Fat Friday (french for "the day after Thanksgiving")

What better way to celebrate Black Friday than to lounge in yoga pants (better known as "pajamas"), laugh with family, and eat the food of the gods (peanut M&M's) out of a holiday dish for the good part of an entire day?  If there is a more perfect method of cultural rebellion, I don't know what it is.  Retail warfare can kiss my ever-widening ham hocks - there is no doorbuster in America that can beat a quiet morning in the woods and hiding snug under a warm quilt past eight.

C and I are visiting with my in-laws at their lake house in the Adirondacks of New York, a place which practically hums with hospitality and radiates with cozy goodness.  The solitude of this small town along with the perfectly quiet atmosphere (no TV buzzing, no stereo cranking, no logging trucks releasing their air brakes) pairs seamlessly with the clarity of the cool blue lake, transparent window panes and as of Wednesday, the delicate layer of snow garnishing the not-quite frozen ground.  Think Call of the Wild meets the North Pole workshop meets HGTV's Dream Cabin.  It's brilliant.

I took a little walk with my mother-in-law this afternoon up the road a bit to a snow-covered beach.  The sun was so warm that we could've comfortably worn short-sleeves, while the snow crunched under our shoes as we stomped down the shoreline, picking up pieces of beaver wood and enjoying the sound of water lapping on the sand.  There is something astonishing about the collection of sounds, smells and sights that define this brief marriage of fall and winter.  It's especially stunning because I know that by the time that C and I get home, the bears will have already built their ice huts and the neighbors will be crawling into their dens to hibernate until June.  It's just another reason to savor these moments before we fall off of that proverbial cliff known as winter.

I hope that your day was as beautiful and inviting as ours was, but honestly, I doubt it was.  Better luck next year.  

I guess if you really think your day was better than ours, you can just go ahead and tell me off in the comments section.  I'll read it. 

Someday.

Let Me Count The Ways

Today is DoesThisParkaMakeMyButtLookBig's 100th post!  It's a good thing you aren't here to see my happy dance, because despite the scientific advances of the 21st century, you still can't erase something like that from your memory, even if you desperately want to.  It's better this way.

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At this particular time of year, there are some things that I miss about our old neighborhood.  

I miss scampering through the local corn maze with my sister, cackling loudly as we race through the crisp fall air and trick small, rosy-faced children into marching down dead ends. I yearn for my kitchen, with its sharp knives, miraculous dishwasher and double sink.  Here, when I load the sink with dirty dishes and greasy pans, I don’t have a second bowl to fill my coffeepot in, and rearranging the mountains of glass and knives is like a kitchen version of running the gauntlet  – one of these days, I am going to reach in, flail about, and emerge not with ten fingers, but with two fists of what appears to be ground meat.  I long for the vegetable stand a mile up the road, with its locally-made ginger and eggnog ice creams and perfectly inspired cherry tomatoes that almost never lasted the 3-minute drive home.  I crave a yoga class, a match with my volleyball team, my washer and dryer, and the company of my parents.   I even sort of miss the way the local McDonald’s employees recognized my face as I drove through for yet another vanilla ice cream cone.  I’d try not to frequent the same franchise more than once per day, but there were times when I cared less about my reputation and more for my craving.  They probably had a nickname for me, and rightfully so.  

But despite the wonder of NPR, wireless internet, and comprehensive fitness centers, there are also a few things that I don’t miss.  For example, I don’t miss traffic.  For you friends who doubt the existence of traffic in the neighborhood, boy do I have news for you.  I can identify between 40 and 50% of the vehicles driven in our current town.  The other half is made up of either Canadians or logging trucks.  The last time I had to stop behind a car was about a week ago.  It was on the 3-mile dirt road to camp, and was because we all knew each other and were stopping to have a chat. 

Traffic.

I also don’t miss shopping.  C and I have developed a very brief retail half-life, which seems ironic since before the move, I worked in that industry.  Perhaps it was always this way, but I suspect that making our direct purchases almost exclusively at convenience and grocery stores for the last nine months has exacerbated our impatience.  The only exception I make to the above statement is that I have retained an insatiable love for shopping with my sister, which categorically falls somewhere between Halloween-costume hunting and raiding a candy store, and is perhaps better known as the eternal quest for the most revolting frock.

Lastly, among the things that I have gladly left behind me are traffic circles.  If you believe in such a place, I am convinced that these, friends, are what Limbo is made of: circle after badly engineered circle of misery and anguish and panic.  I dread them.  There is a special, particularly abysmal roundabout near our old house that was recently re-designed, which means that they decided after a dozen years or more to abruptly change the traffic pattern.  I completely agree with the decision, because the vehicle interactions were backwards and inside out for years (inside out, I tell you!), but this is exactly the problem with traffic circles: there seems to be no universal way of constructing them.  Another loop I know of has two lanes – two lanes­ – something that simply cannot produce a safe or predictable traffic pattern.  I am certain that a preschooler somewhere took red crayon and drew a set of fiery concentric circles, then crammed the paper into her city planner/mommy’s briefcase, only for it to slide out onto the office floor and get pushed through approval and funding by some recently-promoted department intern.  It's particularly infuriating considering that the circles were probably drawn to be a giant apple, or maybe Buzz Lightyear.  Bottom line: a two-lane roundabout is ridiculous. 

Just try to get out of this inside circle without reaching for your Paxil.  Kiss your sanity goodbye. 

Mercifully, I haven’t driven in a circle in months, hardly ever see a stoplight, and buy my gifts online.  This softens the blow of not being able to watch my sister kill a bag of 75%-off Halloween candy or nosh on my mom’s salsa while listening to Simon & Garfunkel with Dad at the dining room table.  It’s is a good thing, because life without the joy of those two events has the potential to really bring me down. 

But no traffic circle Limbo?  This just might be worth it.  

November, You're O.K

 Here's why:

It may be gorgeous, but I'm not ready.

• From where I am sitting right now, I cannot see a puff of snow anywhere on the ground.  And I can see a lot of ground from here, so this is a proof-positive miracle from heaven.  Thank you.
• Tomorrow morning in our county, there will be dozens of hunters’ breakfasts hosted by supermarkets, camps, outdoor outfitters, and snowmobile clubs.  Do you think that they would let me attend?  I’d be the girl wearing a kitten t-shirt under her camo fleece and masking a [not-so] slight aversion to guns by smiling awkwardly and making pistol gestures with my hands.  Can’t you hear my high-pitched shots?  Peuw… peuw… peuw-peuw!  Blow those guns out, hot shot!!  I’d fit right in.
• November is the month of my sister’s second-favorite candy holiday, The Day After Halloween, as well as Thanksgiving (I am waiting for stuffing like a turkey for a pardon), my niece’s fifth birthday, and an upcoming trip-to-die-for to the equator with my sister and mom.  I’m on the verge of making a paper chain to help me count down the days before the madness begins. 

On top of being adorable, my niece has killer moves.

• Black Friday.  My joy in Black Friday has nothing at all to do with joining the masses as they assault salespeople and destroy retail fixtures across the land.  This is the first year in a little while that I won’t be the smiling elf on the other side of that register counter, and unless you have ever been that elf, you have no idea how excited I am for this day.  I might stay home.  I might go out.  I might shop online.  I might hole up at a cabin in the woods and not cross the threshold for anything except some glazed doughnuts and a walk in the woods.   And I will not wear a sparkly headband with antlers.
• My first fall has come and winter is almost upon us, and I still do not own a camouflaged fleece.   In fact, I don’t own anything in camo, except some incredibly thick Smartwool socks I bought a couple years back.  You were right to doubt me in the second paragraph – I totally lied when I wrote that description.  Well, not totally.  I do have a kitten t-shirt (two, actually), and I love pistol hands. 

Peuw… peuw.  

Let Me Help You Find Your Manners

I used to work in retail.   I was employed by a great company that offered pretty good merchandise and an overly generous return policy.  There are a whole host of stories that could be told of the things that happened at work, but here are a few.

• A middle-aged woman came in to apply for a job, introduced herself as Chief White Bear, and followed her online application by making a small purchase only to immediately return it.  Oh, and she ate her change.   She was a shoe-in.

www.coolest-gadgets.com

Pizza vending machines also eat change. 

• I once discovered a nasty, soiled diaper in a women’s dressing room.  Another time we found a poop stain streaked across the Men’s Department carpet.  Folks, this is rule #1 of shopping.  Accidents happen, yes, but try not to make us get out the biohazard kit.  No one looks good in safety goggles. 

• An older woman perched herself on a slate coffee table only to have it cave beneath her like the Metrodome.  We lost a nice piece of furniture, but man, it was awesome.  She was fine, by the way. 

• An irate baby boomer approached me to convey his frustration that the men’s belts were in a location that did not suit his liking.  I hardly uttered a word during our 90-second encounter, and he was flipping me the bird the entire time.  I could only think of his poor wife.  And how much his irrational rage reminded me of working with teenage girls in lockup.

Some of my favorite exchanges would take place when customers were returning items to the store.  Like I mentioned, the company has a ridiculously unwise and generous return policy, and would take [almost] any product back unless it had bloodstains.  And sometimes, accidentally, we even did that. 

Some advice for you when you are considering making a merchandise return:

• If it’s polyester (like, I don’t know, a fleece pullover made of recycled plastic) and your campfire’s embers are fluttering onto your chest, you will melt holes in your fleece.  You can buy a new one and do this again, but if I’m here, I will have your car towed, just in spite, because you should know better by now.

• Oh, you put on a few pounds?  Let me return those pants for you, because clearly they were deficient.  Slacks can be so malicious.

 http://farm6.static.flicker.com

• If you are returning unopened merchandise that you’ve had in your closet since 1985, and you still have the receipt for it, that does not make you helpful.  That sweater vest is unopened.  Twenty-five years later, does that seem strange to you?  Probably not.

• DO NOT, and I repeat – do not – bring in your returns on Black Friday.  Bring cake.

The key to good shopping is the same simple key to life: Be nice.  And treat employees like you would treat your grandma: don't raise your voice, don't ask to be the exception,  and don't eat the change they give you.  

The O.S. : It Was the Night Before the Day After Easter...

Another post from the Other Sister:

www.zanyholidays.com

I passed the seasonal aisle the other night in my rush through the grocery store.  Right now it is a pastel-colored, candy wonderland.  Jellybeans abound in so many varieties it makes your eyes hurt.  It reminded me that we are quickly approaching one of my favorite holidays.  Wait for it....... that’s right, the day after Easter. (Insert a mental picture of me jumping up and down squealing like a piglet with a baby monkey trying to ride on its back.  Yes, I'm that excited.)  Its uglier, more awkward cousin, the day after Halloween, comes in at a close second.  Unfortunately, chocolate doesn't really do it for me, but if it weren't for that, both of these day-after-holiday holidays would run hand in hand over the finish line to my heart.  Or my hips.  You choose.

Why do I consider these as holidays, you ask?  This is a silly question, but I’ll indulge you.  

                                          Half.  

                                                          Price.  

                                                                            Candy.  

Have you ever witnessed a grocery store right before a news-hyped weather catastrophe?  Mass chaos, right?  People run around like headless chickens, glaring over their carefully guarded carts full of precariously balanced gallon jugs of water.  Because this will definitely be the time we run out of water......forever.  The people who, on any other day, you would happily carry on small talk with are now viewed like Sauron, not after the One Ring, but after your Precious [water].  It’s very primal, really.

Well, picture that random psycho, only with my face and a cart full of sugary goodness. Add some Peeps, which are sugary but not goodness, for my favorite sister.  (And, yes.  I only have one sister.)  How can one go wrong with Nerds Bumpy jellybeans or the Sour Patch Kid variety.  I have not seen the latter yet, but please do be so kind as to tell me if any of you have seen them in your travels.  

Have wheels, will drive.  

www.ihasafunny.com

If they stopped making my precious jellybeans, I just might cry or throw a tantrum in the middle of the candy aisle.  Trust me, you do NOT want to see that.  Though, now that I think of it, I do have a friend who manages a grocery store, and I would love to see how the administration would react to this kind of  behavior.  I may do it just for fun.  I'll report back later.

If you too are out to celebrate this hidden holiday, I suggest that you might want to wait until two days after Easter, lest you encounter me in the aisle and I start throwing chocolate bunnies and Cadbury Creme Eggs at you in an attempt to scare you off.  I may not eat those things, but they sure do make a fantastic weapon, and the eggs make an even greater mess.

So saddle up your pig, preferably backwards, and get excited.  The day after Easter only comes once a year, and you don’t want to miss it.  But remember, watch your back.  I may be lurking in the next aisle.

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For anyone looking to get the O.S. Lurker a holiday gift, here's some gold. You're welcome.  -M