how old it is, how was it used, who owned it, any of those memories that come to mind when you see your toothbrush cup. Sometimes they volunteer that information out of nostalgia and Southern friendliness. But even if nothing is communicated, I saw the house and the people who owned it before. Later, when I see the thing in my own house, I can picture where I first saw it and how it came to be mine. I can feel the history.
Now. You think I've snapped the tether because I'm talking about magical mystical auras of past lives floating around toothbrush cups. I know that these objects are in actuality no different than the similar objects on the shelf at Kohl's. They are no different than they were decades ago when they were on the shelf at Woolworth's. However, I personally feel different when I look at them. I get a sense of that history. I know that feeling is coming from inside my own head, rather than anything the object itself is actually giving off. But you know what? That counts. Therefore, by the perception is reality principle, I have just proved that there are magical mystical auras of past lives floating around toothbrush cups.
So. That's my attempt to explain the romantic side of it. To get back to the practical aspect of it, what am I going to do with all this stuff?
Buy less, obviously. You might be surprised to find out that I do. When I was new to thrifting, I bought most everything that ever caught my fancy. It was all so cool and so cheap. But then I grew out of that, and I became more selective. Just think: those weekly entries where I describe the ridiculous amount of stuff I acquired in four short hours - that is me being selective.
That is only a partial solution, and it's not a very fun one. A real solution would be to stop going to sales at all. But I don't see that as a solution at all. It is the anorexia of solutions. I'd rather have the sensible diet and exercise of solutions, one where I can still have this hobby that I love, but I won't be found dead in my house one day, suffocated by vintage clocks. I could go to sales and then not buy anything. There is a lot of fun in just looking, and I often am excited by the things that I had the rare opportunity to even see. I don't think I could do that, though. First I would buy just one thing, then two, and then pretty soon I have a fully stocked Grandma's room.
Right now, I'm using more of a bulimia solution. I purge regularly, taking carloads of stuff to Goodwill. Some of them are going back to the very Goodwill I bought them from. Some things are easy to get rid of, like if I've already bought another thing that serves the same purpose that I like better. But sometimes something will live for a long time in Grandma's room before I have to give up on the idea of ever finding any good use for it. However, my purges are never as great or as often as my binges.
I have noticed that I find it much easier to get rid of stuff when I can give it away to someone I know. There are things I've been holding onto for years for no good reason, but if someone mentioned that they had use for that thing, I would offer it in a heartbeat. I would like to claim that I just have a very generous nature, but I'm not really into talking about my qualities here. I'd much rather use this blog for exploring my flaws in the hope that airing them out will make them easier to overcome until I'm finally a Good Person.
So I don't think of it as being generous, because I get a warm fuzzy out of giving stuff away. And if I'm doing something for the warm fuzzies, no matter if someone else is benefiting, then my motivations are selfish.
So this got me thinking. What if I expanded the circle of people who are able to receive my surplus of goods? And what if I started charging a finder's fee?
There are people who do this. There are antique dealers and consignment shops, and those have been around a long time. I see those people at yard sales. More recently, there are online dealers. The internet has opened up the market such that anyone who has some junk can sell it online. I read some of their blogs, and I recognize them as kindreds. They are people who love to treasure hunt, who really believe that secondhand stuff is way better for all kinds of financial, environmental, community, and awesomeness reasons. They write posts showing off their latest finds, and I am excited with them, just like I am when Josh shows me his new first edition Hemingway.
I have been very, very resistant to the idea of reselling. I read reseller blogs, and I know that I could do what they do. I see the exact same things at sales that they are selling. Even reading those entries makes me look at things differently at sales. I look at a pile of linens, and I'm partially looking for some new kitchen towels, but I'm also keeping half an eye out for the little ladybug brand name, because I know those are collector's items.
And that change in perspective is precisely why I've decided not to resell. Right now, I go to yard sales, and just looking through the piles and piles of stuff is a kind of labor of love. I can pick things up, admire them, file their uniqueness away in my mental filing cabinet. Then I can buy them or put them down, solely on the basis of whether I want to own them. I don't have to think about whether they are secretly valuable, or what I could possibly get for them. I just have to decide if I like them enough to pay what the seller is asking. Later, I can do research to find out the history, and if it turns out that people regularly pay $50 on eBay for them, then that is just gravy.
I don't want to start seeing stuff as commodities, rather than as stuff. If I started reselling, I would see price tags, not the past stories and potential future stories that I see now. I don't want to be like that. I get a lot of joy out of this goofy hobby.
And yet, and yet. I can't buy all the stuff that I see, and I can't keep all the stuff that I buy. I either need to find some new friends that would appreciate the kinds of gifts I've got to offer, or I need to sell some of this crap.
It is fair to say that I have an unfairly low opinion about resellers. I come in contact with them in their stores, and I see them at sales. Neither encounter makes me like them at all.
First, let's talk about their stores. I've talked about vintage stores before, and how they make me so angry. They are like a cruel joke, and they trick me every time. I look in the window, and I see a plethora of amazing old stuff: the prettiest Pyrex, the funkiest lamps, the softest faded linens, the most beautiful stationery. Then I go inside, and there is even more than I could have imagined. It's like the most amazing yard sale ever, where every table is covered in fantastic finds, rather than three piles of baby clothes covering one pretty good find. But then inevitably, I look at the price tag and my happy illusion comes crashing down. This is not a yard sale. It's a vintage store, where people are trying to sell me stuff that I could have found myself. Those aren't finds at all, because the store people put them on the table for me to see. I never buy anything at these stores, because I know I will find something just as good eventually. I refuse to pay a finder's fee.
It's the same thing as online dealers. The Pyrex on eBay is prettier than mine. But it's more expensive, and I wouldn't get the experience of finding it. Entering a couple of words into a search box is easier than digging through crusty boxes of old dishware. I earned my Pyrex. Also, if the appeal of secondhand items is that magical mystical aura of past lives, having a middleman between me and the previous owner breaks that connection. The purchasing experience seems sterile and lifeless, which colors my ownership experience. Might as well have gone to Kohl's.
So I go to their stores, and I leave angry. What about when I see them at sales? You can tell them from the casual buyers, because they have a sort of no-nonsense air about them as they poke through a sale. And then there are the scanners.
You can buy a small hand-held device that will scan a barcode and then bring up information about the item you scanned. Book resellers use them to find out how much they could possibly sell a book for, so they can decide whether the profit margin is big enough to justify the purchase of the book. I try to be generous with my feelings towards scanners, but the truth is that when I see one, I kinda want to kick them in the shins, just a little bit. For one thing, they are in the way, and I want to look at the books. Plus, they are buying books solely on a monetary basis. They might be buying books that I actually want to read, and they don't intend to read them at all. They just want to make money off of them. They are book pimps. And they are in my way.
But see, that's not fair to these people at all. This is a way that they make money. It may be their only job, or it may be a little side job that they do to have some extra cash. In all likelihood, they love books, too. Why else would you resell books unless you actually loved them? If I met someone who owned an actual, brick and mortar used book store, I would immediately assume that they were raging bibliophiles. In fact, I would instantly like that person. I would not assume that they were using books just to make money and I would never call them book pimps. For the same reason, I should not feel so cheated and angry at those who resell stuff from Grandma's room. Who would go to the trouble of accumulating this stuff if they did not have their own little love affair with it? These are the people who did not have to read the explanation about why I thrift. They already get it. I read their blogs, and I like them. I see their pictures of great finds, and I am happy for them. The fact that they then sell those finds doesn't make me like them less. It actually makes me like them more, because they are spreading the Gospel of Secondhand.
So, given the fact that I have just logically determined that my bias against resellers was completely unjustified, could I become one of them? If I imagine my potential buyers as fellow stuff romantics, then I could compare myself to someone who works at an animal shelter, rather than to a pimp. I'm just trying to find a good home for some pieces of daily human history.
I just want to say, for the benefit of my mother, that reselling is not something that I am seriously considering as a career option. I'm not going to quit my software job and hunt Pyrex full time (but, oh man, doesn't that sound really awesome?). It's just something that I've been thinking about lately, and when I think about something, I usually end up writing about it. Honestly, the thought of dealing with the shipping aspect of it sort of makes me all tired inside. But I dunno, maybe on a small level, it is the kind of solution I'm looking for - one where I get to keep doing the goofy hobby that I love.
12.23.2010
there are llamas.
There is a mansion near my house. I don't know what else to call it. Really freaking huge house just doesn't seem to cover it. It's such a really freaking huge house that it needs another word, and that word is mansion. It's beautiful and sits on a huge parcel of land. If not for the interstate right next to it and the airport two miles away, it would be a dream house.
Here, let me just show you.
Thank you, Google, for making it easier to spy on our neighbors!
Anyway, I pass by this house every day because it is in between my house and pretty much everything else. The first couple of times I saw it, I was struck anew in its vastness and the implied vastness of the bank accounts of the people who lived there. But after a while, even this giant mansion became just more scenery on the way home.
Next to the house, on that same piece of prime real estate, there is a barn-like structure. Here, I'll show you again.
There is a nice grassy paddock in front of the barn, where livestock might graze and watch the planes go over. In fact, livestock do exactly that. The barn and paddock are partially obscured from the view of the highway, which is as close as I'll ever get to such a house, but many times I saw animals there. With that kind of setup, anyone would assume horses, and the animals that I briefly saw in between the trees as I was driving by were roughly the right size and shape of a horse.
However.
One day, I saw an animal in profile. It could've been a horse, but it was kinda shaggy. Also, its neck was a bit long. Those people, those mind-numbingly rich people, had llamas. One can only assume that they buy the very finest llama food. Perhaps they served it in stemmed crystal, like those old Fancy Feast commercials.
For you to relate to this whole story at all, you need to think that llamas are funny. Because they are. Some things are just funny, like penguins and squid and llamas. They even have a funny name, with two Ls at the front. Funny! Also, they have a funny shape and a goofy face and they are shaggy.
I was really excited to find that I lived so close to llamas, even if I would never ever have any contact with them, seeing as how they were the wealthiest llamas in town. I told Josh all about the llamas, expecting to see an enthusiastic response.
Instead, what I got was doubt. He didn't believe that there were llamas. He thought I was mistaken, that I just wanted very badly to see llamas and so I imagined them. He thinks that I am a crazy person who just sees llamas everywhere. Rather than focus on his doubt, I should note that he didn't leave me, citing llama-based hysteria.
Of course, his reaction only made me increase my efforts to see the llamas. Every single time I drove by, I rubbernecked to catch a glimpse of them. A lot of times, they weren't out, or they weren't turned the right way to really show off their llama-ness. So convinced was Josh that there were no llamas, and so fleeting and few were my sightings, that I began to think that maybe I was a crazy person who just sees llamas everywhere. But then I would see that shaggy not-horse again, and I would be revived in my faith.
I considered how to get photographic evidence of the existence of the rich llamas. I could park down the road and walk back up the street, safely on the grass. Would that yield a good enough picture, even across the way and through the trees? I could conceivably drive up to the mansion and ask, but I was intimidated by the obvious wealth of the people. Even if they were the kind of people who had llamas, they might still not like strangers coming up their driveway. Besides, it was gated. I could just imagine using the intercom outside the gate, talking to the butler, saying "Hi, I live down the road and I just want to know if you have any llamas?"
The llamas were a point of contention in my relationship for a year. That is a long time to argue about whether or not there are llamas, let me tell you.
One day, I came home from work and Josh was waiting for me, bursting to tell me something. He told me that he had talked to our next-door neighbor that day, who knew the people who lived in the mansion. She confirmed that there were llamas. Then I think she was confused by Josh's excited reaction. I guess most people don't think llamas are funny, nor do they get into arguments about llamas that span months.
The point is, there are llamas.
Here, let me just show you.
Thank you, Google, for making it easier to spy on our neighbors!
Anyway, I pass by this house every day because it is in between my house and pretty much everything else. The first couple of times I saw it, I was struck anew in its vastness and the implied vastness of the bank accounts of the people who lived there. But after a while, even this giant mansion became just more scenery on the way home.
Next to the house, on that same piece of prime real estate, there is a barn-like structure. Here, I'll show you again.
There is a nice grassy paddock in front of the barn, where livestock might graze and watch the planes go over. In fact, livestock do exactly that. The barn and paddock are partially obscured from the view of the highway, which is as close as I'll ever get to such a house, but many times I saw animals there. With that kind of setup, anyone would assume horses, and the animals that I briefly saw in between the trees as I was driving by were roughly the right size and shape of a horse.
However.
One day, I saw an animal in profile. It could've been a horse, but it was kinda shaggy. Also, its neck was a bit long. Those people, those mind-numbingly rich people, had llamas. One can only assume that they buy the very finest llama food. Perhaps they served it in stemmed crystal, like those old Fancy Feast commercials.
For you to relate to this whole story at all, you need to think that llamas are funny. Because they are. Some things are just funny, like penguins and squid and llamas. They even have a funny name, with two Ls at the front. Funny! Also, they have a funny shape and a goofy face and they are shaggy.
I was really excited to find that I lived so close to llamas, even if I would never ever have any contact with them, seeing as how they were the wealthiest llamas in town. I told Josh all about the llamas, expecting to see an enthusiastic response.
Instead, what I got was doubt. He didn't believe that there were llamas. He thought I was mistaken, that I just wanted very badly to see llamas and so I imagined them. He thinks that I am a crazy person who just sees llamas everywhere. Rather than focus on his doubt, I should note that he didn't leave me, citing llama-based hysteria.
Of course, his reaction only made me increase my efforts to see the llamas. Every single time I drove by, I rubbernecked to catch a glimpse of them. A lot of times, they weren't out, or they weren't turned the right way to really show off their llama-ness. So convinced was Josh that there were no llamas, and so fleeting and few were my sightings, that I began to think that maybe I was a crazy person who just sees llamas everywhere. But then I would see that shaggy not-horse again, and I would be revived in my faith.
I considered how to get photographic evidence of the existence of the rich llamas. I could park down the road and walk back up the street, safely on the grass. Would that yield a good enough picture, even across the way and through the trees? I could conceivably drive up to the mansion and ask, but I was intimidated by the obvious wealth of the people. Even if they were the kind of people who had llamas, they might still not like strangers coming up their driveway. Besides, it was gated. I could just imagine using the intercom outside the gate, talking to the butler, saying "Hi, I live down the road and I just want to know if you have any llamas?"
The llamas were a point of contention in my relationship for a year. That is a long time to argue about whether or not there are llamas, let me tell you.
One day, I came home from work and Josh was waiting for me, bursting to tell me something. He told me that he had talked to our next-door neighbor that day, who knew the people who lived in the mansion. She confirmed that there were llamas. Then I think she was confused by Josh's excited reaction. I guess most people don't think llamas are funny, nor do they get into arguments about llamas that span months.
The point is, there are llamas.
12.22.2010
tv service.
When I answered the phone, it was Time Warner, which goes to show that if you see an unfamiliar number on your caller ID, you should just let it go to voicemail. But heck, I'd answered, so I might as well talk to the lady. I was a little worried that it might be about a billing problem, but no, it was a sales call.
She told me they were having some special deals because it was the end of the year. There were some clickety noises in the background as she called up my account. Lo and behold, she found that I only had internet service with them. This seems like a business opportunity. Here is this lady, who has paid her bill faithfully for several years now. Perhaps she would also be interested in some cable TV and internet phone?
"What are you doing for phone and TV service right now, ma'am?"
"We use cell phones and don't have TV service." This is not entirely true. We have Vonage, but we are getting rid of it as soon as our required two year contract is over. Then we will use only cell phones.
"Do you own a TV?"
"Yes." Oh yes, it was state of the art back in 1995. Twenty-six inches, hoo boy.
"But you don't have any TV service."
"Right."
"What do y'all do?"
Ugh, that irritates me so much. I got similar disbelief when I moved into the house and didn't sign up for cable.
"I cook, I read books, and we do have movies that we watch on our TV." Here again, I sorta was not quite honest with the Time Warner lady. What I said is true, but it was incomplete. See, we have a Roku and a Netflix account. Frankly, that is all the TV that I want. Netflix has obviously put a lot of work into their streaming service. The selection is enormous, and it's searchable from the TV interface. Basically, I have a huge selection of things to watch, and I can watch them without commercials anytime I want. That is worth $15 a month to me. I happily pay it to Netflix, a company that seems to be efficiently run, has innovative ideas and good customer service. Time Warner? They once sent the police to my doorstep because they didn't have my address right.
"Well, ma'am, you'll find that there are a lot of educational programs on now. We have the Science channel, and there is a Smithsonian channel as well. It's not all reality TV."
Ah, she's giving me the spiel reserved for concerned parents. You know, I've seen educational programming, and I'm never very impressed because it's so sensationalized. They cut out the information and replace it with invented drama. I'm sure there is good educational programming out there. It's probably on Netflix, though. But I didn't say all that, just like I didn't ask the lady how much more she might be able to get done in her life if she didn't have TV service.
"I'm not interested in getting any TV service at all."
Click. She hung up on me. I guess I'm a lost cause.
She told me they were having some special deals because it was the end of the year. There were some clickety noises in the background as she called up my account. Lo and behold, she found that I only had internet service with them. This seems like a business opportunity. Here is this lady, who has paid her bill faithfully for several years now. Perhaps she would also be interested in some cable TV and internet phone?
"What are you doing for phone and TV service right now, ma'am?"
"We use cell phones and don't have TV service." This is not entirely true. We have Vonage, but we are getting rid of it as soon as our required two year contract is over. Then we will use only cell phones.
"Do you own a TV?"
"Yes." Oh yes, it was state of the art back in 1995. Twenty-six inches, hoo boy.
"But you don't have any TV service."
"Right."
"What do y'all do?"
Ugh, that irritates me so much. I got similar disbelief when I moved into the house and didn't sign up for cable.
"I cook, I read books, and we do have movies that we watch on our TV." Here again, I sorta was not quite honest with the Time Warner lady. What I said is true, but it was incomplete. See, we have a Roku and a Netflix account. Frankly, that is all the TV that I want. Netflix has obviously put a lot of work into their streaming service. The selection is enormous, and it's searchable from the TV interface. Basically, I have a huge selection of things to watch, and I can watch them without commercials anytime I want. That is worth $15 a month to me. I happily pay it to Netflix, a company that seems to be efficiently run, has innovative ideas and good customer service. Time Warner? They once sent the police to my doorstep because they didn't have my address right.
"Well, ma'am, you'll find that there are a lot of educational programs on now. We have the Science channel, and there is a Smithsonian channel as well. It's not all reality TV."
Ah, she's giving me the spiel reserved for concerned parents. You know, I've seen educational programming, and I'm never very impressed because it's so sensationalized. They cut out the information and replace it with invented drama. I'm sure there is good educational programming out there. It's probably on Netflix, though. But I didn't say all that, just like I didn't ask the lady how much more she might be able to get done in her life if she didn't have TV service.
"I'm not interested in getting any TV service at all."
Click. She hung up on me. I guess I'm a lost cause.
12.16.2010
remember snow.
During my childhood, the Tarheel blue skies of North Carolina forgot how to snow. I lived in the foothills, though people east of Hickory would say that I lived in the mountains. When Josh would introduce me to his friends that grew up with him in Winston-Salem, he would tell them that I was from the mountains. I would correct him every single time, because I did not grow up in the mountains. I grew up in the foothills. Then I realized that he was just making fun of me, because moutain people are to be made fun of. Well, he's the one dating the mountain woman.
Anyway, even in the foothills, it should snow. It should snow several times in the course of a winter, and at least one time, there should be enough accumulation to get us out of school for three days or more. That shouldn't be too much to ask for, not in the foothills. But there was no snow. The TV weatherman on WBTV, Eric something-or-other, would promise winter weather events, but it would just be cold. The closest thing we got to snow was rumors. This being my formative years, I came to be skeptical of snow. Sure, the forecast might say it was coming, but I knew better. I would have to get up and go to school just like every other day.
We had some family pictures around the house from when I was very small. There was clearly a great big snow, and my brothers built an igloo. I was little and cute in my mismatched hand-me-down winter gear, oblivious to the years of snow deprivation ahead of me. I don't remember that actual snow, I've only seen the pictures. As far as my memory was concerned, it had never snowed in the foothills of North Carolina. Seems like we had a couple of ice storms. There was one in particular where my mom didn't come home until really late because she'd gotten stuck somewhere after her mail route. I don't remember the specifics of it, though I do remember my sister yelling at me for laughing at a TV show when our mother was surely dead in a ditch.
I got more than my fill of snow in college in Boone, because, as anyone with any actual knowledge of North Carolina geography can tell you, Boone is in the mountains. To get to Boone from my hometown, you had to climb a mountain. One thing I learned at college was that I pretty much hate winter. The campus at Appalachian is the kind where the walk to class is actually uphill both ways. When I left town for the last time, I was trying to get away from winter. Every time I hear on the news that the skies over Boone have dumped another foot of snow on the students walking to class, I cackle inside. Suckers.
It must have been while I was at school, but the skies over the rest of North Carolina must have remembered about snow. It snows now even in Raleigh, which is definitely getting to be flatlands. A couple of weekends ago, I looked at the afternoon sky and thought it looked like snow. You know, sort of gray without being dark. I thought it was weird, because my childhood trained me to not even really believe in snow. Even when it started coming down, I didn't think it would stick. But it did - two or three inches. We stayed home in the warm, venturing outside only to walk around the neighborhood holding hands. Then it all melted away the next day. This is the kind of snow that I can get behind. As long as I don't have to go anywhere and it's all gone the next day, I am A-OK with snow.
Yesterday, a coworker said he needed to get snow groceries, which means milk and bread. Why milk and bread? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows anymore, they just know that's what they're supposed to get. It was probably all started years ago by the Wheat and Dairy Council. His comment was the first I'd heard of any snow, because I don't pay a bit of attention to the weather reports. I scoffed. Later, my boss sent out an email tellings us that the office would go by the Wake County Public Schools' ruling in terms of delays or closing. People left the office yesterday evening saying "See you Friday!" Still, I would not allow myself to hope. Don't they know? It doesn't snow in North Carolina.
I woke up this morning at 7 AM, and there was a fine white dusting on the ground. I used my phone to check the school closings without leaving my bed. Half an hour later, I got an email from my boss saying that the office was closed, and still I was in bed. Wohoo! Snow day!
Of course, snow days aren't the same as they were when I was a kid, or rather as they would have been, had there been any snow days. But I slept a little later before going downstairs, making some coffee, and then logging onto my computer to work from home in my pajamas. I can play my music without bothering anyone, and I can pause to admire the Christmas tree. It is not the snow day I would have dreamed of when I was a kid when I still had hope for snow, but I've got to admit, it's pretty dang nice.
Anyway, even in the foothills, it should snow. It should snow several times in the course of a winter, and at least one time, there should be enough accumulation to get us out of school for three days or more. That shouldn't be too much to ask for, not in the foothills. But there was no snow. The TV weatherman on WBTV, Eric something-or-other, would promise winter weather events, but it would just be cold. The closest thing we got to snow was rumors. This being my formative years, I came to be skeptical of snow. Sure, the forecast might say it was coming, but I knew better. I would have to get up and go to school just like every other day.
We had some family pictures around the house from when I was very small. There was clearly a great big snow, and my brothers built an igloo. I was little and cute in my mismatched hand-me-down winter gear, oblivious to the years of snow deprivation ahead of me. I don't remember that actual snow, I've only seen the pictures. As far as my memory was concerned, it had never snowed in the foothills of North Carolina. Seems like we had a couple of ice storms. There was one in particular where my mom didn't come home until really late because she'd gotten stuck somewhere after her mail route. I don't remember the specifics of it, though I do remember my sister yelling at me for laughing at a TV show when our mother was surely dead in a ditch.
I got more than my fill of snow in college in Boone, because, as anyone with any actual knowledge of North Carolina geography can tell you, Boone is in the mountains. To get to Boone from my hometown, you had to climb a mountain. One thing I learned at college was that I pretty much hate winter. The campus at Appalachian is the kind where the walk to class is actually uphill both ways. When I left town for the last time, I was trying to get away from winter. Every time I hear on the news that the skies over Boone have dumped another foot of snow on the students walking to class, I cackle inside. Suckers.
It must have been while I was at school, but the skies over the rest of North Carolina must have remembered about snow. It snows now even in Raleigh, which is definitely getting to be flatlands. A couple of weekends ago, I looked at the afternoon sky and thought it looked like snow. You know, sort of gray without being dark. I thought it was weird, because my childhood trained me to not even really believe in snow. Even when it started coming down, I didn't think it would stick. But it did - two or three inches. We stayed home in the warm, venturing outside only to walk around the neighborhood holding hands. Then it all melted away the next day. This is the kind of snow that I can get behind. As long as I don't have to go anywhere and it's all gone the next day, I am A-OK with snow.
Yesterday, a coworker said he needed to get snow groceries, which means milk and bread. Why milk and bread? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows anymore, they just know that's what they're supposed to get. It was probably all started years ago by the Wheat and Dairy Council. His comment was the first I'd heard of any snow, because I don't pay a bit of attention to the weather reports. I scoffed. Later, my boss sent out an email tellings us that the office would go by the Wake County Public Schools' ruling in terms of delays or closing. People left the office yesterday evening saying "See you Friday!" Still, I would not allow myself to hope. Don't they know? It doesn't snow in North Carolina.
I woke up this morning at 7 AM, and there was a fine white dusting on the ground. I used my phone to check the school closings without leaving my bed. Half an hour later, I got an email from my boss saying that the office was closed, and still I was in bed. Wohoo! Snow day!
Of course, snow days aren't the same as they were when I was a kid, or rather as they would have been, had there been any snow days. But I slept a little later before going downstairs, making some coffee, and then logging onto my computer to work from home in my pajamas. I can play my music without bothering anyone, and I can pause to admire the Christmas tree. It is not the snow day I would have dreamed of when I was a kid when I still had hope for snow, but I've got to admit, it's pretty dang nice.
12.10.2010
tradition!
I'm no good at Christmas, and I've known it for a long time. Once, in middle school, we were going around the classroom on the first day back from Christmas vacation, telling what we did over the holiday. I shrugged and said "My family isn't big on Christmas."
"What are you, Jewish?" some other kid asked.
I knew that we weren't Jewish, but I didn't know why the other kids seemed to get so much more out of the year's biggest holiday than I did. I just figured we were sort of apathetic. We were low-key people in general, so if this one holiday failed to impress us the way it did the rest of the country, that wasn't entirely out of line with our characters.
I was wrong, though. It was a religious thing after all. Back before I was born, my family was part of a denomination of Christianity that was...well, let's call it restrictive. They didn't celebrate Christmas with presents and Santa. I actually don't know how they celebrated it. Probably with prayer and sitting quietly. Eventually, my folks got out of that church and became Methodists, who are much more lenient about things like reindeer and decorated trees and stockings. However, our family was already pretty established by that time and had no holiday traditions. So we had a tree and we got presents and we ate a big meal, but that was it. It was like my parents had read an encyclopedia entry about American Christmas traditions and then tried to have a holiday based on that.
I have come to believe that it is these traditions that are key to what everyone else loves about Christmas. So many of these traditions are shared, as if everyone in the whole country had actually celebrated it in the same house. So one kid might talk about going to his grandma's, and all the other kids are basking in the glow of the memories of seeing their own grandmas. But then there are individual family traditions. The same kid then talks about having to sit and wait on the stairs, shivering with anticipation, presents so close he could smell them, waiting for his parents to make themselves coffee before he and his siblings were unleashed upon the tree. And all the other kids are thinking about their own family quirks, waiting just as anxiously for their turn to share them with the rest of the class.
And I never really got all that. I didn't feel deprived, because I didn't understand what those other kids had that I didn't. I still got presents, we still had a tree. We didn't do stockings, though I tried once. I hung up some old socks on the mantle and I put candy in them. The candy all melted when we used the fireplace, ruining the socks and my interest in stockings. Even without stockings, it seemed like we had the same basic holiday structure as everyone else. So why wasn't I as excited as everyone else? The idea of a missing set of family traditions never occurred to me.
Through the magic of boyfriends, I have latched on to the traditions of other families. I went to Christmas at my ex-boyfriend's grandparents' house for several years. It seemed like a pretty standard gathering. We went, we ate, we chatted with aunts and uncles and cousins, we opened presents. The last year I went, his mom gave me my own stocking. It had a scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas on it, and when you pressed a button, it played music. I was very touched, and not just because it looked expensive. I have no idea whatever happened to that stocking. Maybe they lucked out and his next girlfriend liked Snoopy, too.
I've been doing Christmas with Josh's family for four years now. Actually, the first year, I had to invite myself. It had gotten to be December without him mentioning anything about holiday plans, when I finally asked him whether I was welcome wherever he was going. He was surprised. He hadn't asked because he'd figured I had my own family thing to go to. I should've explained to him that I rely on boyfriends for my Christmases.
His parents are divorced, which adds a whole level of complication that I never imagined in my naive and limited understanding of what other people did at Christmas. We go to his dad's for Christmas Eve, where we eat the most amazing steak and seafood dinner and watch classic holiday movies on repeat. We have beer before dinner, wine during dinner, port or cognac with dessert, followed by spiked coffee or eggnog. By the time Clarence is getting his wings, we all feel pretty good about the world.
The next morning, we go to Josh's mom's house. Or maybe his aunt's or his other aunt's or his grandmother - it doesn't matter, they all live within a square mile of each other. They have Christmas breakfast with oyster stew. All those years, I wondered what I might be missing about Christmas, and it was oyster stew. After breakfast, we sit in the living room while various family members play music for everyone. One guy plays the accordian, there are a couple of pianists, and finally three violinists and a cellist. There is an impressive amount of musical ability in that family. I would feel bad about my complete lack thereof - I rely on boyfriends for that, too - if not for his grandmother, who can't play a lick either. She just sits and looks proud enough to burst. Later, we walk back over to his mom's house for presents. There was a stocking for me last year, a spare one they had - the visitor stocking, I suppose.
I have always felt welcome at these gatherings. Everyone has been wonderfully sweet, they give me gifts, they feed me food, they ply me with alcohol. And yet, I feel like an outsider. Even as I start to understand the routine of it, I have no emotional attachment to these traditions. Perhaps that will come with time - in twenty years I may really look forward to that oyster stew. But for now, I still feel like a kid listening to how everyone else spent their Christmas vacation. I just don't get it.
Last year was the first where I was really interested in doing anything at all on my own for Christmas. After all, I have a house now. I have roots, permanence! Therefore, I need, uh, decorations. So I thought about a tree. In the apartment, I'd sort of half-heartedly put ornaments on my unicycle turned upside-down. I was going for eccentric, but I think it was mostly pathetic. A real house deserves a real tree, maybe one right in front of the living room window.
Also: stockings. I'm not sure what got into my head, but I saw some handmade stockings online and I decided that I was going to make some. If I'd thought it through, I would have realized that I'm a crappy seamstress and I don't even really understand about stockings anyway. But I paid a quarter for a secondhand stocking to use as a pattern, I bought the material and some felt, and I spent two weeks worth of evenings sewing and stitching. There was some unstitching and ripping, too. I attached felt letters that spelled out our names and embroidered greenery garlands and snowflakes. The stockings don't play music and they look...homemade, but I'm quite proud of them.
Once they were all done, I tried to remember what I'd seen Josh pull out of his stocking at his mom's house. It seemed to be small toys, candy, and underwear. So I bought some small things and informed Josh that he was responsible for buying me small things. He thanked me for the heads up.
After I finished the stockings, I hung them up on the mantle. Then I put the things that I bought into Josh's and proudly showed him the bulging homemade sock. It was then that I learned something that probably does appear in the encyclopedia entry about American Christmas traditions - you don't stuff the stockings until Christmas Eve, because Santa takes all the credit. I don't care about Santa, and I don't think I ever will, and Josh knows that. So he gave me a better reason: little children cannot be trusted not to look in their stockings. He then informed me that grown men could not be trusted not to look either. And so I had to un-stuff his stocking and go hide all the little presents again.
As for the tree, I was open for suggestions. My family had always had an artificial tree with metal limbs that were color-coded so you'd know where to attach them to the trunk. I saw tree lots on the road in December, and I saw dead trees thrown out by the curb in January. For someone who didn't get Christmas anyway, the live tree thing seemed like a waste. When it came time for us to get a tree, I was leaning toward artificial. But I could tell Josh really wanted a live one, and so that's what we got. Hey, what do I know? My family was, like, Jewish, or something.
It was a beautiful tree - probably seven and a half feet tall. It made the whole room smell like a forest, and the needles got all over the floor. We had to water it, which is another thing you don't have to worry about with artificial trees. We had to feed it, and it shed. It was like a big, decorated pet. We were admiring it one evening, when Josh told me that you could always tell an artificial tree, no matter how nice and expensive, by the pattern of the branches. They're symmetrical, and there is a certain shape. Our tree was not symmetrical. It was generally tree-shaped, but some branches stuck out more than others, while others went out at different angles. I've decided that I like that about live trees, too. They're naturally imperfect, just like me.
So we had a tree, and it was naked. We didn't have any ornaments or lights or garlands or anything. I went to Big Lots and splurged on $30 worth of ornament multi-packs. Josh found a light set at the thrift store. Even after that, his parents came over and took pity on our pathetic unadorned tree and brought us about four boxes of decorations that had been in their basement. There was one that was bought the year Josh's dad was born, a few that his mee-maw knitted, and a couple that he remembers from the time before his parents split. We kept those and a few others that we just liked, but the others were sent along to the thrift store. I was terrified that we were unknowingly throwing out treasured heirlooms. But then again, I've picked up hundreds of heirlooms secondhand. Just because a different family inherits them doesn't mean that the memories held in them are completely lost. I guess the lesson is that if you want heirlooms to stay in the family, don't give them to me.
We had just finished decorating the tree and were standing back, arm in arm, to admire it. Me, I like to ruin a sweet moment with some sentimental remark said sarcastically.
"Aw, we have a tree. Does that make us a family?"
"Maybe. I think it's the stockings with our names on them that do that. That makes us a family."
And I didn't have any smart reply to that.
The thing is, I feel like I kinda get Christmas now. I don't know if it was the new house, the tree needles on the floor, the hand-me-down ornaments, the hunched-over embroidering or what, but I enjoyed last holiday season more than I can remember enjoying one before. I feel like we are starting Christmas from scratch. We'll go to his dad's and then to his mom's, but we're also doing stuff that is just ours. We are building our own traditions. They are straight out of the American Christmas Encyclopedia, so they are shared with the whole country, and yet somehow they are only ours.
"What are you, Jewish?" some other kid asked.
I knew that we weren't Jewish, but I didn't know why the other kids seemed to get so much more out of the year's biggest holiday than I did. I just figured we were sort of apathetic. We were low-key people in general, so if this one holiday failed to impress us the way it did the rest of the country, that wasn't entirely out of line with our characters.
I was wrong, though. It was a religious thing after all. Back before I was born, my family was part of a denomination of Christianity that was...well, let's call it restrictive. They didn't celebrate Christmas with presents and Santa. I actually don't know how they celebrated it. Probably with prayer and sitting quietly. Eventually, my folks got out of that church and became Methodists, who are much more lenient about things like reindeer and decorated trees and stockings. However, our family was already pretty established by that time and had no holiday traditions. So we had a tree and we got presents and we ate a big meal, but that was it. It was like my parents had read an encyclopedia entry about American Christmas traditions and then tried to have a holiday based on that.
I have come to believe that it is these traditions that are key to what everyone else loves about Christmas. So many of these traditions are shared, as if everyone in the whole country had actually celebrated it in the same house. So one kid might talk about going to his grandma's, and all the other kids are basking in the glow of the memories of seeing their own grandmas. But then there are individual family traditions. The same kid then talks about having to sit and wait on the stairs, shivering with anticipation, presents so close he could smell them, waiting for his parents to make themselves coffee before he and his siblings were unleashed upon the tree. And all the other kids are thinking about their own family quirks, waiting just as anxiously for their turn to share them with the rest of the class.
And I never really got all that. I didn't feel deprived, because I didn't understand what those other kids had that I didn't. I still got presents, we still had a tree. We didn't do stockings, though I tried once. I hung up some old socks on the mantle and I put candy in them. The candy all melted when we used the fireplace, ruining the socks and my interest in stockings. Even without stockings, it seemed like we had the same basic holiday structure as everyone else. So why wasn't I as excited as everyone else? The idea of a missing set of family traditions never occurred to me.
Through the magic of boyfriends, I have latched on to the traditions of other families. I went to Christmas at my ex-boyfriend's grandparents' house for several years. It seemed like a pretty standard gathering. We went, we ate, we chatted with aunts and uncles and cousins, we opened presents. The last year I went, his mom gave me my own stocking. It had a scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas on it, and when you pressed a button, it played music. I was very touched, and not just because it looked expensive. I have no idea whatever happened to that stocking. Maybe they lucked out and his next girlfriend liked Snoopy, too.
I've been doing Christmas with Josh's family for four years now. Actually, the first year, I had to invite myself. It had gotten to be December without him mentioning anything about holiday plans, when I finally asked him whether I was welcome wherever he was going. He was surprised. He hadn't asked because he'd figured I had my own family thing to go to. I should've explained to him that I rely on boyfriends for my Christmases.
His parents are divorced, which adds a whole level of complication that I never imagined in my naive and limited understanding of what other people did at Christmas. We go to his dad's for Christmas Eve, where we eat the most amazing steak and seafood dinner and watch classic holiday movies on repeat. We have beer before dinner, wine during dinner, port or cognac with dessert, followed by spiked coffee or eggnog. By the time Clarence is getting his wings, we all feel pretty good about the world.
The next morning, we go to Josh's mom's house. Or maybe his aunt's or his other aunt's or his grandmother - it doesn't matter, they all live within a square mile of each other. They have Christmas breakfast with oyster stew. All those years, I wondered what I might be missing about Christmas, and it was oyster stew. After breakfast, we sit in the living room while various family members play music for everyone. One guy plays the accordian, there are a couple of pianists, and finally three violinists and a cellist. There is an impressive amount of musical ability in that family. I would feel bad about my complete lack thereof - I rely on boyfriends for that, too - if not for his grandmother, who can't play a lick either. She just sits and looks proud enough to burst. Later, we walk back over to his mom's house for presents. There was a stocking for me last year, a spare one they had - the visitor stocking, I suppose.
I have always felt welcome at these gatherings. Everyone has been wonderfully sweet, they give me gifts, they feed me food, they ply me with alcohol. And yet, I feel like an outsider. Even as I start to understand the routine of it, I have no emotional attachment to these traditions. Perhaps that will come with time - in twenty years I may really look forward to that oyster stew. But for now, I still feel like a kid listening to how everyone else spent their Christmas vacation. I just don't get it.
Last year was the first where I was really interested in doing anything at all on my own for Christmas. After all, I have a house now. I have roots, permanence! Therefore, I need, uh, decorations. So I thought about a tree. In the apartment, I'd sort of half-heartedly put ornaments on my unicycle turned upside-down. I was going for eccentric, but I think it was mostly pathetic. A real house deserves a real tree, maybe one right in front of the living room window.
Also: stockings. I'm not sure what got into my head, but I saw some handmade stockings online and I decided that I was going to make some. If I'd thought it through, I would have realized that I'm a crappy seamstress and I don't even really understand about stockings anyway. But I paid a quarter for a secondhand stocking to use as a pattern, I bought the material and some felt, and I spent two weeks worth of evenings sewing and stitching. There was some unstitching and ripping, too. I attached felt letters that spelled out our names and embroidered greenery garlands and snowflakes. The stockings don't play music and they look...homemade, but I'm quite proud of them.
Once they were all done, I tried to remember what I'd seen Josh pull out of his stocking at his mom's house. It seemed to be small toys, candy, and underwear. So I bought some small things and informed Josh that he was responsible for buying me small things. He thanked me for the heads up.
After I finished the stockings, I hung them up on the mantle. Then I put the things that I bought into Josh's and proudly showed him the bulging homemade sock. It was then that I learned something that probably does appear in the encyclopedia entry about American Christmas traditions - you don't stuff the stockings until Christmas Eve, because Santa takes all the credit. I don't care about Santa, and I don't think I ever will, and Josh knows that. So he gave me a better reason: little children cannot be trusted not to look in their stockings. He then informed me that grown men could not be trusted not to look either. And so I had to un-stuff his stocking and go hide all the little presents again.
As for the tree, I was open for suggestions. My family had always had an artificial tree with metal limbs that were color-coded so you'd know where to attach them to the trunk. I saw tree lots on the road in December, and I saw dead trees thrown out by the curb in January. For someone who didn't get Christmas anyway, the live tree thing seemed like a waste. When it came time for us to get a tree, I was leaning toward artificial. But I could tell Josh really wanted a live one, and so that's what we got. Hey, what do I know? My family was, like, Jewish, or something.
It was a beautiful tree - probably seven and a half feet tall. It made the whole room smell like a forest, and the needles got all over the floor. We had to water it, which is another thing you don't have to worry about with artificial trees. We had to feed it, and it shed. It was like a big, decorated pet. We were admiring it one evening, when Josh told me that you could always tell an artificial tree, no matter how nice and expensive, by the pattern of the branches. They're symmetrical, and there is a certain shape. Our tree was not symmetrical. It was generally tree-shaped, but some branches stuck out more than others, while others went out at different angles. I've decided that I like that about live trees, too. They're naturally imperfect, just like me.
So we had a tree, and it was naked. We didn't have any ornaments or lights or garlands or anything. I went to Big Lots and splurged on $30 worth of ornament multi-packs. Josh found a light set at the thrift store. Even after that, his parents came over and took pity on our pathetic unadorned tree and brought us about four boxes of decorations that had been in their basement. There was one that was bought the year Josh's dad was born, a few that his mee-maw knitted, and a couple that he remembers from the time before his parents split. We kept those and a few others that we just liked, but the others were sent along to the thrift store. I was terrified that we were unknowingly throwing out treasured heirlooms. But then again, I've picked up hundreds of heirlooms secondhand. Just because a different family inherits them doesn't mean that the memories held in them are completely lost. I guess the lesson is that if you want heirlooms to stay in the family, don't give them to me.
We had just finished decorating the tree and were standing back, arm in arm, to admire it. Me, I like to ruin a sweet moment with some sentimental remark said sarcastically.
"Aw, we have a tree. Does that make us a family?"
"Maybe. I think it's the stockings with our names on them that do that. That makes us a family."
And I didn't have any smart reply to that.
The thing is, I feel like I kinda get Christmas now. I don't know if it was the new house, the tree needles on the floor, the hand-me-down ornaments, the hunched-over embroidering or what, but I enjoyed last holiday season more than I can remember enjoying one before. I feel like we are starting Christmas from scratch. We'll go to his dad's and then to his mom's, but we're also doing stuff that is just ours. We are building our own traditions. They are straight out of the American Christmas Encyclopedia, so they are shared with the whole country, and yet somehow they are only ours.
12.09.2010
the circle of secondhand life.
We are due for a massive purge.
Some of you may wonder where I put all the stuff. After all, the only thing I ever seem to do is shop, either at thrift stores or yard sales. During the summer, I seem to come home on Saturday afternoons with a hatchback bursting with new purchases. Sure, I can get it all into my Honda Fit, but where does it go in the house?
There comes a point in every thrifters life where they must get more selective. I started thrifting in high school. At first, it is truly thrilling. My whole world changed, as I realized that I could most anything I needed or wanted for a fraction of what regular stores were charging. And I could get a whole lot of things that I never knew I wanted. When you first start buying used, things can get a little crazy. I realized at some point that I was going through a lot of money (well, a lot for someone still on an allowance), and I was running out of space. So I had to settle down a bit. As I thrifted more, I got better at identifying what I would actually use and what was just something that seemed awesome and cheap at the time.
That doesn't mean there aren't still missteps. I still buy something and then realize a year later that I've never used it at all. And that's why I need to frequently purge. Because I binge, binge, binge all the time. Some things outlast their usefulness. A lot of things were purchased with no clear use in mind. To be fair, a lot of things that I buy for no apparent reason do find use. For example, I bought a food dehydrater for a dollar a few months back. I attempted to use it once, but it didn't quite work out. And then I put it in the pantry to get it out of the way and forgot about it for a while. Then lo and behold, I hear on the family grapevine that my sister-in-law wants a food dehydrator. So I give it to her, and everyone is happy. That has happened many times in the past. Either I find someone who needs the thing or I find some way to use it myself. Or I don't find a way and I send it off to the thrift store for someone else to try.
At the house, we always have a Goodwill pile, usually a box or bag sitting somewhere in the way. Josh and I periodically contribute to it as we find something in our big stash of stuff that hasn't worked out. Even so, we obtain faster than we release.
The best time to purge is during a move. You're forced to go through everything you own anyway, so it's a good time to assess whether your stuff deserves to take up space in your new digs. Unfortunately, I bought a house last year. I used to move every couple of years, but I'm going to be keeping the same address for a while. Without a move to force me to get rid of all the crap that I bought but never used, I have to use discipline and will power. Bleah.
Actually, it's not unfortunate at all that I bought a house. For one thing, I have a house now. But also, I went from a two bedroom apartment to a three bedroom home. I added about 700 square feet to my stuff storage. The house was kinda pathetically empty when I moved in. It was like a free pass to buy whatever caught my fancy. Ah, to be a yard saler with a half-empty house! Those were good times.
Those times are definitely over now. My house is full. I don't consider myself to be a hoarder, though I have some definite packrat tendencies. In terms of stuff, I am a lousy minimalist. Even with my high tolerance for clutter, it is time to purge. It's time to go through everything I own and decide whether it still deserves to live with me. And it's time to give Josh a couple of boxes and tell him not to come out of his library until they are full.
Purging is hard. Some things are obvious. I'm going to keep my kitchen table and I'm going to get rid of the brass lamp that has been sitting in the corner for a year. It's those things in between that give me trouble. Sure, I haven't found a use for it yet, but I'm still a little bit in love with it. I'm still holding out hope that I will find something to do with the cast-iron fajita plates shaped like cows. Or maybe I will meet someone that desparately needs some fajita plates. Do you need fajita plates? THEY ARE SHAPED LIKE COWS. Some of the things in that middle category will go into the Goodwill box, and some will remain on the shelf, safe for the time being.
I feel like I should feel bad that I need to purge. It implies wastefulness. After all, I paid money for those things, then I never used them and then I gave them away for free. Maybe if I calculated the amount of money spent on items never used, I would be even more selective about my purchasing. Numbers are good at making you feel guilty.
Obviously, I don't feel bad about it at all. Based on the amount of stuff I see at yard sales that has clearly never been used, I'm not the only person who buys a thing without a need for it. I allow myself to feel slightly superior to those people because they bought it new (and then sold it to me for very little). I am wasteful, but less wasteful than people who are really very wasteful indeed.
There is also the cyclical nature of secondhand binging and purging. I bought this from the secondhand market, and I am returning it there. While I might feel bad about wasting the money spent, I don't have to feel bad about wasting the thing itself. It has life in it yet, and perhaps the next person will figure out what to do with it where I could not. I take comfort in being part of this cycle. I don't hear Elton John singing that Lion King song every time I drop off a Goodwill donation, but I do get a sort of zen feeling about the whole thing. Purging this way is less like getting rid of stuff and more like sharing with someone I don't know. That's way cornier than I meant to get today, but there you go.
Some of you may wonder where I put all the stuff. After all, the only thing I ever seem to do is shop, either at thrift stores or yard sales. During the summer, I seem to come home on Saturday afternoons with a hatchback bursting with new purchases. Sure, I can get it all into my Honda Fit, but where does it go in the house?
There comes a point in every thrifters life where they must get more selective. I started thrifting in high school. At first, it is truly thrilling. My whole world changed, as I realized that I could most anything I needed or wanted for a fraction of what regular stores were charging. And I could get a whole lot of things that I never knew I wanted. When you first start buying used, things can get a little crazy. I realized at some point that I was going through a lot of money (well, a lot for someone still on an allowance), and I was running out of space. So I had to settle down a bit. As I thrifted more, I got better at identifying what I would actually use and what was just something that seemed awesome and cheap at the time.
That doesn't mean there aren't still missteps. I still buy something and then realize a year later that I've never used it at all. And that's why I need to frequently purge. Because I binge, binge, binge all the time. Some things outlast their usefulness. A lot of things were purchased with no clear use in mind. To be fair, a lot of things that I buy for no apparent reason do find use. For example, I bought a food dehydrater for a dollar a few months back. I attempted to use it once, but it didn't quite work out. And then I put it in the pantry to get it out of the way and forgot about it for a while. Then lo and behold, I hear on the family grapevine that my sister-in-law wants a food dehydrator. So I give it to her, and everyone is happy. That has happened many times in the past. Either I find someone who needs the thing or I find some way to use it myself. Or I don't find a way and I send it off to the thrift store for someone else to try.
At the house, we always have a Goodwill pile, usually a box or bag sitting somewhere in the way. Josh and I periodically contribute to it as we find something in our big stash of stuff that hasn't worked out. Even so, we obtain faster than we release.
The best time to purge is during a move. You're forced to go through everything you own anyway, so it's a good time to assess whether your stuff deserves to take up space in your new digs. Unfortunately, I bought a house last year. I used to move every couple of years, but I'm going to be keeping the same address for a while. Without a move to force me to get rid of all the crap that I bought but never used, I have to use discipline and will power. Bleah.
Actually, it's not unfortunate at all that I bought a house. For one thing, I have a house now. But also, I went from a two bedroom apartment to a three bedroom home. I added about 700 square feet to my stuff storage. The house was kinda pathetically empty when I moved in. It was like a free pass to buy whatever caught my fancy. Ah, to be a yard saler with a half-empty house! Those were good times.
Those times are definitely over now. My house is full. I don't consider myself to be a hoarder, though I have some definite packrat tendencies. In terms of stuff, I am a lousy minimalist. Even with my high tolerance for clutter, it is time to purge. It's time to go through everything I own and decide whether it still deserves to live with me. And it's time to give Josh a couple of boxes and tell him not to come out of his library until they are full.
Purging is hard. Some things are obvious. I'm going to keep my kitchen table and I'm going to get rid of the brass lamp that has been sitting in the corner for a year. It's those things in between that give me trouble. Sure, I haven't found a use for it yet, but I'm still a little bit in love with it. I'm still holding out hope that I will find something to do with the cast-iron fajita plates shaped like cows. Or maybe I will meet someone that desparately needs some fajita plates. Do you need fajita plates? THEY ARE SHAPED LIKE COWS. Some of the things in that middle category will go into the Goodwill box, and some will remain on the shelf, safe for the time being.
I feel like I should feel bad that I need to purge. It implies wastefulness. After all, I paid money for those things, then I never used them and then I gave them away for free. Maybe if I calculated the amount of money spent on items never used, I would be even more selective about my purchasing. Numbers are good at making you feel guilty.
Obviously, I don't feel bad about it at all. Based on the amount of stuff I see at yard sales that has clearly never been used, I'm not the only person who buys a thing without a need for it. I allow myself to feel slightly superior to those people because they bought it new (and then sold it to me for very little). I am wasteful, but less wasteful than people who are really very wasteful indeed.
There is also the cyclical nature of secondhand binging and purging. I bought this from the secondhand market, and I am returning it there. While I might feel bad about wasting the money spent, I don't have to feel bad about wasting the thing itself. It has life in it yet, and perhaps the next person will figure out what to do with it where I could not. I take comfort in being part of this cycle. I don't hear Elton John singing that Lion King song every time I drop off a Goodwill donation, but I do get a sort of zen feeling about the whole thing. Purging this way is less like getting rid of stuff and more like sharing with someone I don't know. That's way cornier than I meant to get today, but there you go.
12.01.2010
the lady doesn't like mushrooms.
I remember every mushroom I've eaten in the last fifteen years. There have been two.
I don't like mushrooms and I don't like that I don't like them. It makes me feel like a picky eater, and I don't care much for those either. I don't like not liking anything, because it makes life difficult for other people. If someone is making me dinner, they have to keep my preferences in mind. It would be much easier if I just didn't have any.
I'm not sure what it is. I don't like the taste, I don't like the texture, and I don't like the smell. But I don't know what came first. It's possible that I was turned off by the smell and then the other things became associated with that smell. But I don't like any of it, and I can't explain why. I shouldn't have to explain why. Once I told a friend that I didn't like cantaloupe, and she asked, "Why?" I'm not sure if she expected me to have some story about a bad cantaloupe experience. Because it tastes bad in my mouth, that's why. I'm allowed to not like things, and cantaloupe and mushrooms are two things that I cannot abide.
I ate a mushroom about eight years ago. I was at an art gallery, where there was lots of free food and wine, and they were not checking IDs. There were long tables lined with finger foods. I made it my business to try everything, as if it were the samples section at Sam's Club. I saw these little balls of something or other, brown on the bottom and sorta cheesy-looking on top. I couldn't really identify them, but I am not fearful of unfamiliar foods. Then, as soon as I touched one, I knew. And I also knew that it was too late, because I had touched it and so I had to put it on my plate. I took a bite, felt sick, and threw the rest away when I thought no one was looking. Then I went and got some more free wine.
As far as my kitchen is concerned, mushrooms do not exist. When I read a recipe, I skip right over the parts about mushrooms like it's not even there, sort of like when someone sends you a greeting card with a long message written in flowing script. If the mushrooms are a crucial element of the dish, then I just don't make that. Poor Josh. He never gets any shrooms. Whenever he eats pizza at the restaurant where he works, he always has them load it up with mushrooms, because all his meals from home are fungus-free.
I ate a mushroom last Friday. It wasn't an accident, like the time eight years ago. I did it because I was intimidated.
Josh and I went over to see one of his high school buddies and his parents. The dad answered the door, greeted us, and told Josh to "take the lady's coat and put it in the closet." At that instant, I was immediately thrown off my game. Everything about this situation screamed formality at me, and I really do better with casual affairs. Even though I know how to act, something in me thinks that if I allow myself to get too comfortable, I'll slip and betray my redneck past.
Not that I have any problem with my redneck past. But some people, particularly ones who mistakenly refer to me as "the lady," might.
There were mushrooms at dinner. They were stuffed with tuna, and apparently once of Josh's friend's specialties. We also had delicate salads, Thanksgiving leftovers, and deep-fried duck. I tried rutabagas for the first time ever, because I jump at the chance to try something new. And then the mushrooms were passed around and I put one on my plate. I wondered if Josh noticed and hoped that if he did, he wouldn't say anything. I knew it was completely stupid. These were nice people. Just because they serve salads with goat cheese and dried cherries on Christmas china does not mean that they would be offended if I happened to have an aversion to mushrooms.
I ate the whole thing. It was gross. I tried so hard to like it. I tried to tell myself that I was just put off by the texture and that the taste and smell were fine. When that didn't work, I told myself that it was just the smell. That didn't work either, and for the second time in fifteen years, I came to the conclusion that me and mushrooms are just not meant to be.
The whole experience was just...odd. Even as I was eating the mushroom, I could not have told you why I was doing it. It was only later, when I really thought about it, that I figured out my own bizarre behavior and the subconscious thought behind it. Frankly, it makes me wonder. What else have I been doing for what other weird reasons?
I don't like mushrooms and I don't like that I don't like them. It makes me feel like a picky eater, and I don't care much for those either. I don't like not liking anything, because it makes life difficult for other people. If someone is making me dinner, they have to keep my preferences in mind. It would be much easier if I just didn't have any.
I'm not sure what it is. I don't like the taste, I don't like the texture, and I don't like the smell. But I don't know what came first. It's possible that I was turned off by the smell and then the other things became associated with that smell. But I don't like any of it, and I can't explain why. I shouldn't have to explain why. Once I told a friend that I didn't like cantaloupe, and she asked, "Why?" I'm not sure if she expected me to have some story about a bad cantaloupe experience. Because it tastes bad in my mouth, that's why. I'm allowed to not like things, and cantaloupe and mushrooms are two things that I cannot abide.
I ate a mushroom about eight years ago. I was at an art gallery, where there was lots of free food and wine, and they were not checking IDs. There were long tables lined with finger foods. I made it my business to try everything, as if it were the samples section at Sam's Club. I saw these little balls of something or other, brown on the bottom and sorta cheesy-looking on top. I couldn't really identify them, but I am not fearful of unfamiliar foods. Then, as soon as I touched one, I knew. And I also knew that it was too late, because I had touched it and so I had to put it on my plate. I took a bite, felt sick, and threw the rest away when I thought no one was looking. Then I went and got some more free wine.
As far as my kitchen is concerned, mushrooms do not exist. When I read a recipe, I skip right over the parts about mushrooms like it's not even there, sort of like when someone sends you a greeting card with a long message written in flowing script. If the mushrooms are a crucial element of the dish, then I just don't make that. Poor Josh. He never gets any shrooms. Whenever he eats pizza at the restaurant where he works, he always has them load it up with mushrooms, because all his meals from home are fungus-free.
I ate a mushroom last Friday. It wasn't an accident, like the time eight years ago. I did it because I was intimidated.
Josh and I went over to see one of his high school buddies and his parents. The dad answered the door, greeted us, and told Josh to "take the lady's coat and put it in the closet." At that instant, I was immediately thrown off my game. Everything about this situation screamed formality at me, and I really do better with casual affairs. Even though I know how to act, something in me thinks that if I allow myself to get too comfortable, I'll slip and betray my redneck past.
Not that I have any problem with my redneck past. But some people, particularly ones who mistakenly refer to me as "the lady," might.
There were mushrooms at dinner. They were stuffed with tuna, and apparently once of Josh's friend's specialties. We also had delicate salads, Thanksgiving leftovers, and deep-fried duck. I tried rutabagas for the first time ever, because I jump at the chance to try something new. And then the mushrooms were passed around and I put one on my plate. I wondered if Josh noticed and hoped that if he did, he wouldn't say anything. I knew it was completely stupid. These were nice people. Just because they serve salads with goat cheese and dried cherries on Christmas china does not mean that they would be offended if I happened to have an aversion to mushrooms.
I ate the whole thing. It was gross. I tried so hard to like it. I tried to tell myself that I was just put off by the texture and that the taste and smell were fine. When that didn't work, I told myself that it was just the smell. That didn't work either, and for the second time in fifteen years, I came to the conclusion that me and mushrooms are just not meant to be.
The whole experience was just...odd. Even as I was eating the mushroom, I could not have told you why I was doing it. It was only later, when I really thought about it, that I figured out my own bizarre behavior and the subconscious thought behind it. Frankly, it makes me wonder. What else have I been doing for what other weird reasons?
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