Scary News

Proving once again that journalists give good headlines, I just ran across a good one. In the local section of my paper where they list the various goings-on and things to do, I was startled to see this header:

Give Blood.

Get Gas Card

Yikes! Gas already costs an arm and a leg. Now they want BLOOD.

How I Spent My Summer Staycation

With the high cost of gasoline and thus the high cost of every other thing in the universe, there is apparently a new trend in vacationing. Instead of taking a costly traditional vacation. we are now being urged to take a "staycation", which means you pretend to be on vacation without actually leaving your home. So I thought I'd try it.

I'm still waiting for room service and the maid hasn't shown up yet either. This is a sucky vacation.

But seriously, I guess people are actually doing this. I recently read two different articles about this new concept, the stay-home vacation, actually dubbed the "staycation". I wasn't kidding about that. Some people are taking advantage of their local attractions and seeing the sights in their own hometown, being pretend tourists. Others (and I actually read this) are setting up tents in their livingrooms and having camp-ins with their kids. Why not at least use the yard, you ask. Apparently this one family didn't have a yard. So they pitched a tent right in the livingroom, placed a floor lamp outside the tent to look like moonlight, and roasted marshmallows over a candle. Could I make this up?

I guess the staycation idea is okay. A lot of people have never taken full advantage of all the good things their hometown has to offer. I come from a town that's about an hour away from Niagara Falls and I bet half the population has never been there. However, for people in certain geographic locations, which shall remain nameless, it's probably a lot harder to pull off the staycation concept. "Hey Beufort, you been in the sun long enough. Better git yourself back under the car port."

I, on the other hand, live on the west coast of Florida and this staycation idea should work pretty well for me. The beach is less than five miles away, there are concerts and plays galore, enough festivals to clutter the entire landscape of the moon with arts and crafts, and marvelous fine dining restaurants all within the distance of a gallon of gas, which by the time I post this should be about $12.95.

But I have a confession to make. I don't like the beach. (Eeww, all that sand) I don't do well sitting through concerts and plays; arts and crafts festivals make me barf, and my idea of fine dining is any restaurant that doesn't use a roll of paper towels for napkins.

The truth is, I don't need to pack a pretend suitcase, and put a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door of my condo to feel like I'm on vacation. Trust me, I know how lucky I am. Every morning when we put on the coffee, put on our morning music, and take our stack of inspirational books out onto the lanai for our morning reading time, I thank God for the life we have. It already is the perfect staycation.

What Not To Wear

I like that show "What Not To Wear" on TLC. You know the one, where the two fashion experts help someone learn how to dress. That's an oversimplification of course. Here's how it works; well-meaning friends and family of someone who is a walking fashion disaster secretly blow her in to the show, then secretly videotape her going about her business dressed badly. Then Stacy and Clinton (the aforementioned fashion experts) surprise the victim and confront her with all the incriminating videotape and offer her a $5000 credit card to buy all new clothes in New York City under the condition that she give up her old clothes and follow their "rules". Although the first quarter of the show is pure gratuitous humiliation, it's all in good fun (tell that to her) and the rest is actually pretty uplifting. In the end, the slovenly "before" morphs into a dazzling "after" and gains tons of self esteem and grace. Seriously, by the time you get to the big "reveal" at the end, you're really rooting for her.

I'm fascinated with this show because they actually give great advice. I always learn something. But there's a predictable side effect to watching this show. Every time I watch it I get the urge to purge. No, not throw up. Purge my closet. I watch Stacy and Clinton hold up some article of the victim's old clothing like a decaying carcass and I think, "I have that in my closet." Now I don't think the contents of my closet are embarrassing really, but there are always a few things that just stay in there a little too long. I have a time-frame deficiency that prevents me from remembering when I bought something. When I think "that's probably a couple of years old", in reality it's apt to be more like six or seven. I confess, I have found a few choice articles in there that are twenty years old. I started taking advantage of a visual cue to help me out recently. If it has shoulder pads the size of throw pillows, it might not be as new as I thought.

So the other day after watching Stacy and Clinton humiliate - I mean educate -yet another victim, I got that urge to purge and made a nice big pile of clothes to give to Goodwill. Then I got right into it and dug a little deeper, and made another pile of perfectly good and rarely worn clothes to take to a consignment shop for resale. You know, these are the things I hate to just give away because they're really nice, I just haven't worn them much for some reason. Probably because I didn't know the "rules" when I bought them. Like if you're 5'6" you don't buy "petite" pants. Sorry, I mean trousers. (See how much I've learned?) A permanent wedgie is no fun. So I asked around to find out which local consignment store was a good one, since I've never done this before, and got an enthusiastic endorsement for one in particular. I called.

"Have you ever consigned with us before?"
"No, I haven't. How does it work?"
"Well, we only accept the better labels, and only things that are in season. What do you have?"
I took the phone into my closet and started reading off some labels, which didn't actually mean anything to me, but I remember buying them in a good store so thought they might mean something to her.
She said "Mmm hmm. Well the main thing is that they are less than three years old. Are they?"

Uh oh. The old deficiency. I had no idea. They could be. Or they could be twelve years old. A quick glance told me they all passed the shoulder pad test. That was encouraging. So I hemmed and hawed and said well maybe I'd just bring them in and have her take a look. NOT LIKELY. I don't think I could take the beat-down that would surely ensue. The pitying look, the decaying carcass two-finger pick up, the inevitable thanks-for-stopping-by rejection. So guess what....my Goodwill pile just got bigger.

Name These Plants

These little guys appeared in my potted palm yesterday. I'm conducting a "Name That Plant" contest. Anybody care to submit an entry? (Oh hush up, it's funny and you know it.)

Billboards I'd Like To See Part 1

My Mom, the Original Recycler

First of all, HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! I don't really have a big theme thing going on for my 4th of July entry. I just felt like writing today and it happens to be the 4th of July. So I guess I'm happy for the freedom to not write about the 4th of July. Okee dokee then.

What's on my mind today is the idea of "recycle, re-use". Everything's all about being green these days, and that's a good thing. Don't want to leave a great big old carbon footprint behind. I've got a pretty big foot and this idea of the carbon footprint freaks me out a little. There are reams of newspaper and magazine articles all extolling the virtues of going green. Hmmm. That's ironic, isn't it? Anyway, this is wonderful fodder for journalists, freelance writers, and editors of every ilk who desperately need to fill their publications or news casts with meaningful and relevant content. "Come on everyone, let's all think of some great ways to conserve our natural resources! Put on those thinking caps and fill those pages!"


Well, if they had known my mother, they'd have enough material for the next fiscal year. Before recycling was hip, or even thought of, my mother was way ahead of the curve. She was brilliant at conserving and re-using. Back then it was more a matter of "a penny saved is a penny earned", or as I used to like to call it, "being cheap". Of course I realize now that the "cheap" label was a cheap shot. My parents lived through the great Depression and never quite came out the other side, mentally. Besides, while not dirt poor, we weren't exactly rich either, and saving pennies here and there was not really a matter of choice. So my mother became quite expert at conserving, recycling, and re-using, having learned many of her skills from her own mother. Okay, here's a for instance; I learned at the age of two how to open a Christmas gift without making a single tiny tear in the wrapping paper. Every home movie of Christmas past has at least one shot of my mother sitting in a chair, carefully smoothing and re-folding the wrapping paper for use at a later date while we kids meticulously opened our gifts like we were defusing a bomb. The art of this careful gift opening was made easier by the fact that the attached bow was only loosely stuck on there with a small loop of scotch tape, since it too had been preserved from years past, possibly including the scotch tape and was not likely to do much damage to the aforementioned wrapping paper. I was 15 years old before I realized that bows were actually three dimensional, and not in fact supposed to be flat. (By the way, this careful unwrapping is a skill I have had to unlearn in my adulthood. It makes most people crazy when they watch you do it.)

Oh, and here's another thing. When I finally outgrew the lunchbox stage of my childhood and started brown-bagging it to school, that bag had to last a week or two. Or until my banana finally dropped out the bottom.

Then there were the note pads. This is the one I know she got from Grandma, because Grandma's house was full of these things. Okay, try to follow me now. In the old days greeting cards were large pieces of paper folded twice so that when you opened the card, it was double thick on both sides. If you own a computer and make your own greeting cards, you probably know what I'm talking about. Anyway, if you unfolded these greeting cards back into a large piece of paper, there would be all white space inside. You with me so far? Okay. Now all this pristine white space was naturally divided into four rectangles or squares because of the fold lines. So you took your big old shears (pinking shears if you wanted to be really artistic) and cut that paper into its four pieces. Voila. Four beautiful pieces of note paper. Now it gets better. Grandma used to dissect all her Christmas and birthday cards, then stack them into little piles, punch a hole in the top of each pile, and tie a ribbon through the hole to hold the pile together. (The ribbon was, of course, left over from what? That's right class, from a previously opened gift!) Nothing was wasted. My mother learned this craft from her mother and I myself would probably still be carrying on the tradition if modern greeting cards had not changed to their current configuation. Also because my husband would divorce me.

Well, I can tell that I could write a book about this. There's just so much more. I mean so far I've only touched on paper products. But that's enough for now. You know, what I thought was cheap and embarrassing back then is now the subject of high level discussions and suggestions for all of us. She would have liked that, being on the cutting edge, ahead of her time. Way to go Mom.