More Monday Miscellaney



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It's Monday, and I've got "It's Friday, I'm in Love," on the brain.  I guess this means it's time for more Monday Miscellaney.  Lucky you!

• There's nothing like your pre-teen telling you the computer keyboard is frozen to start your day off right.  After a change of batteries, some messing around with clicking this button or that, running the virus scan and restarting the computer, the keyboard works again. Whew. Double whew. I'd be lost without the home computer.
• I'm thinking Halloween is my favorite holiday, hands-down.  I mentioned to a relative last night that "We're getting ready for Halloween, here," and got the response, "WHAT? It's only October 3!"  That gave me pause for all of five seconds.  I'll blame it on having kids, though I suspect that even without the kids, I'd have gotten out the pumpkins and skeletons anyhow.  At least I waited until October 2nd to do it.  I like the costumes, the free candy (though, at my age, the candy isn't free anymore), and the decorations.  It's rather low-pressure, unlike Christmas.
• It's weird to start seeing people you know in the obituary column who are your age.  This isn't a new phenomenon by any means, but it always takes one by surprise. 
• Why is it that during 40-degree weather, I still see people wearing flip flops? Seriously? I can't wait until snowfall.  Wonder how many will be losing toes to frostbite.
 



totalfilm.com

"MY TOES! MY TOES! Why didn't

I wear my fur-lined boots?"

• I feel privileged to help serve Mass at our local parish.  My family is on the schedule once a month.  For the last 6 weeks, however, we've not only served on our scheduled date and time, but also been pinch-hitting for others who don't bother to show up, let alone arrange for a substitute.  My husband has lately taken to asking me, "Are you scheduled to do anything, this time?" My response is usually, "No," which he quickly follows up with, "Yeah, until you get there."  Then he stifles snickers of "I told you so," when someone taps my shoulder and says, "Can you fill in, today?"  I really don't mind - except that I'm starting to feel resentful toward those who are finding it impossible to fulfill their commitment.  To them, I'd like to say, "You signed on for this.  It is one hour, one weekend, per month.  If you can't fulfill the duty, then ask to be taken off the schedule, and until that happens, find someone to fill in for you.  You aren't the only person who might like to sit with their family now and then during a church service.  It is extremely rude and inconsiderate of you to skip out when you know you're scheduled, and then when you do show up, it's within two minutes of start time - leaving everyone to wonder if you'll even be here.  You can do better than that!"
 



thegreenhead.com

peanut butter & jelly spreader

• Wow, but I'm tired of fundraisers.  Every year, our school does the same fundraiser. In my opinion, the catalog is full of stuff that could be purchased elsewhere, and for less. For example, those handy suction-cup containers you can stick in the shower - the catalog had them for $2.00 more than the local Meijer.  The chocolates look mouth wateringly delicious until you get them.  Then, you discover they're all about the size of a fifty-cent piece and 2/3 of the box is raised cardboard with the chocolates artfully spread on top of that to make the container look like it's brimming with sweetness.  And I really need to spend $7.50 on a "peanut butter & jelly spreader."  I'm thinking most of this stuff probably comes from the Lillian Vernon catalog to begin with.
• Excuses, excuses. I do feel badly, sometimes, when kids tell me they've lost an important piece of homework, or that they couldn't do the homework because they were being shuffled here and there, often at the parent's whim and will, and no one had time to sit down and help with the work.  Other times, it's generally a case of the kid being extremely disorganized and sitting in front of the computer or video games instead of prioritizing what really  needs to be done.
 



sweetcatastrophecakes.blogspot.com

• At what grade, in school, do you remember the teacher having to tell the class, "In order to get a birthday treat, you need to be seated at your desk and not swarming Alfred.  I expect to hear a 'thank you' to Alfred when he brings your treat to you."  Now, I'm not so old as to believe that my elementary school days are filled with rosy-cheeked, well-behaved children.  I'm sure we were little monsters at times - in fact, I know we were.  But - I seriously don't recall my teachers ever telling us to be seated at birthday treat time. I don't think most of us dared to swarm the birthday kid, hoping to pick over each decorated cupcake in hopes of getting the one with the most frosting.  Really, kids?  You're ten and eleven years old now. What happened to manners?
 



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• Of course, what can I expect when I see what's left in the staff room of the rolls from a meeting.  Someone took out the center part of the roll and left the rest in the box.  My reaction was laughing disbelief: This is something we'd do to each other, at home, I thought - recalling the days when my brothers would say, as one of us eyed that last piece of pie or cake, "That's mine - I spit on it."
• That lipstick you were so happy to find that cost $1.99?  It's going to go on your lips like $1.99, too.  Ever try to color your lips with crayon? Not even a Crayola, but one of those generic off-brand crayons? That's what $1.99 lipstick is like. Don't waste your money.  On the other hand, if the lipstick is $1.99 because it's been marked down from $12.00 or something, stock up.
• While I'm on the subject of lipstick, why is it when I look at the wide array of colors available I end up purchasing something nearly the same shade as what I have at home? I guess I'm just meant to wear one shade of lipstick.
• Where art thou, 2 yards of black lace? I've searched high and low for this lace now that I want it for a Halloween costume, and do you think I can find it?  Just my luck, I'll find it November 1st.

A Sale-ing I won't go

Whenever fall rolls around, we hear the inevitable tolling of school bells. 

     Who knows which bell will toll for thee?  If John Donne only knew.  Funeral bells don't toll for me, at least not yet.  The bells that toll for me, when school starts, are the fundraising bells.

     I remember fund raising from elementary school days.  I remember we had packets of junque to sell. Little trinkets, chintzy chocolates that always looked better in the sale catalog than they did in real life.  They'd have doubled for excellent crayons, they were so waxy.  Someone one year got the bright idea we should sell spices.  Sometimes we sold wrapping paper.

     Seems like there was always a fundraiser in elementary school. I don't know if we were real clear on what the funds were going for, but back in those times it was usually for a field trip.  And back in those days, we were allowed to, told to, go door-to-door to peddle our wares. 

     We'd start out with the immediate neighbors, who usually saved their fundraising support for my sisters and me.  Then we'd branch out down the street, in hopes that other neighborhood kids hadn't gotten there first. 

     We might hope there'd be a family birthday party to go to, and then we could hit up the aunts and uncles.  Of course, if the cousins had something to sell, our parents would be hit up, too.

     Then, decades later, someone decided that kids going door-to-door wasn't such a good idea because there were too many creeps out there.  This changed the face of fund raising for good.

     When my kids brought home the sale catalog, a note came with it encouraging parents to take the sale catalog to work.  The kids should ask family members to purchase items. 

      Of course, there are prizes to be had for the top seller, and the classroom with the most money earned from the sale.

       Those kinds of incentives were around back in the dark ages, when I was selling spices and wrapping paper at the tender age of seven.  My sisters and I never tried too hard, because there were, inevitably, ten kids in our classes whose parents worked at large corporations like General Motors. Parents would gleefully take the catalog and set it out on the break room table, and within days, up to a hundred orders would be placed. 

     Those parents are still around, the kind who will pound the pavement for their child all in the name of winning a glow-in-the-dark necklace or inexpensive bedside radio in the shape of a hamburger.

     More power to them.

      This year, I've done the unspeakable.  My husband says I'm being incredibly rude, considering our neighborhood is home to innumerable children who are involved in all sorts of activities that require fund raising. 

      I say it's a matter of self-preservation.  Plus, I remember the looks my husband would give me, as he'd come home from work and find me captive on my own couch, listening to the door-to-door vacuum salesperson displaying and demonstrating the latest and greatest in vacuums.  They always sounded like a great deal, until you got to that bottom line price.  I sadly had to explain to one salesman that I couldn't afford the vacuum, because what he wanted for it had to go to pay for a new furnace.  He suggested that since my old vaccum was obviously inadequate (in other words, my house was filthy by his vacuum's standards) that it might behoove me to give up the furnace for another year. 

      I was happy to show him the door.

      Then there was the day the incredibly perky book salesgirl came to the door.  She was a college student, hawking the one huge tome that your child would absolutely positively need to get through all the educational endeavors possible in this lifetime.  She was the kind who had paid attention to her training, where the salesperson asks the stunned by overwhelming perkiness buyer what she thinks would be so wonderful about owning this particular book.

       Uh. I don't know.  See, my parents bought one for my sisters and me when I was about seven years old, and I don't think we ever opened it.  It sat on the shelf, alongside the huge dictionary my mom purchased in alphabetical sections from the grocery store and had bound between two covers.  They were hauled out for pint-sized dinner guests to sit on, covered in a towel of course, so they could reach the table and their plates without difficulty. 

     All right. We used the damned books for booster chairs.  

     So getting back to the unspeakable thing I did.

      Recalling my husband's wry looks as he'd see me held slightly unenraptured in my house  by eager salespeople  and my own, obvious inability to say "No," I posted a sign on the front door that stated, simply, "No solicitation, religious or otherwise."

     Oldsters will recall that solicitation doesn't always mean inquiring for sexual activity for pay. 

     I just couldn't handle saying "no" to the bright shiny, red-cheeked, earnest faces that would come to my door, politely pleading for me to purchase something to

• support a sports team from a town 50 miles away
• support a sports team from just two blocks away
• support another sports team from just two blocks away
• support another school fundraiser
• support a good cause for medical research
• support a college student by purchasing encyclopedias we'll never open
• support a religious group's trip to an impoverished nation or neighborhood within our own country
• support someone else's religion that directly contradicts my own
• support local businesses by purchasing a lawn care package that I'm too cheap to want to pay for
• support local businesses by signing on for regular pest control
• purchase beauty products sold by a subdivision resident
• purchase cooking products sold by a subdivision resident
• enroll the children in daycare

    Well, you get the idea.  We live in a nice neighborhood, where people send you their lawn guys, unsolicited, to try and sell you lawn care because yours is the only lawn with weeds within a two block radius.  So the fundraising bug swarms about on a regular basis.

          We still had some solicitation, even after the sign.  I figured that nobody knew what "soliciting" meant in this day and age, and since we didn't typically deal with the religious type of soliciters anymore, I put up a larger sign that simply read, "No Sales. SORRY."

      I still get fliers for various things that are stuck in the newspaper box.  People looking for business still slip a business card in the door. Some people ignore the sign and still ring the bell.

      My husband says what I did is terrible because some day, our kids will likely have to pester the neighbors to purchase something to support some activity they're involved in.

     My personal feeling is that I'd rather pay the extra money and avoid the fund raising, if possible.  I hate asking people to buy things they most likely don't want. 

     Mostly, it's hard to say no to the kids.  I'm happy to support the youth group who came asking for sewing supplies, as they had seen me sewing on something on my front porch one day.  I'm happy to support other good causes.  But I simply can't afford to say "yes" to everyone who comes to the door. 

     So I informed my husband, who has been known to hide when the religious solicitors ring the bell, that he could answer the door from now on and make the executive decision on whether or not to purchase.  And if he wasn't happy about it, I would just change the sign to read, "If you aren't selling chocolate, don't ring the bell."

     Meanwhile, I'm going to hope that someone selling those foot-long candy bars and gummy bears comes to the door. I've got a craving for something sweet.