The 'Junk' in My Husband's Drawers

Chuckle #500 | February 27, 2013
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Everyone lives with a certain amount of ‘mess’ in their lives – from an overflowing junk drawer to an unmade bed.  But if you have more than two junk drawers (or an entire junk closet, basement or garage), you could be a nascent hoarder. 

How can you tell the simply messy mom from the future reality TV show star?  The list below might help.  These are things that are traditionally ‘hoarded’ in the early stages of pathological collecting.  Let’s see if the shoe fits.

·         Old magazines, catalogues and newspapers

·         Things that ‘could’ be useful for making crafts

·         Clothes that ‘might’ be worn one day

·         Broken things

·          Freebies

This list scares the living toenail collection out of me because I have ALL these things in droves.  I don’t purposefully keep this stuff around; I’m just too lazy to throw it away.  Or am I too attached?

  

I need a cure for incipient hoarderdom right now, and the best cure I can think of is to watch the show Buried Alive.  After watching this show, many people end up throwing all their belongings out, in a visceral ‘reverse-hoarding’ reaction.  That’s what can happen when people see someone store bags of dirty diapers in their fridge and then use them to make soup stock.

Very few people want to end up as a diaper-stock-making, wispy-haired unwashed person sleeping on a roach-infested newspaper-stuffed mattress.  Watching Buried Alive is an extreme treatment, like skipping straight to the third ghost in A Christmas Carol.  You’ll get a dumpster the next day.

Of course my junk is completely normal. 

I have only one junk drawer and it’s in my kitchen.  My junk drawer helps me feel in control and organized because I have an official place to put things – things that I otherwise would leave lying around in piles, and while that might sound a tiny bit OCD, it doesn’t mean I’m a hoarder. 

My junk drawer is where I put all those leftover Ikea parts that will one day turn out to be extremely important, but only after I throw them out, a classic Catch 22.  But that still doesn’t make me a hoarder.

My junk drawer also contains things that my husband has neglected, or refused, to fix, including some wanky stuff from his own ‘junk’ drawers.  I’ve got a busted doorbell, 3 tassels that fell off an expensive living room pillow, and a bobble head doll that needs a massive dose of superglue if he ever hopes to bobble again.

This all feels normal to me, but I do have this little problem with buttons that worries me.  I just can’t bring myself to throw them away.  I have to wonder what it all means.  Do I have a pathological attachment to things?  Do I have what they call a “persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value”?

(I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that my mother might read this and give me back all the useless stuff I’ve stored in her attic for the past 20 years.)

The real answer to that question will come when I clean out my junk drawer, which has recently reached ‘maximum engorgement’.   If only it were self-immolating in its last stages of life, like a phoenix; but no, I have to clean it myself.  If I don’t clean it soon, I might as well give up and start acquiring a few dozen underfed cats to stash in my basement.

My husband would be able to clean out our junk drawer in in under an hour, but that’s because he would wait until I was away, then throw everything out, even the loose change.

I need a full day to properly sort, organize and obsess over every little thing I find.  Nothing should go to waste.  I don’t know if that’s hoarding, or just normal Yankee behavior.   Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

On the positive side, I’m almost positive that I don’t have a serious hoarder problem because I recently threw out a dried up piece of umbilical cord and three Walmart watches that needed their batteries replaced.  As it turns out, the batteries cost more than the watches so this made a lot of sense.  And who really needs a dried up piece of umbilical cord?  It’s not like it’s a button.

I take this as a sign that I can let go.  Now, if I could just bring myself to part with the bobble head doll I could call myself cured. 

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Seeking Self Determination in the Self-Checkout Lane

Chuckle #499 | February 20th, 2013
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I like the concept of self-checkout.  I like having a DIY option, just in case all the other lanes are filled with nearsighted little old ladies clutching their checkbooks.  For that reason alone, self-checkout is a great idea.

 

It’s the public humiliation that usually ruins it for me.

Checking myself out is almost never faster than standing in line and waiting patiently for a professional cashier, but I do it anyway.  Just like I’ll always take the creative detour around a traffic accident, even though I know it will take longer and be a lot more aggravating. 

It’s all about controlling my own destiny and self-determination.

A body in motion, especially an American one, is happier than one standing in line.  This is human nature.  This is why we pump our own gas, hate Disney World, and get rip-roaring mad when we have to queue to vote.

Before self-checkout was invented, long lines were a free will buzz kill.  Sure we could buy as much ice cream as we wanted, but it would melt before we could get it home.

So for better or for worse, self-checkout is here to stay.

They say that curiosity killed the cat and the tablet killed the netbook.  Will American ideals kill the cashier?  Maybe, maybe not...

What I like about self-checkout is that I get to play cashier without having to actually take a minimum wage job.  What I don’t like about self-checkout is realizing that I’m totally unqualified to be a cashier. 

Being a cashier is surprisingly difficult.  Fruit and veggie codes are challenging - can you say organic pomegranate?  Coupon rules are downright incomprehensible, and barcodes are hidden as if they’re pirate treasure.

Grocery stores don’t place a limit on how many items you can ‘self’ checkout because the process itself is self-limiting.   I can handle about 4 things.  After that it gets all kinds of self-checkout ugly.

Even if I manage to ring the item up properly, I am never swift enough to ‘PLACE ITEM IN 

BAG!’ within the .05 seconds allowed by the grocery store computer.   I then spend 10 minutes in handcuffs trying to convince the self-checkout warden that I was NOT trying to steal that third lime. 

Meanwhile, all the men in line glare at me like I’m frog spawn.  And yes, they are all men.

Self-checkout was, of course, created by guys, for guys.  Men are impatient and prefer anonymity when shopping.  They are definitely NOT striking up a conversation or holding your place in line while you run and get some milk.  That’s considered a hostile action.

For them, a visit to the grocery store is a black ops mission, not a social occasion.  Self-checkout is their communication and command center.  Don’t get in their way, speak out of turn, or hold up the line.

The true brilliance of the self-checkout lane is that stores are giving their guy customers exactly what they think they want, saving money on staff, and reducing complaints about service.  Guys are happy because they’ve reclaimed the freedom, liberty and self-reliance that they thought they’d lost.   

Good for them.

Self-checkout might be as American as Apple Pie and Call of Duty, but I’ve pretty much gone back to the manned lane and my favorite cashier.  Call me un-American, or worse, a Luddite, but self-determination is about having choices, not about what you do with them. 

Don’t be so quick to judge.

Someday there may be no cashiers at all, but until then, I choose Veronica in lane twelve.  I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even own a pair of handcuffs, or if she does, she keeps them at home where they belong.

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What Came First, the Chicken or the Alpaca?

February 13th, 2013
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Last weekend my husband cracked open an egg to make me breakfast - and out popped two egg yolks.  I know what you’re thinking: How astonishing!  A man got up early to fix his wife breakfast!  Not surprising at all, in fact.  He fixes me breakfast all the time.  The freak show egg, however, was a bit unusual. 

  

“Ew,” said my daughter.

 

“I’ll throw it out,” said my husband. 

“Hold on there just a minute, Captain Suburbia!” I protested, thinking this is what I get for marrying a boy who never owned chickens, a cow, or a pony.  Toss a perfectly good, cage free all-natural 50 cent egg just because it has two yolks?  I don’t think so.  Two yolks are double the fun.  Even a Gemini like me will relish a two yolk egg, in spite of those ‘eating my twin’ twinges of guilt. 

When I was a kid we owned a slew of Bantam hens (midget chickens, for you city folk).  My job was to collect the eggs.  The only ‘bad’ egg, in my humble six year old opinion, was the one with the half formed chick inside.  This is a delicacy in Guangxi, but I’m not Chinese, and the thought of eating unborn baby chicks is slightly less than lip smacking. But double yolk eggs are an entirely different matter.

Two yolks is a sign from the gods - a run out right now and buy a lottery ticket kind of lucky omen.

Or maybe not.  Is finding a two yolk egg really all that lucky?  How many lottery tickets should I be buying?  Should I quit my job and hope that something else even better comes along before we lose the house?  These are big questions, big enough to require at least 15 minutes of intensive online chicken reproduction research.

It turns out that getting a two-yolker is more common than you might think.  Young hens that aren’t quite hormonally settled can often drop two egg cells and their accompanying yolks into the oviductular canal (the egg chute) at once.  The shell forms around these two yolks, the egg is laid, and there you go, a double yolk egg. 

So you can stop ‘laying’ that hogwash on your kids about where eggs come from and tell them the truth next time.

 

What you don’t want to find when you crack open your morning egg is ‘no yolk’. According to some quite creepy Wiccan and Wizard websites, the lack of a yolk indicates that something seriously evil is at work.  Back in the 1600s, finding a no yolk egg was enough to get you thrown into the pond.

 

So if you happen to find a yolkless egg, make sure you bury it in the backyard with some suitable offerings to Zod to appease his bloodthirsty lust for the raw hearts of tiny children.  Or take your chances with that egg white omelet. It’s totally up to you. 

Surprisingly enough, a lot of very educated people don’t realize that an egg is not a baby chicken that was snatched from its mother and put in the fridge before it could hatch.  Hens lay an egg roughly once a day, whether conception or ‘fertilization’ has occurred or not.  As a woman who has given birth – vaginally - three times, I feel for them.

This might be TMI for many of you, but I think this is important info.  Now you can assure your kids that they are NOT eating the unborn without having to get into a complicated discussion about reproductive rights.  Kids don’t get enough protein as it is; you can’t have them refusing to eat eggs on moral grounds.

You see, only a rooster can fertilize an egg, and that’s by having sexual relations with a hen.  I know from first-hand experience that this involves a lot of flapping.  When I was little, my dad told me that all that all the flapping meant that the hen was happy to see the rooster.  I’d like to point out that the hens did NOT look ‘happy’ to see the rooster and it was pretty clear to me, even then, that my dad was attempting a massive cover-up. 

My embarrassing lack of chicken reproductive knowledge is all on him.

The problem of fertilization is why you don’t see any roosters around egg farms.  No one wants to find a baby chick sunny-side up on toast.  In fact, roosters are not only useless in the egg farming business - they can be downright counter-productive.

A chicken will lay more eggs if a rooster is not around to harass her about stuff.  The same way shopping is more relaxing for us if we don’t bring our husbands.  So if you are thinking around raising chickens (which I am), don’t get a rooster.

As you can see, I’ve done a lot of research about chickens.  That’s because I’ve been wanting backyard chickens for a while now.  The only thing keeping me from pulling the trigger is the smell (worse than cat litter), and my husband.  He thinks that chickens will be the first step down a slippery slope to Alpaca farming. 

He’s probably right.  Have you seen an Alpaca?  They’re absolutely adorable.

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Three-way Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...I'm pretty sure I'm not that tall

Chuckle #497 | February 6th, 2013
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The dress was cute.  I wasn’t in love with it, but when something’s on triple markdown my fashion standards, which are already pretty low, drop through the floor.   Throw in a dressing room mirror that is designed to make you look and feel like a supermodel, and you’ve got the perfect shopping storm.

Yeah, I bought the dress.  It was a terrible color, but it was a steal.

  

Women aren’t ninnies.  We know that stores use ‘skinny’ mirrors in dressing rooms -  mirrors that take off 15 pounds and add 5 inches in height - but we don’t care.  This kind of self-delusion is healthy.  Some ultra-feminists might call this collusion, but I, for one, appreciate the efforts of Retail America to improve my self-esteem.

Corporate good intentions aside, my new dress made me look like a Quaker farm hand.  But I didn’t know that until I got home and tried it on in front of a normal mirror under a 100 watt light bulb.

But that’s OK.  Because shopping is about wants, not needs.  And I still cling to the memory of how great I felt in that dressing room, on that day…in a dress that will eventually be donated to Goodwill with the tags still on.

I try my best not to buy ugly clothes, but it’s hard because I’m a sucker for a sale.  As a result, I have to have a LOT of systems in place to protect myself.

It helps to shop with friends who are obnoxiously opinionated.  That pretty much describes all my friends, and even my acquaintances.   My friends are blunt about dresses that cling in all the wrong places and they aren’t afraid to tell me that I am way too old for baby doll blouses.  I adore my friends.

But it’s hard to find a friend who’s willing to shop with me when I only like to shop in places like Marshalls, T.J. Maxx, and Burlington.  So I often rely on vindictive dressing room ladies who’ve been on their feet all day for a second opinion.

“Do you think this dress makes me look like Audrey Hepburn?” I venture timidly.

She fixes me with her expert, lazy eye.  “I think it makes you look like you’ve been shoppin’ in the junior department again.”

Oh SNAP.  I didn’t buy the dress, but I still think about it.  The dressing room lady could have been wrong, but I wasn’t about to defy her when she has the power to arbitrarily to limit me to 6 items instead of 10.

Sometimes I find myself in the checkout line with a shopping cart full of iffy clearance rack finds, and I have to get tough with myself.  That’s when I institute the ‘three times’ rule.  I can’t buy something until I’ve tried it on three times to make sure that I am really truly committed.  

My friends think this is the worse rule of all because it means spending another four hours in the dressing room with me.   (Did I mention that I adore my friends?)

If all else fails, I initiate the ‘only buy two things’ rule.  But what if I want four things?  Too bad, I can only choose two.  This takes an immense amount of discipline.  Some days I get really angry with myself for making up arbitrary rules that force me to choose between an adorable pair of flats and an embroidered peasant skirt. 

   

If I really want to restrain myself, I shop with my teenage daughters.  I almost never buy anything when I shop with them because I am too busy humiliating them.  I try on lingerie in the three-way mirror.  I make friends with the lady in the stall next to me.  I roam the store shouting their names.  I am the non plus ultra of embarrassing mothers.

To be honest, I do this stuff just to mess with them.  A little bit of humiliation goes a long way with teenage girls.  It will either make them run away, or toughen them up.  On the bright side, if they run away I can spend their clothes budget on myself. 

If you don’t have teenagers, the next best shopping buzz-kill is the three-way mirror.  Avoid it at all costs. 

God had the foresight to put my butt, bumps and bulges behind me, so I wouldn’t have to look at them.  (Even more proof that God is indeed, a woman.)  The butt has been in ‘the back’ for every species since the beginning of time.  Darwin and God were on the same page in this regard.  But the three-way mirror has changed all that.

The fact that humans can now see their own bodies from nine different angles could have a serious impact on the evolution of our species.

People worry about meteorites and global warming…who knows how women will respond to such a blow to their self-esteem? 

Could the mirror on the wall be the end of us all? 
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