The "Gift with Purchase" Trap

I haven’t written since Tuesday because of one thing or another.  On Wednesday, I wrote a draft about a deer one of my neighbors has been feeding, but I didn’t want to post the story without her permission, so I waited until afternoon.  I don’t recall what happened that afternoon, but I didn’t get to finish the blog.  Which is why my ironclad rule is to finish my blog first thing in the morning, before I get distracted by emails or anything else. 

Then Thursday, instead of writing first, I ran some errands.  One of those crucial errands was to buy some makeup at one of those "GWP" (gift with purchase) deals.  My one indulgence makeup-wise is Estee Lauder foundation.  Otherwise I buy cosmetics at the drugstore or grocery store.  If there is a difference between their products and the department store brands, it’s not worth the 500% markup.  Anyway, the only place in town having an Estee Lauder GWP within the next two months was Nordstrom’s.  I marked it on my calendar, and the appointed day arrived, which happened to be Thursday.  So I put on my best T-shirt and my second best jeans and drove clear across town to Nordstrom’s. 

I ran the shoe department gauntlet without pausing, I’m proud to say.  Then I wound my way through a jungle of cosmetics counters to Estee Lauder and bought the foundation I came for.  I was absurdly pleased that they’d raised the price of a 1 oz. bottle of colored liquid from $28.50 to $36.50.  This meant the foundation was priced high enough to render me eligible for the “gift” without having to buy anything extra that I really didn’t need.  I’m fully aware that this is ridiculous, but there I am forking over my debit card.     

When I got home and examined my free gifts, I was disappointed to find that both lipsticks were orangey shades that would look ghastly on me.  And the eye shadow “quad” likewise wouldn’t work.  So the only usable items I ended up with were a couple of creams.  Was it worth it to spend half a day driving all over town just to get a “free gift” with purchase, which I mostly can’t use, plus miss my writing time?  No. 

To make matters worse, on the way home from my dispiriting shopping expedition, I stopped for lunch.  As I chomped into my Schlotzky’s, an electrifying pain shot from one of my lower bicuspids to the top of my skull.  Apparently, that cracked tooth my dentist has been warning me about for the last two years finally gave out. 

So the next day I showed up first thing at the dentist’s office.  It was a Friday, in the midst of the annual festivities that San Antonio calls “Fiesta.”  Yesterday was the Battle of Flowers Day, which means half the businesses in town shut down, and even the schools are closed.  The dentist's office was open only until noon.  Fortunately, he squeezed me in, and, not so fortunately, I underwent an emergency root canal then and there.  So there went my writing time for that day. 

And that is why I haven’t written for three days. 

On Writing, Perspective, and Eyewitness Testimony

I was re-thinking my blog yesterday.  One phrase in particular kept going through my head:  “orgiastic bacchanalia of drunken revelry.”  I used that phrase, among others, to describe the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. 

Shortly after I posted the blog, I started to question myself.  Does “orgiastic” mean what I think it does?  What about “bacchanalia"?  (And why do you put quotation marks inside a question mark but outside a comma or period?)  So I took out my Merriam-Webster and looked up both words.  This is what M-W had to say:

Orgiastic:  (1) of, relating to, or marked by orgies (2) characterized by unrestrained emotion: frenzied.

So far, so good.  Then I looked up “bacchanalia”:

Bacchanalia:  Roman festival of Bacchus celebrated with dancing, song, and revelry.  (Bacchus is the Greek God of wine.)

That’s what I wanted to convey, all right.  Of course, it wasn't necessary to follow “orgiastic bacchanalia” with “drunken revelry.”  My description is effusively redundant, but that captures the atmosphere of Sturgis at rally time.  Or so I imagine it to be.  

Writing is an inexact art, as I suppose all art is.  Not all writing is supposed to be creative, of course, and you could argue that if you’re writing about something that really happened (i.e., nonfiction), you should stick soberly to the facts.  But it’s also a fact that emotion and perspective are woven into the memory of an event. 

Consider eyewitness testimony.  Why our legal system continues to place so much weight on eyewitness testimony is perplexing, considering how unreliable it is.  When I worked for law firms, my job sometimes involved interviewing witnesses.  I was amazed that their descriptions of the exact same event were often completely different and even contradictory. 

Yesterday I based my entire blog on one conversation that took place in a corner of the kitchen at my husband's birthday party.  Maybe a half dozen people were present at this conversation, taking an active part or just listening.  I’m sure their recollections of the same conversation would be different from mine, depending on what resonated with them.  Of course, dozens of conversations took place throughout the evening, and a blog could perhaps be written about any one of them.  You could probably write a whole book about one single party, and I’m sure it’s been done.  And each person there would write a different book. 

Writing involves not only deciding what to write about, but what to leave out.  You can’t include it all.  The result would be unfocused and not very interesting.  You just write from your own unique perspective.  What else can you do?  That's all you’ve got to work with.   

So when you think about it, it's no wonder that eyewitness testimony is so individual, and, therefore, “unreliable.”   

 

Going to Sturgis

The cookout party we hosted for my hubby’s birthday was a smashing success.  At least I had a great time, and I hope everybody else did, too.  We wondered how it would go, since most of the invitees didn’t know the others.  But it turned out to be a convivial mix of folks. 

Somehow the topic of the Sturgis motorcycle rally came up.  This huge bike rally turns the small town of Sturgis, South Dakota, into an orgiastic bacchanalia of drunken revelry.  I’ve been to the ROT Rally in Austin, a smaller version of the same, so I can only imagine what goes on in Sturgis.  Whenever James has expressed a desire to attend this annual rite of insane drinking, macho posturing, and sexual promiscuity, I’ve gently let him know that could only happen over my dead body. 

At the cookout, one of our neighbors was actually trying to convince me to let James go. 

He said, “We don’t even care about going into Sturgis—we’ll stay at a Best Western in Rapid City.” 

Righhhggggt. 

“It’s for the scenery – to see the Black Hills, Mt. Rushmore, and, ya know, those other scenic places around there.” 

Umm-hmmm.  “If it’s for the scenery, why not go any old time of year?”  Like in the spring or fall instead of August?  That sounds like torture to me—to be stuck on a motorcycle for hours at a time, a hot wind blasting your face and waves of heat shimmering up off the asphalt.  I don’t get it.  James has explained many times, “You’re close to nature on a motorcycle.  You feel it, you smell it, you see it up close.”

OK, then ride a bicycle.  It’s safer and you can actually smell the roses instead of get a blurry glimpse as you whiz by.  I understand that bicycles don’t have the panache of a motorcycle.  Motorcycles reek of danger, risk, machismo.  Bicycles conjure up skinny guys in funny helmets, who don’t seem to be having any fun.  They all seem to be wearing the same grim expression.  Think “motorcycle” and an entirely different picture springs to mind:  hairy, muscular dudes wearing tattoos and dirty jeans.  I suppose that type appeals to some women, but I suspect, like lifting weights, the display is more for the other guys than for the ladies.  Actually, James and his motorcycle friends are more like “Wild Hogs” than “The Wild One.”  They are just middle-aged (to put it kindly) guys who like to dress up like badass dudes on the occasional weekend.  Which is harmless. 

Plus, as some of the women at the party pointed out, while he’s gone to Sturgis, I can take that opportunity to do something I want to do, whether it’s shopping in Dallas, visiting an old college friend, or maybe holing up in a cabin somewhere and having my own little writing retreat.  They have an excellent point. 

At some point in this discussion, I look over at James, and suddenly I know.  “If I tell him he can go, he won’t want to anymore.” 

So this morning, I casually throw out, “Honey, it’s been awhile since you’ve been on your bike.  Why don’t you go for a ride with somebody?  In fact, why not just go ahead and take that trip to Sturgis?  I don’t mind.  Really.”

There was a slight pause.  Then my dear husband, who’s been vigorously campaigning for the Sturgis rally for years, said, “Nah, I don’t really want to go.  That’s a long trip for a motorcycle.” 

I look at him, pretending to be shocked.  Finally I shrug, “OK.  But if you change your mind, you have my blessing.”  I’m slightly disappointed.  I was already planning my own little getaway. 

There’s a lesson here somewhere.  When you push somebody to do this or that, their natural inclination is to resist.  Then one day, you get tired of pushing and just give up.  Suddenly there’s nothing for the other person to fight against anymore.  They might just slide into the position you’ve been trying to maneuver them into all that time. 

Interesting how that works.

Have you had an experience like this?  Leave a comment!

The Heirloom Ficus Tree

I didn’t write anything yesterday.  We’ve been getting ready for a cookout this weekend for my husband’s birthday.  Getting the house and yard ready has required a lot of work, all done in the space of the last few days.

I’ve been housecleaning like mad, rearranging, packing up clutter, doing all those little chores I’ve been meaning to do for months but haven’t. Yesterday I had the carpets cleaned.  The carpet guy went around with the black light they use in forensics to find blood stains.  It seems they also work for urine stains.  He found an alarming amount of dog urine throughout the house.  I always clean such accidents right away, but it seems they soak down into the padding and you can’t get them out with normal cleaning.  So he employed a urine-gobbling enzyme solution on the worst areas.  Wood floors are starting to look like an attractive option. 

Then there’s the yard.  This winter wreaked havoc on the landscaping.  Some plants didn’t survive in spite of the fact we scurried outside to cover them up on the coldest evenings.  So in the past few days we’ve made multiple trips to plant nurseries.  We’ve dug, planted, mulched, trimmed, weeded, and watered.  It’s exhausting and I hope we don’t have to do it again for another year.  What happened to the neighborhood kids who used to go house to house asking for work to earn extra cash?  I haven’t seen them in years.  The kids in our neighborhood have better cars and, I'm almost certain, more pocket money than I have. 

But the most devastating casualty of the harsh winter was the heirloom ficus tree.  It’s been in James’ family for over 40 years, beginning with James' grandmother.  It’s a heavy responsibility to keep the heirloom alive and well.  Up until this winter, it wasn’t a problem.  The tree was full and magnificent.  It provided sanctuary for numberless birds' nests, especially for cardinals.  We enjoyed watching the babies hatch and grow and the parents feed them tasty bits of worms and bugs.  Now the heirloom ficus looks all but dead.  Its branches are completed denuded, except a few green leaves sprouting down low on the trunk.  Needless to say, it’s not fit for public viewing–and may never be again—so it will be relegated to the garage for the Saturday cookout. 

I still have a long To Do list and need to get cracking.  It will all be worth it when we enjoy the company of our friends and family tomorrow.

P.S. I did make it to the Thursday night belly dance classes (two in a row) last night.  Today, I'm getting by on Tylenol and Icy Hot.   

Elsekka, Here I Come

Back to belly dance –

I finally signed up for the Elsekka performance, on the last day of the deadline, along with another classmate.  It was an “I’ll sign up if you sign up” type of thing.  I didn’t want to be the lone beginner out there alongside Miss K and the accomplished advanced student.  I’m still going to be the least adept performer, but at least my classmate has as much stage fright as I do. 

Yes, I’m a bit jittery about it.  Every new snippet of this dance involves something I’ve never done before.  This last section involves standing on the toes, with one foot in front of the other, and bending the knees up and down while at the same time executing hip snaps.  Hip snaps are an elemental belly dance component.  You snap one hip upward, then drop it back down to neutral position.  If you’re wearing a coin belt, the snap is accompanied by a satisfying little jingle.  Of course, all the while you must maintain your posture and arm position, without bobbling around or, God forbid, windmilling.  Oh, there are so many ways to screw up!  And only one way to do it right!

Hip snaps are the easy part.  For me, the hard part is balancing on my toes while doing knee bends.  So last night at the gym I worked a bit on lunges, even though my orthopedic doc said lunges are a knee injury waiting to happen.  To minimize the possibility of tearing loose any knee cartilage, I held on to a piece of equipment as I did knee bends on my toes.  My quads are complaining today, which I take as a sign that the correct muscles got a work out.

Like everything else, mastering this small movement involves repetition, just plain old sweaty practice. 

Not long after I started studying belly dance, I was stymied by a basic step that nobody else in class seemed to have any trouble with.  You stand on one leg, knee bent, and simply point the other leg out and back in.  So all your weight is on one bent leg, albeit briefly.  At that time, my left hip was still bad.  I just didn’t have the strength (plus it hurt like the dickens) to do it.  So I practiced at home by holding onto a chair for support.  Eventually I could do this move without the chair and without pain.   

The happy unintended consequence of this and other belly dance practices is that now my hip is fine, at least 90% of the time.  Belly dance has done more for my hip than physical therapy, anti-inflammatories, and gym workouts put together.  This ought to be studied and written up in medical journals.  Seriously. 

The Grammar Police

It’s nice having a handy husband.  James can fix anything around the house or yard and a lot of things on a vehicle.  And he usually has a really nifty tool just for that purpose, often a tool I didn’t know existed before.  For example, there’s a cunning device that works like a more efficient version of the good old coat hanger.  It’s a rod with a handle on one end and a little grabber thing on the other, like a very skinny arm and hand.  It’s just the thing for pulling hair out of drains.  When I think of all those hours I spent toiling over drains using bobby pins to dig out one gooey strand at a time....  I've found other household uses for "the grabber."  It did a creditable job of cleaning lint out of the dryer hose that vents outside.  (Although neighbors might have wondered what I was doing crouched behind the bushes for 20 minutes.)  Then I used it to retrieve socks that had fallen behind the dryer. 

I used to pride myself on my mechanical ability.  When I was a single mom, I could change the oil in my car, replace a toilet valve, and, my favorite, take a vacuum cleaner apart, remove whatever was clogging it, and put it back together.  Now I realize I have limitations.  The other day James asked me, “How long has the car been making this noise?”  I asked, “What noise?”  This is a fairly common exchange between us.  I just don’t notice. 

On the other hand, there are things that he doesn’t notice that jump out at me.  Like bad grammar and misspelled words, especially when used on public airwaves by people who should know better.  We’ll be driving somewhere, listening to the radio, and suddenly I exclaim, “Oh, my God!  Did you hear that?” 

“Hear what?” 

“The guy on the radio just said 'theirselves'!”  I’m beside myself.  “That’s inexcusable.  He speaks English for a living!” 

I obsessively point out grammatical errors on billboards and misspelled words on those little news banners that run at the bottom of the TV screen.  o matter that a hurricane is heading our way—they misspelled hurricane!  My daughter shares my horror at the abuse of the language.  Not long ago, she gave me a book entitled, I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar, subtitled "A Collection of Egregious Errors, Disconcerting Bloopers, and Other Linguistic Slip-Ups."  It's full of pictorial examples and comments like, “Teaching children the wrong place to put apostrophes is child abuse.”  It’s nice to know there are others like us out there.

Sure, I understand the language is always evolving, and what was ungrammatical a few years ago, like ending a sentence with a preposition, is now perfectly OK.  And I realize the problem is not in the same league as terrorism or the price of gasoline.  But when a college graduate says, “I didn’t do nothing last night,” something is seriously wrong with our educational system.  For self-appointed grammar police like me, bad English, bad punctuation, and bad spelling is just another sign of civilization sliding toward an abyss of ignorance and incivility.  And it seems you can’t do nothin’ about it.

Backyard Wildlife

Check out the little umbrella plant island below.  Can you see any frogs?  Believe it or not, there are six frogs on that island. 



Umbrella island with 6 frogs


You can see some of them in the photo below - especially the big fellow at the bottom.  They blend in well, don't they?  You should hear the din they make in the evenings!  Neighbors on all sides can hear them.  I just love "my" frogs.  I'm quite protective of them, especially now that I know frogs are disappearing at an alarming rate, all over the world.  The reasons are unclear but may have something to do with disappearing habitat and pesticides.  (Use organic gardening!)


Close-up of frogs



Garter snake in back yard


 Whoa - here's another bit of backyard wildlife.  This is a harmless garter snake.  He's only about as thick as my thumb.  He was just moseying around looking for bugs to eat.  He blends in pretty well, too.  If I hadn't been examining the ground for dog poo to pick up, I'd have missed him. 

Now, some of you probably hate snakes.  I've never been afraid of snakes.  Maybe that's partly because I grew up in West Texas where we have a lot of snakes.  I have a healthy respect for rattlers, cooperheads, and the like.  But the fact is 90% of snakes are harmless, and they eat critters we don't want around, like mice and bugs.  So leave them alone!  And if you've ever held a snake, you know they are not slimy and scaly.  They are warm and smooth.  And they don't bite unless you give them a good reason to. 

I don't have a problem with tarantulas or scorpions, for the same reason.  They were everywhere when I was growing up. 

Although I have to confess there was one time a scorpion scared me.  I was visiting my brother and his wife in Odessa, after I'd been living in Bolivia for several years.  In the middle of the night I went to the guest bath and saw a huge scorpion on the little rug in front of the toilet.  I thought about it for awhile and decided I didn't want to mess with it.  So I woke up my sister-in-law.  I stood there in the dark beside her bed and quavered, "There's a big scorpion in the bathroom." 

There was a pause as Sharla blinked up at me.  She finally answered, "So?"  Spoken like a true West Texas gal.  I'd been away too long.  So I slunk back to the bathroom, feeling ashamed of my cowardice.  I think Sharla took pity on me and took care of the scorpion after all.  Since then I've approached them fearlessly.  When my children were small, if I ran across a scorpion in the house, I'd catch it in a jar and give them a "Scorpions are our friends" mini-lecture.  Then I'd put it back outside.  Here's one excellent reason for saving scorpions:  they eat fire ants.  

Cockroaches are another matter.  Put me in a room with a big flying cockroach and I'll come running out screaming like a banshee.