Archive for the ‘Misc. Griping’ Category

My sister and I love Thanksgiving. It’s our favorite holiday of the year. No pressure, no gifts, just bring a bottle of wine and a pie.

I think we broke the record last year with eight pies for about fourteen people. It’s getting harder every year to do the sliver of each pie on your plate.

When the weather is nice, the ladies of the family go for a walk after consuming the actual meal and  before the pie. My aunt and uncle live in town, so we walk a couple of blocks, over the bridge of the Apple River (and every year someone comments on the giant bobber- art piece), and turn at the dam to walk Grease Pit Road. That’s the back alley behind the Dairy Queen, Subway, and Supper Club (which I think is Mexican this year?) where the hot, salty fat  permeates the atmosphere. It’s actually a little sickening after all that turkey, so we walk fast.

Rounding the Baptist church at the end of the block, we head back for home and pass by my mom and dad’s old house. It’s the house they bought right before I graduated from college and sold right after my sister got married. In that time, they repainted all the rooms, put in new carpet and vinyl, refinished all the cabinetry, landscaped, added a garage door, and put in two huge picture windows in both the living room and family room. They sold it to a guy from Iowa. When the guy bought it, he was married with four kids. Shortly thereafter, he  divorced his wife who moved back to Iowa, ripped out most of the landscaping and started the kitchen on fire. His dad ended up taking over the place. It eventually went into foreclosure. I don’t know who owns it now.

Even though Mom and Dad have been in their new place for well over a decade, Mom still can’t go past that house without sighing.

You can’t make other people appreciate the time or effort you put into a particular project. They either do or don’t. Sometimes, self-satisfaction is the only satisfaction you’re going to get. Believe me, as a validation junkie, that’s a hard pill to swallow. The only time that’s not hard is with pie. Not everyone digs into your pie? Whatever, take the rest home. Be thankful with pie!

You know what I love to do? Shop in thrift stores. With 70% of our country’s GDP depending on consumer spending, that pretty much makes me persona non-grata.

The ugly truth is I am afflicted with the dreaded Lutheran Cheapass Syndrome or LCS. My husband has it too. It makes us very compatible, materialism-wise. It’s just that nine times out of ten we can rationalize ourselves out of most non-essential purchases. The only time we ever bother buying anything new is usually for someone else, like at Christmas.

Ah Christmas! How the birth of Christ manages to creep further and further into other holiday territories at the stores every year like some tinsel coated glacier is a phenomenon that can only be truly loathed by a person who has no intention of buying any of that crap.

I just think that having the fall bulb displays across the aisle from the giant glowing skulls across the aisle from the lighted shrine to the Griswalds sends a confusing message to customers.

I don’t particularly like Christmas shopping. Since my life is pretty much determined by my guilt factor, I stress about what to get each person that will rid me of my obligation to them with as little shame as possible. This stress is compounded by the said persons who will inevitably say, “Oh, I don’t really need anything. Don’t go to any trouble.” This is clearly a ruse, and I must now try to make whatever present I get them be a thoughtful one.

My husband shops with me, but he is basically not allowed to accomplish this task without supervision (because I’m a control freak). So together we will descend on whatever cluster of stores will provide the highest yield of required gifts in the shortest amount of time. I generally do all my shopping in one weekend in December.

This year will be our first year ever to host Christmas, and I’m planning something diabolical. No gifts. That’s right. Each family can exchange all they want with each other, but once they cross our threshold, their arms better only be laden with food and drink. We will watch Christmas movies, play board games, listen to holiday music and graze to our heart’s delight, but the only thing under the tree will be the cat fur coated tree skirt.

Is this wrong? Maybe. But the truth is I’m one of those annoying people who “doesn’t need anything” and I really wish that people “wouldn’t go to any trouble,”. The privilege of other people’s company to celebrate the birth of the Savior is all the gift I desire. You know, that and some kick-ass appetizers. Leave the leftovers if you feel guilty.

The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy is making the lives of millions of people downright miserable, yet it’s really hard to feel empathy when we’re still being bombarded with political attack ads. It was irritating enough before. Now, it’s just pisses me off.

I will be the last person to deny others their 1st amendment rights. In kinder words, I have had people pretty much call me a smut peddler. That’s their prerogative. Don’t like it? Don’t read it. So if some special interest group has the will and the money to push their agenda by smearing a political candidate that they don’t agree with, who am I to say they can’t?

The problem is BILLIONS (with a big ol’ capital B) of dollars are being siphoned into these superpaks that have no contact information, no brick and mortar address, and work under almost complete immunity from possible consequences if their statements are defamatory. Front Line did an awesome piece on them the other night.

So all that money is being spent simply to try to convince you and me about how bad a person is, while millions of people are facing devastation. Where is the sense in that? If these supposed non-profit groups had just taken a tiny percentage of all that political influence money and given it to a disaster relief fund, any disaster relief fund,  imagine how much more good that money would be doing right now instead of annoying the hell out of us.

It’s no wonder that there is no trust in our political system anymore. Public good has become a dirty turn of phrase in a climate of  “just me, right now.” That needs to change. We all live under the same rule of government on the same chunk of real estate. We all need to get along, because when the proverbial shit storm comes our way, we’re all we’ve got.

The political activist group that happens to serve your favorite flavor of Koolade isn’t going to come over and help you bail out your basement or make sure your grandma’s not freezing to death in her little apartment in the next state. It’ll be your neighbor, that crazy tea-partier, or her neighbor, that weird feminist with the two last names that does it. Ignore the rhetoric for now, and practice some good, old-fashioned civility.