burnt toast life

We shop at Target

Dear Marie Claire magazine,

Hi, I’m sorry, I am your audience. At least I thought I was. But month after month I go through the same cycle of emotion when you show up amongst my pile of bills. It starts with excitement (Fall fashion!) and ends with depression ($900 boots?). Along the way there are pit stops at outrage, confusion, envy, lust, hopefulness and resignation.

You know the women in your magazine? I don’t know these women. For once I’m not complaining about impossibly skinny models with airbrushed faces. I actually do know plenty of slender ladies with gorgeous skin. No, I speak instead of your “respondents” to various polls in various articles. The women who have questionable job titles, are 24 years old, and who cannot live without $1200 studded belts and $200 face cream. To some extent, I understand – magazines are not about reality, they are about fantasy. They set themselves as a fashion compass and we can choose to follow to the extent that we are able. It’s sort of like runway vs. the real world – no, you won’t be wearing the 8-inch spiked heels, but you might spring for the 4-inch. But still. I read each issue cover to cover and finish feeling anxious, overstimulated and woefully left behind. Sometimes I do wonder if my peers are lounging out in their mid-century modern lofts admiring their newest Birkin. But I also find it hard to believe.

Here in suburbia I can pinpoint where my friend’s new cardigan came from because I have the same one in teal. We didn’t get them at Bendels; we got them at Old Navy. We shop the Target clearance rack like its a second job. Our shoes are from Macy’s, but sometimes they’re from DSW or if we’re really lucky, they’re from Target clearance. Did I mention we like Target? Our face cream comes from Walgreens, but on payday it comes from Sephora. It almost never comes from Neiman’s.

No offense to those who do, but I don’t live in West Virginia. I can (and do) drive to NYC in under two hours. While I don’t live in the most happening metro area, it’s not quite east of nowhere. I have a few friends who live and work in the city. They shop at Target. We also like Marshalls and Forever 21 and when we’re feeling edgy, we really love H&M. At Target we scoop us $13 sundresses and $8 tank tops and $10 braided flat sandals. We compare notes and compete and try to figure out who paid the least. We walk down the back of the aisles for end cap sales, because everyone knows that walking down the center of the aisle is pointless.

That’s not to say we don’t splurge. I used to work for a luxury handbag retailer, and you’d be hard pressed to find a bag in my closet worth less than $200 – but remember I bought them all for half price with my discount. I couldn’t help but notice that in this month’s “Look Luxe for Less” feature, you offered a $998 Tommy Hilfiger coat as the cheaper alternative that would help to keep you from “straining your wallet.” Seriously? Our splurges are $168 dresses from White House Black Market. I own exactly one $300 Theory blazer (it was a gift) that I’m almost frightened to wear. And yes, $998 would most certainly be a strain for my wallet.

So what do we want? A little perspective, maybe. It’s like in the HBO series Girls, the one where the characters are real. They’re real and they’re likeable and they’re messed up and they probably shop at Target. It’s so easy to relate. We watched Sex & the City when it was cool (before it was a movie) and we loved it but we also scratched our heads and wondered if these women really existed. Someone finally figured it out – real women with budgets are out there, not with closets full of Manolos, but with mortgages and student loan debt and half priced gift cards to Applebees. This is your audience.

So about that Chanel watch – I won’t be calling to inquire for the “price upon request.” I’ll be at Target. Thanks, though.

 

 

Massacre at Harding Farm

Based on the title, and because I’m not the most adept at suspenseful openers, I’m just going to say it: the chickens were murdered. Well, not all of them. Just three of them. That leaves one confused, lonely hen that we found wandering the driveway in a state of shock (not sure if chickens can register shock, but if they can, that’s what she was).

We went on vacation last week and of course it was relaxing. However, I realized something about myself. While I did not face work stress or home stress or regular daily stress, I managed to create vacation stress. Rather than just live and let live, I found myself worrying about who was doing what and at what time, when I should be ready by, how long I should stay at the beach, whether I should pack a turkey sandwich or peanut butter and fluff, etc. You know – big decisions. It’s not that my problems were monumental, it’s just that my poor brain doesn’t know how to function without at least a modicum of anxiety. In the absence of actual drama, I somehow manufacture faux drama.

One thing that was actually worth worrying about came in the form of text around mid-week. I had a friend checking in on the animals at home (cat, turtle, fish, chickens), and she found an ominous pile of feathers in the front yard, which she reported to me with a sad face emoticon. She said that she did not see any chickens wandering about.

We got home and immediately set off looking for our flock. It didn’t take long to discover the aforementioned feathers in the front yard… and then the second pile near the neighbor’s yard… and also the third pile near a pine tree. A quick stop at the neighbor’s confirmed that nary a rooster crow had been heard since Tuesday (it was then Friday). Dismayed, we walked up and down the driveway until we found our lone surviving hen, who turned her head at us inquisitively as if to ask, “Where were you? Where were you while my family was being murdered?” Eric quickly gathered her up into the coop and locked it up tightly. The giant food and water feeders we purchased recently take up half the floor space of the coop, serving as a cruel reminder to all that we had and all that we lost.

all that remains

Obviously, free ranging has its limitations. Eric tried to make me feel better by justifying that this would have happened even if we had been home since we weren’t corralling them at night, but I would imagine that we would have noticed they were being plucked off one by one and locked them up sooner. Really, we should have kept them in the coop full time once the first hen went missing weeks ago. But we loved seeing them strutting around the yard, hiding in the front bushes, perching on the wood pile out back, and creating a little haven in the dry creek bed beside the driveway. The neighbors also enjoyed them immensely, saying it warmed their hearts when they found chickens wandering around their backyard.

Silver linings: we still have one hen. The three roosters that we gave away to the farm are still living (hopefully). And the ones that we lost had very good, albeit short, chicken lives. They roamed freely, eating bugs and ruling the yard. They were not restricted to the tiny cages of giant eggs factories. If it were me, I would prefer a short and free life to a long and imprisoned one. However, these could all just be justifications of a woefully inept caregiver.

The next steps involve finding a chicken friend for Diana Ross (Get it? She will survive?) [EDIT: Diana Ross DID NOT, I repeat DID NOT sing “I Will Survive.” Shame on the writer for not doing her research. The hen’s name shall be Gloria.] and then starting the whole process over again in the spring, if my uncle allows it. Maybe I shouldn’t tell him this little tale. To my lost chickens, I will just say this: I’m sorry, and I hope you can forgive me.

Naughty Bird & the stinky chickens

If I ever start a band, that’s what I’m naming it.

This week was interesting, to say the least. It culminated with me on my hands and knees last night, furiously scrubbing chicken shit off my dining room walls and cursing the chicken coop man who refuses to return phone calls.

Here’s what happened: the chicks got too big for their cardboard box, and around that same time Eric stopped cleaning out their cardboard box. This resulted in a filthy, smelly, chicken filled cardboard box caked in excrement on my dining room table. Not cool. Last garbage day I made the decision that I could not, under any circumstances, continue life for one more day with that pit of despair contaminating the air of my home. The box got tossed, but the chickens remained. I had to find a quick solution.

I should also mention that I found someone on craigslist who sells beautiful, hand-constructed chicken coops for $250. This is a fantastic bargain considering Green Acres wants $700+ and the materials to build one would probably cost $200 alone (not to mention the manual labor, time spent, and so on). The dude answered the first time I called but hasn’t since. Hence, the homeless chickens were relocated to the dog crate.

The problem with that solution, of course, was that we no longer had a functioning dog crate. So at first we let Bird run free, a privilege that Ryder earned a few weeks ago. He thanked us by peeing on the bed (daily), chewing my glasses beyond recognition, eating one of Eric’s expensive tools, and eventually pooping on the bed. Clearly this was a bad plan.

Someone had suggested that we close him in the bathroom instead. This turned out to be a worse idea.

The yellowing linoleum that came with the house, while ugly, was perfectly functional. Now we have half a floor missing, which looks quite ghetto if you ask me. Bird also managed to chew through 2 bath towels, 3 rolls of toilet paper, and a very soft and comfortable bath mat that we got as a wedding gift. He was just about to start work on my bathrobe when we got home.

As angry as we were at Bird, this whole fiasco did force us to take action – quickly. Eric found someone else on craigslist with a smaller, “transitional” coop for just $35. We spent last night cleaning out the layer of solidified bird droppings that had formed in the bottom of the dog crate in the space of just a week. It was a grand time. The mess in my dining room was epic, but now it’s cleaned up and smells pretty and the chickens are outside! Yay! They love their new home and I love that because of a naughty Bird, the stinky chickens are officially where they belong.

finally, a home

turn off the faucet

Today was mildly pleasant at work. To clarify: most days I enjoy my basic job function. But there is one major drawback. It affects every minute of my day in an all-consuming way that’s impossible to ignore.

It is freezing.

I don’t mean, “Oh, they set the temperature a little low.” I mean that every single day of the year, from January 1st through December 31st, there is a constant icy cold stream of air steadily blowing from the moment I step in the door until the moment I leave. It is relentless.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. Most people wear their winter coats for the entire workday. I’ve seen everything from fingerless gloves (for easier typing, of course) to floor length blankets with sleeves, scarves, hats, thick socks, and year-round cable knit sweaters. Sleeveless shirts and bare legs in the summer is a laughable concept. You might as well strip naked and spend the day in a walk-in freezer.

So why? If it’s so cold, why don’t they turn on the heat (or at the very least… turn down the air)? Poor building planning is the short answer. The offices in the building are windowless and small, and seem to have been added on as an afterthought. They have terrible ventilation and therefore cause their inhabitants to swelter, even while the rest of the employees chip icicles from their chins. And as you may imagine, the people in the offices carry a little more clout than the lowly cubicle workers. So no matter how many times I email the facilities manager with desperate pleas for a temperature boost attached to pictures of the arctic Tundra, the constant frigid blast continues day in and day out.

Today, however, was a breakthrough. Someone who sits close to me unearthed a space heater from an empty office and turned it on full blast. The air conditioning tried its best to keep us in our frozen state, but that little heater won out and provided a cocoon of warmth that allowed me to shed a layer, stop shivering, and actually be a little more productive (thawed out fingers have that effect).

The whole thing reminds me of something my dad used to say: “We’re too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.” That has always resonated with me. I prefer solving the root of a problem rather than constantly cleaning up the aftermath, which is why when other coworkers share their keep-warm tricks I often exclaim, “But why don’t they just turn off the air conditioning? It’s snowing outside.”

I don’t know the solution, nor do I have the power to “shut off the faucet” in this situation. As with most offices, the thermostat is literally kept under lock and key. But I am eternally grateful for that little space heater that gave me hope again.

Chickenworld: the opposite of China

This is a sad post. All other burnt toast sympathizers should abandon it now.

Still with me? I warned you. Ok, here goes.

In our attempt to create what can only be classified as the Harding Family Farm, we adopted 8 chicks. In fact, I’ve been meaning to write about them for quite some time, but then they got really ugly. When we first got them they looked like this:

"I'm so cute!"

Now they look like this:

"I'm pretty awkward."

We had toyed around with the idea of getting chickens for two reasons. First, the notion of having fresh eggs was appealing. Second, it sounded cool. Now, Eric was definitely the instigator behind this whole plan. If I’m being completely honest it was one of those ideas that I hoped would go away and never come back. It’s not that I didn’t want chickens – it’s just that I assumed (correctly) that they would be more of a hassle than we were bargaining for and we were probably romanticizing the notion of owning them.

Then my uncle sent an email saying that his children had embarked on a 4H project hatching chicks from eggs. At the end of it they planned to donate the chicks to a farm. Unfortunately or fortunately for me, they wound up coming home with us this past Easter Sunday.

Obviously we didn’t know the genders, though we crossed our fingers for 7 girls and 1 boy. Sadly, the odds were against us. As the weeks passed it became clear that we had 4 girls and 4 boys. Not the worst outcome, but not what we were hoping for either. And unlike China, the boys are next to impossible to get rid of.

No one wants male chickens. All you need is one. If you keep more than one, they will fight to the death (so I’ve been told). So what do you do with them? I can’t figure it out. I called a family friend with a farm who sounded delighted that I wanted to give away chickens until I mentioned the gender. “Well, I don’t want males. I need layers,” he explained. So what the hell do people do with the men?!

There are different types of chickens and the kind we have are meant for egg-laying, not for eating. Apparently they aren’t tasty and tender. So now I’m stuck with 3 male chickens who no one wants and who will fight each other into a bloodbath of rooster carnage in a few short months. I’m really at a loss here. Plus, I feel so terrible for them that I can’t even go into the dining room where their cardboard box resides. It’s totally out of sight and partially out of mind on this one.

So my question is this – does anyone want 3 awkward-looking and not delicious male chickens? Free delivery.

happiness on delay

I’m a happy-delayer. What I mean is that I like to intentionally deprive myself of good things and get the bad things out of the way first. I’m sure a lot of people do this – getting the difficult tasks done makes it more likely that you’ll finish the whole project. The problem is that I married a non happy-delayer (an instant-gratifier?), which has led to some interesting arguments.

For example: if I bought a flavor of juice that I didn’t really care for, I would be sure to buy a better flavor the next time I went shopping. I would not, however, open the new juice, drink the new juice, or even think about the new juice until the old juice was gone – not until I had suffered through it. Eric, on the other hand, will forget about the old juice the second the new juice hit the refrigerator shelf. I try to argue him on this point and say, “Why don’t you finish the old one first?” to which he replies logically, “Because it’s disgusting.”

Sometimes I wonder if it kind of goes back to the whole discarded food thing (doesn’t everything?). Maybe it’s a waste not, want not situation. But then I think that no, it’s actually more than that. I enjoy the anticipation of waiting for the new juice. With every sip of the gross old juice, I think, “This takes me one step closer to deliciousness.” And it’s a proven fact that the anticipation of a thing makes you happier than getting the actual thing. I read a study once that claimed employees rated their happiness much higher the week before their vacation than when they were on the actual vacation. Seems strange, but makes perfect sense in my twisted head. Once you are on vacation, it’s impossible to stop counting the days that you have left before you leave. With every fun activity, you can’t help but think “Only 3 days left of this. Then it’s back to the old grind.” But before vacation? That’s when your imagination can run wild, imagining all the exciting times that you’ll have… once you suffer through 2 more days at the office, of course.

Today I got an email from a friend into my work inbox and made myself wait to read it. I intentionally read all the emails around it and left it unread so that through each tedious task of my day, I could look forward to reading it after I had finished the self-appointed hurdles I had to jump to allow myself to read it. Did it make that hour go faster? Of course it did.

But back to my instant-gratifier hubbers. In a way, I think he can teach me something. Like… it doesn’t really profit anyone to suffer through disgusting juice. I deserve to be happy, and I deserve it right now, not later. Like that whole life’s short, eat dessert first thing; maybe I can incorporate that – at least partially – into the suffering that I somehow think is unavoidable in life. There’s enough sadness that we can’t avoid, so when it comes to those little things we can give ourselves to make the day a little brighter? That’s when it’s OK to just throw out the disgusting juice.

the Wegmans conspiracy

it's a magical place


I’ll never forget overhearing a conversation in my high school French class.

Student 1: “Hey, wanna go hang out at Wegmans after school?”
Student 2: “What’s that?”
Student 1: “Cool new grocery store.”

Now, these weren’t particularly strange students, meaning they weren’t the type to hang out at grocery stores for fun. So there had to be more to this ‘Wegmans’ than the description “grocery store” implied. I remember jotting down the name in my notebook and making a point to go check it out later that week.

From my first wide-eyed, jaw-dropped visit up until today, I have loved Wegmans. Truly, I think no grocery store in the nation, or even the world, compares. Many argue that they are expensive, but I disagree. While their specialty products and imported cheeses are a bit on the pricey side, the typical household staples are the same price or cheaper than they are at other grocers. Bags of baby carrots are always 99 cents, and I’ve never seen them cheaper than $1.29 at Giant, even on sale (side note: you know you’re a grown-up when you can give baby carrot price comparisons). I think people want to believe that it’s more expensive because it looks like it should be – the atmosphere is more beautiful, the store’s artwork is… well, artwork, and they actually make grammatically correct signs. I still smile every time I see the “15 items or fewer” line rather than the horrendously offensive (to an English major, anyway) “15 items or less” line. Employees are friendly. You know how I know? Because I used to be one! Yes, many years ago I worked as a barista at the coffee bar in the Lower Nazareth store, and I absolutely loved it. They really do treat their employees like gold and they pay well for a grocery store, which is partly (or mostly?) why most employees are so darn helpful and genuinely happy to be there. They know they’re appreciated, so they treat customers well. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if all employers were like this?

But.

I have one very big complaint, and it’s only recently that I started to notice its pervasiveness. It began years ago, when I was still working there. My mom asked me to bring home an Entenmann’s coffee cake for some guests that she had over. I went to look, but quickly realized the store didn’t carry Entenmann’s products. Not a single one of them. I left perplexed and brought home a Wegmans store brand cake instead.

Next there was the turkey incident. Since I regularly switch between Giant and Wegmans for my weekly shopping, I ordered at the deli counter without thinking, requesting “One pound of Boar’s Head turkey, please.” The deli counter person looked at me strangely. “We don’t carry Boar’s Head, we never have,” she said. So once again, I was forced to opt for the store brand. On that same trip, I headed over to the pickle section for my Claussen dill sandwich slices. I found Claussen bread & butter (ew), gigantic Claussen spears (seriously?) and in the spot where my sandwich slices belonged, the Wegmans store brand dill slices in a similar looking jar. That’s when I started to wonder.

It seems that the Wegmans philosophy is that if a brand or product is too delicious, they must refuse to carry it and offer their own store brand as the only alternative. As a girl who often buys store brand products when they are cheaper than name brands, I feel indignant about this. I mean, we can all agree that Wegmans brand items are fabulous. Their cakes? To die for. Some are better than Entenmann’s. Their pickles? Not quite Claussen, but a worthy adversary. What frustrates me is that they won’t even give me the option, but choose rather to force their store brand upon me, giving me no other pickle choice and therefore making me resent their pickles rather than happily choose them. It’s all a bit paranoid, if you ask me. What they’re really saying to customers is, “I’m afraid you won’t pick us if you have the option,” like some self-conscious teenage girl who is convinced her more attractive friend will be asked to the prom instead. But why not give me the chance? Listen, Weggies, I love my Boar’s Head meat just as much as the next sandwich eater, but if you offer your oven-roasted, honey glazed 99% fat free turkey for $1 cheaper, I will pick you every time. Same goes for all the other high-quality items you refuse to stock. Because in these tough economic times (sorry, necessary cliché drop), price trumps name brand every single time. Well, except when it comes to macaroni and cheese. You could give that stuff away and I’d probably still buy Kraft. Sorry.

wordless wednesday

I know, it’s been too long! I wish I had some good excuse, something like “I’ve been busy working on my novel,” but the truth is that I’ve been busy catching up on recorded episodes of Auction Hunters. Anyway. I do have a whole post planned out and I’ve even arranged to blog on Nazareth Patch too (yay!)… I just haven’t been motivated. I spend all day writing and when I get home at night, sometimes the last thing I want to do is stare at a computer screen. But anyway, just so y’all don’t think I gave up on the blog, here are some pics for wordless Wednesday. Or in my case, not so wordless, but not as wordy as usual, Wednesday.

how to become a mother overnight

I swear, this blog isn’t just going to be about puppies. But the dog is new and the blog is new, so this is what I have.

It’s no secret that Eric and I want to have children, but haven’t been blessed with one yet. I guess that’s a very short and compact way of summing up a much more complicated reality. But anyway, that’s not the point of this post. The point is that I used to mock people who treated their dogs like children, talked to their dogs like children, and behaved as though their dogs actually were children. Now that I have a dog, I’m starting to understand why this is so easy to do.

It all started at Marshall’s when I was shopping for a dog bed and various other accessories. I started perusing the dog toy section and thinking, “Ooh, this one’s cute. Should I get the wittle bitty lambie or the wittle bitty lion? Oh my, but then there’s a giraffe, too!”

baby toy? dog toy? both..?

Yeah. It felt suspiciously like shopping for a small child, and the similarities were not lost on me. Plus, from the moment we brought him home to live with us, Eric automatically became daddy and I became mommy. Ryder’s new tag bears our last name. It’s like we effortlessly adopted a very furry child.

And like having a new baby, I feel desperately guilty every morning when I leave him and anxious to get home to see him. The romanticized notions are basically gone, and he gets in my way and annoys me daily – you know, like when you have a kid. I’m proud of what he has learned so far – you can already tell he’s getting more comfortable in his own skin and he’s even learning how to walk properly. Our little boy is growing up so quickly…

One non-baby related thing that makes me very happy about Ryder is that he has forced me into exercise. For the past year I have made up excuse after excuse to go back to bed for an hour after waking up at 7 to pack Eric’s lunch. Every night I would go to be saying, “Tomorrow will be the day. I will stay up and do my Pilates video or maybe even go for a run. I will not go back to sleep.” And then morning would come and the bed would look so inviting that I would abandon exercise in favor of sleep. But now that I have this very active pup, I’m guilt tripped into walks in the morning. Well, the first morning was a guilt trip. Now I actually enjoy these walks, probably as much as he does. I actually have more energy during the day, and I feel just slightly less guilty about crating him all day. Eric and I even started taking evening walks, too, rather than flopping down on the couch the minute we get home from work. So all in all, this dog has improved our lives and given us a pseudo-child.

Don’t get me wrong – we still want a real baby. But he’s a nice distraction in the meantime.

must tolerate dogs

I’m not a dog person.

This may even be an understatement, especially since several friends responded to my text about getting a dog with, “What? Did pigs start flying to announce that hell froze over, too?”

The truth is that I never wanted a dog. A few years ago I would go as far as to say I disliked them, but really only when they were jumping or drooling on me. However, I married a “dog guy” and we talked about getting one since the idea of sharing our lives together finally became reality. He insisted that he needed a dog, and over time the idea grew on me. I even began to romanticize the notion, imagining a stoic companion to keep watch beside my armchair while I sipped hot cocoa and delved into a good book. In my doggie daydreams, of course, I never imagined a poorly behaved pup.

Eric and I clashed on what breed to get, and somewhat violently. I wanted a small, pocket-sized dog to carry around in my handbag and strut with down the street. His inclinations leaned more towards large, bad-ass dog that could be his best friend and not threaten his manhood while on walks. He wanted a pitbull; I wanted a pug. We both agreed that whatever dog we picked absolutely had to be a rescue from a shelter and not a pet store purebred. Since we disagreed on just about everything else about our future pet, the matter was laid to rest for the time being.

Then Friday afternoon rolled around. My mom forwarded us an email about a 7 month old Golden who needed a home – and fast. The email came with 2 snapshots, a sad tale of allergies, and a warning that whoever wanted the dog needed to make a decision before Saturday evening. We called and set up a meeting for the next morning.

We could tell Ryder was going to be a firecracker from the first time we saw him straining against his leash as his family walked him down the street. There’s just something about the way he walks – it’s as if he doesn’t quite know how to coordinate his front legs with his back legs. It was immediately apparent that this was a high energy, high maintenance dog – but he was a purebred Golden worth $1,000 that we were getting for free. He was a big dog (Eric’s happy) but a loyal, friendly dog that’s great with kids (Amanda’s happy).

Then we heard a bit about why the family was getting rid of Ryder, and that’s when I knew he was absolutely, without a doubt coming home with us. Eric already chastised me for speculating and giving credit to hearsay, so I’ll just say this – they (supposedly) did not give him the love and attention he deserved, allergies notwithstanding. It became apparent that he was my “burnt toast dog,” which went along well with my burnt toast husband and various other burnt toast people/items in my life. But that’s another story for another time.

So Ryder is our dog, and so far things are going well. He is rambunctious, excitable, and has endless stores of energy. My biggest complaint so far is the ridiculous amount of dog hair and dog dandruff all over my clean floor. It’s pretty obvious that he has never been to the groomer, so hopefully once we get that out of the way the shedding will be less intense. We took him to the dog park on Saturday afternoon and he had an absolute ball, plus he seems to play well with others. He sleeps curled next to our bed at night and follows Eric around the house wherever he goes. He clearly needs to be trained and to get comfortable in his element, but I can tell he’s a good dog already. We definitely made the right decision – though I still would not call myself a “dog person.”