I have already gotten a significant portion of my xmas shopping done. It really hasn’t been that hard this year, due in part to a new reliance on gift cards, which a number of people have told me they want this year.
I kind of like them and kind of hate them. Sure they make life easier, but they are particularly unfestive and impersonal. It’s kind of like saying You don’t trust me to buy you something, so I’ll save you the trouble of getting me the wrong thing and then you won’t have to return it. On the other hand, there are some people I wish would give me gift cards since although knowing me for years, seem clueless to my sense of style (or lack thereof) and buy me stuff that they would like to wear (for example, when have you ever seen me wear pink? I don’t wear pink, don’t buy me pink. I don’t feel like turning over a new pink leaf).
The whole idea of having a the great gift card exchange instead of the great gift exchange seems kind of goofy. To think that 2000 years ago a little babe in a manger (of questionable existance to me, but that isn’t the point) was born and therefore people trade off little plastic cards in rememberance of his birthday, is pretty odd.
Today I turned 36. I wasn’t so excited about entering my “late-thirties”, but I am feeling up about it now. Why?
Among other things, my husband got me a bathroom scale. I could have taken that as an insult but really — I’d requested one. But the really good news, was when I got on that scale and found I’d lost 5 pounds in the last couple of weeks. Despite Thanksgiving dinners and desserts. Now that makes for a happy birthday!
It also makes up for missing all the snacking (and extra bedtime meals) I’ve missed. So really the key to losing weight is, not eating constantly all day long. Ha.
For Thanksgiving this year I have been given my first cold of this school year. I thought I’d hit it full force from the medicine cabinet but the homeopathic junk, the Cold Eeze, the Sudaphed and Afrin, but aren’t really doing much. I’m making a semi-traditional dinner and pie, but I am so stuffed up, there is a good chance I won’t be able to taste anything. At least if anything is overcooked and tastes like rubber, I won’t be bothered by it.
The one friend we are having over is a bit of a germaphobe. I called her up yesterday and told her it would be fine if she declines, but I am making the food anyhow if she would like to come. She said she would come, but that “she was going to get a flu shot first”. She told me it is more for the psychology of it than it actually preventing her from getting my cold, which I find that rather funny. For her benefit today, I will make some very visual demonstrations of my “handwashing skills” to put her at ease.
There is a small plus side to having a cold. I am actually on the getting-my-pants-to-fit-again-instead-of-buying-new-ones-diet and, not being able to taste anything makes it all less of a temptation. Plus, I have that sexy-moviestar-who-smokes-2-packs-a-day-voice that my husband loves. I read somewhere that men tend not to hear female voices all that well. Perhaps having my voice a little lower will improve his listening ability. We will see when I see what he brought back from the grocery store.
It seems not long ago, there was an unwritten rule that Christmas stuff was not shown on T.V. or displayed in stores until after Thanksgiving. That seemed reasonable. These days, Father Christmas is even more about the Cha-Cha-Ching of the cash register than a babe in a manger, so that bit of logic is out — I started seeing the Xmas commercials and stuff in stores right after Halloween ended. My fantasy is that the brilliant marketing executives who came up with that idea have a herd of children that nag them them the whole two months before Christmas with questions of “how soon until Christmas is here”. Since I’m getting nagged too.
I would love to write about how horribly material the season is like the good liberal I am, but I would just be a big hypocrit. The fact is, that I am going to be out shopping and buying too much stuff for everyone like everyone else, to my own dismay. I write it up to a seasonal mass hysteria. The rest of the year I will return to my frugal, practical self.
This year I think my kid has everything he could really want. Actually, I am really going to keep my gift giving to him to a minimum. There’s a thing or two I think he would like, but I am a little dry on ideas this year. And we are definitely going to have to move stuff out to replace the stuff coming in because there is really no room in our teeny rowhouse.
And, there is no guaranteeing that he is going to like the stuff we give him. I’m pretty good at picking out what he likes, but he really gets bored with most stuff eventually. Surprisingly, too, the latest big hit is this little plastic superman who showed up in his halloween candy. His face came off in the wash but he doesn’t seem to care.
The little plastic superman is preferred over a lot of the stuff he got for his birthday. Superman likes “watch” my son do a lot of activities and tends to “follow” him around. Superman gets a time-out, thought, when he trys to “fly” as I really don’t like projectiles going near my eyes. Also well loved, are a pile of, get this, plastic rocks. Plastic rocks that came with his Playmobil truck set. His 3 year old girlfriend likes them too. And occasionally they fight over piles of plastic rocks. They’re a bitch to pick up, though.
Another thing that is very popular - the blue clear plastic shoebox that my son likes to wear on his head to pretend he’s a spaceman. So maybe I should just go to the tupperware section of Target this year. And, perhaps put a few coins in those candy and toy machines at the grocery store. Who knows, I might find a hit.
This past weekend I went thrift storing. It’s something I love to do and have been doing for 20 years — before it was trendy; before Antiques Roadshow; and before a zillion skinny little hipsters decided wearing 70’s print retro tees were cool.
I get no better thrill than getting a big bag full of clothes for my son, including some major labels, for under $10 bucks. It’s cheaper than consignment and considering how much kids get stains on their clothes, I don’t see how buying new clothes for kids is practical (especially when that preschool “washable” tempera paint really isn’t washable).
There are a couple of bad things to thrift storing, though. 1)That old person smell in some of the clothes doesn’t always wash out completely. 2) The dressing rooms, if they have one, are sometimes makeship rooms with no doors, so that odd, older man can at any moment start a conversation with you while you are changing your clothes. Nothing like some old coot cracking jokes at you while you are standing there in your bra. 3)Some of the best thrift stores are not in the safest neighborhoods. 4)It’s highly likely you will see the very cheap, new with tags Gymboree sweater you wanted in someone else’s cart.
These days I do less shopping for myself, and more for my son. When I was 17, the pickings were excellent for vintage clothes, and I wore nothing but. The brighter and goofier the better… I still have a few 60’s psychedelic mini dresses stuck back in my closet, but I doubt they still fit.
I even used to dumpster dive for clothes (What is dumpster diving, you ask? It’s pretty self explanatory… there’s a dumpster, you dive into it and get stuff). Most of the time it wasn’t clothes. However, I did manage to completely furnish my apartment in the early 90’s from dumpsters, alleys, and thrift stores. I was lucky — my freshman year in college I lived in a high rise (well, living in an ugly high rise wasn’t the lucky part, the lucky part was that we lived on the 8th floor, right below a dumpster). My roomie and I would get up each morning, open the window, and look down to check out what the dumpster gods had brought us that day, like Christmas morning. It was a pretty fruitful dumpster.
Part of the thrill of this kind of thing is definitely the hunt. Or perhaps I should say, the gather. Lacking many nuts and berries in Baltimore city, I suppose it’s the contemporary version of hunter-gathering. Of course now, my funny polyester dress days are long gone. I am much less comfortable in polyester gaberdine (or at least the itch didn’t bother me as much). Besides the vintage pickings being poorer, I have given into jeans and boring looking, comfy loungewear. But it’s sometimes thrift-store, comfy loungewear.
It’s funny how having the water turned off in your neighborhood makes you suddenly want to do dishes, laundry, and especially use the toilet. Next time I get constipated I’ll ask the city to turn off my water for inspiration.
Recently we’ve been going to a new playground at the local elementary school. It’s brand spanking new and pretty nice, and just a few blocks away. But it does have it’s drawbacks. Some are the type you’d want your kids to play with and some are the kind you wouldn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole. Not to say that there is inherently anything wrong with the Hampden neighborhood kids that my son might play with… at this young age they aren’t all that different. It’s some of the parents.
There’s been so much gentrification in the our neighborhood that frequently you will see on the playground the progressive, semi-hippie, or upwardly mobile yuppie types parents and their kids. Like the gentrification or not, the kids and their parents are generally pretty nice. And you will see those born and bred in Hamdpen that are genuinely good parents, and their kids. And THEN you see what we call the Hampden “Stroller Girls”.
The typical stroller girl gets pregnant at a very early age, because all of her friends are doing it. 14 isn’t too young. She likes to walk down “The Avenue” (36th Street, the main drag) pushing her stroller showing as much skin the weather will allow, with the lowest cut short-shorts (or tight jeans with something written on the butt), bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other (I think the Stroller Girl thinks it looks sexy). She likes to hang out on the corner to flirt with the guys or show off her new baby. The typical “Stroller Girl” never talks to her child, she always hollers as if the child is deaf or 40 feet away. They carry a very hard look on their faces that makes them look prematurely old.
So…
This past weekend we went to the playground at the elementary. There were just a few kids and parents there. Two kids on the playground, I couldn’t figure out who they belonged to. The one boy who looked to be 5 and didn’t hardly a thing like the other who looked barely 3. The two boys hardly acknowledged each other, playing independently. I asked the other parents on the playground if the kids were theirs, and they said no. I asked the 3-year-old where his mom was and I couldn’t get an answer that I could understand, it was too garbled. The 5-year-old ignored me.
Finally the playground had emptied out and it was only my son on the playground and these two kids and NO parents. I looked across the street to see if there was a parent sitting on their front porch watching them from a distance but I didn’t see anyone. I was beginning to think I was going to have to call the police. Finally their mother pushes her stroller up to the playground. The 3-year-old ran up to her saying “Mommy Mommy” and the 6 year old kept playing. She looked in a bad mood and yelled at the 6-year-old for, of all things, walking up the slide. She had a infant girl in her stroller. She couldn’t have been much more than 20, with three kids.
Soon she was joined by her friend and her little girl. The friend had the letters “Be Be” across the butt of her tight jeans. Her daughter, who looked to be 8, was dressed a little like a Bratz doll, and her bra strap hung down her shoulder from under her tank shirt.
I sat on the bench in awe of this woman leaving her very young kids unattended. Perhaps she was watching them from a stoop somewhere I didn’t see, but I doubt it. I was tempted to open my big mouth and give her a tongue-lashing but for once I kept my foot out of my mouth. Which was totally smart. These women scare me. They are tough girls and don’t like outsiders telling them what to do.
I know some nice kids that will go to this school, but I I have no doubts that THIS mom and the other “Stroller Girls” will send children there. And that is reason #1, #2 and perhaps reason #3 my child will not be going to school here, at our zoned elementary.
My husband says of my son’s age, “These are the good years”. I wouldn’t know from personal experience, but he does… he’s already gone through survived raising three teenage boys.
And boy can I tell you, the teenage years for boys aren’t particularly pretty. At least based on what I heard from him. I’ve heard enough from him to shake in my shoes about it. I wasn’t an angel or anything, but I wasn’t that bad relatively speaking… I did nothing that involved heavy drugs, arrests or involuntary commitment to inpatient mental health facilities, or the trashing of houses. And, I bathed a lot. I hear some teenage boys can slack on that a bit.
I think things have gotten worse. I’ve seen the movie Kids and I read things like this and feel the panic come on prematurely.
(I love the part that that article where it says alcohol may have been involved. Ya think?)
So I may bitch about the extremely late potty training. Or the sitting on my head or wiping of boogers on my clothes or whatever it is, but 4 is pretty cool. It’s a lot better than 2 and it’s bound to be better than 14.
Except for one thing — I hear teenagers sleep in a lot. I can’t wait for that!
Today I got a check in the mail… for 25 bucks. Now 25 bucks really isn’t that much, but it means something.
I got “published”.
Okay, not really published, but I sent some savings tips to a local monthy kids magazine and they chose to publish them. So that kinda counts, right?
(I think I need to keep that day job, still).
You know, I really don’t like most photos of myself. It’s not just that I’m getting a little older, a little bigger, and a little more unfashionable with time.
It’s the stupid faces I frequently make.
I’m always blinking, squinting, or my mouth is agape, or making a stupid expression. Even moreso, after one measly drink.
Somehow Emma and I thought it would be a good idea to make kissy lips when this photo was taken at the most recent Baltimore Weblogger’s Happy Hour. What was I thinking?
I even told the person who took it not to put it on his blog. And with much prodding from Emma changed my mind. So there it is.
Anyhow, I had a good time… my thanks to our hosts, Jennetic, and Malnurtured Snay, even though he took that bad photo of me.
