Monthly Archives: June 2011

June 11, 2011 · 0:00

Downsizing

My husband John and I had an appointment to look at smaller houses with a realtor.  We were going to go this afternoon, but after going to the grocery store early this morning, I cancelled.

“Why did you do that?”  asked John, puzzled.  John wants to get rid of the big house.  He wants to get rid of the big mortgage.

“Sorry,” I told my husband.  “I can’t downsize.”

“Why not?” he asked again.

“Toilet paper.”

“Huh?”

Everyone I know talks “downsizing.”  Our friends are mostly middle-aged like us.  We all bought 4 bedroom 2-1/2 bath colonials back when our kids were small – we thought it was a legal requirement that came with the birth certificates.  Now the kids are off at college, or off working, or just off.  Occasionally friends decide to downsize because they are not yet empty nesters and are trying to push their overgrown open-mouthed offspring/bloodsuckers out of the nest.

As I said I had just come home from the grocery store.  With 36 rolls of toilet paper.  Double sized rolls.  That means I had actually just come home with 72 rolls.  For two adults and one dog.

What made me do it?  We really only need a fraction of that.  Why not get a six-pack?  And then a six-pack of toilet paper?

Earlier, I stood in the aisle at my local Safeway and considered my options.  Hmmmm.  I thought.  This HUGE package costs $15.00.  The size I really need costs $9.00.  But the 36-which-equals-72 roll package was only 6 bucks more.  I had no choice.  I bought the big package.  It was cheaper.  Unless you totaled up today’s groceries.  Then it wasn’t cheaper.   But into the cart it went.

I continued on down the aisle.  Damn, I thought.  I need paper towels too.  Sixteen rolls?  Why not?

Go through any grocery store.  You can buy small, but it’s gonna cost you.  You can buy a six-pack of soda for $4.99.  Better still, you can buy a twelve-pack of soda for $6 or two twelve-packs for $12 and get three twelve-packs FREE!  What a deal.  You save $18 just by spending $6 more than you were going to spend in the first place!   I must buy them.  Just because I stopped drinking soda in 1996 doesn’t mean I should pass up this deal.

Twenty-four 12 oz. bottles of pure spring water?  Sure.  I only have six left from the two dozen I bought in 2007.

These promos work on me every time.

The price of wine also goes down as the quantity goes up.  I can buy one bottle of my favorite Pinot Grigio for $9.00 or I can buy two for $7.50 each.  If I want to buy even more, I can buy six or more bottles for $6.00 each, get totally sloshed and not really care what I’m spending.  There’s some logic there.

It even happened in the produce section. I wanted one small container of blueberries and one of strawberries.  Instead I took home two hefty containers of each.

“Are you going on a ‘berries only’ diet?” asked John as he helped me unload the groceries when I got home.

“No,” I responded.  “It was ‘buy one, get one free.’  I couldn’t let them go to waste, could I?”

“Well at least not until the extras have been in our fridge for a few weeks,” John muttered.

So you see, I can’t downsize.  I cannot get a smaller house. I can’t even get a smaller car.  How would I get my groceries home?

I think I’m going to call the realtor back.  We need a bigger house.

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June 8, 2011 · 0:00

Gizmos and Gadgets

In the last two years electronics manufacturers replaced  product instruction booklets with human tears — mine.

Until 2008, each computer, radio, TV, cellphone, or other electronic device had a little booklet that told all about the product I’d just bought.  Important things.  How to turn it on, for example.  It is not always that obvious, you know.  The booklet also told me how to turn it off, and how to mute it.  That last one’s especially important given the current crop of advertisements, mostly for other gadgets that won’t have booklets either.

Those were the days.  I remember fondly that I would pull out the instruction booklet first.  If I’d had any inkling that the lines and those pages would soon disappear, I would have treated it better.  But when I’d get something new, I’d push the manual aside, heartlessly toss it to the floor and completely ignore it.  I would turn on the gizmo and figure out exactly how to make it do just what I wanted done.  I could always figure out how to use it, even the most complicated ones.  The instructions were then put into the drawer next to the oven with the rest of the booklets.  That drawer collapsed in 2009 under the weight of instruction booklets for the 4,153 electronic devices we’ve purchased since we bought the house in 2002.

Now, I understand the need to cut back on paper usage.  I am all for saving rainforests I’ll never see, limiting emissions that may or may not be causing global warming.  I’m into all that sort of environmental crap, really I am.  But  they cut out my little booklets at exactly the same moment that they made the damn gizmos completely incomprehensible.

When manufacturers first removed my instruction booklets, I was brave.  I didn’t cry for the first three or four hours while I pushed every frickin’ button on my new cell phone, hoping in vain that one of them might just turn it “ON.” Naturally, the power button was the one I didn’t press because that had a picture of what clearly represented “OFF” and the bloomin’ button is RED.  Am I the only person who ever played Red Light/Green Light????  RED IS STOP.  GREEN IS GO.  Jeez.

OK, I know I should have gotten over this particular problem with my very first Windows product, but I didn’t.  And I won’t.  Not ever.  And I will never feel stupid for not pressing OFF when I want ON.

Still, I do try to not be a crybaby.  And sometimes I make it.  For a while.

I didn’t cry for 6.5 hours when my new “plug in and use” laptop couldn’t be.  Equally exasperating, this laptop had no installed software that would have permitted use once it was plugged in.  As I sobbed to a Geek Squad Rep at Best Buy, I was told “there’s no software on it because people like to individualize.”

“I’m pretty sure,”  I said, pulling my head out of the paper bag I’d been breathing into, “that Neanderthals like me who buy products advertised to be ‘plugged in and used’ aren’t all that into individualization.”

It has gotten to the point where sometimes I don’t even bother crying.  I just throw stuff.  In fact, hospital emergency rooms see a 5-fold rise in shoulder, elbow, wrist and foot injuries during the holiday season as consumers throw, fling or kick their electronic Christmas gifts across the room, trying to miss the Christmas tree it took them so damn long to hang lights on.   Personally, I worry that I might decapitate relatives who wander into my house within 24 hours of a technology acquisition, when I have just sent something flying.

So all that is left for me to do now is cry.  And I do.  Every single time I buy something.  I’m considering going for a Guinness World Record for “Most electronics-related crying jags.”  Other contenders should just throw in the towel.  Or a tissue.

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June 5, 2011 · 0:00

Manitoba Bound

It’s time to export all the stupid people in the United States to another country.  Congress will go along with it as long as we can designate “stupid people” a commodity.  A trade lawyer I consulted suggested that designating them as “spare parts” under the Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement would permit widespread exportation of stupid people from all over the country.  It would also ensure that only “real” stupid people and not fake or “counterfeit” stupid people qualify.  US export numbers will skyrocket, the debt limit will take care of itself, and we won’t owe China a penny.  Or a Yuan.  The economy will be saved.  More importantly, I won’t have to deal with them any more.

I decided to send them to Canada – nobody lives there, anyway.  Manitoba, to be exact.  Why?  It’s easier to spell than “Saskatchewan.”  Manitoba is right there in the middle of the continent where the stupid people won’t be able to hurt themselves.  Like one big padded room.   They will be safe, happy, well cared for.  Cable TV.  Internet access — even broadband.  I’m not unkind, you know.  A team of teenagers will be available to help them turn on their TVs, stereos, DVD players, mobile phones.  Friends and family members can visit anytime.

There are a lot of stupid people in the US, you say, so where do we start?   We’re starting with the ones that bug me the most.  It’s only fair.  After all I am the brains here.

I deal with stupid people every day.  I work in medical products litigation.  Stupid people believe the TV lawyers’ mantra “Sue then Retire.”  Each time I walk into my office, I am smacked upside the head by the stupid actions of stupid people who sue for big bucks.  I learn way too much about them, sort of like when you interrupt your 74-year-old uncle in the shower.  You’d be happier without the image.

          I want them outta here.

 Here’s a contender:

 A woman named Mona was sick.   Mona went to her doctor and was given a 30 day prescription for the drug that would treat her.  She took it to the pharmacy where the pharmacist typed up a label and put it onto the bottle that the manufacturer dispensed the tablets in, because conveniently, those pills already came packaged in bottles of 30 pills.  Terrific!  Safe!  Foolproof!  How many times have you gotten medicine this way?  Loads of times, I wager.  Have you gotten it that way lately?  Nope.  Thank Mona.

Now Mona is a very precise woman.  She carefully monitors everything.  She uses a pedometer to count her steps, compares food package labels. Understands the food pyramid.  She doesn’t walk when the “Don’t Walk” sign starts blinking.  She knows the calorie, carbohydrate and vitamin content of everything she swallows. Brushes her hair precisely 100 strokes each night.  Flosses.  Therefore, she read the label that came with the pills from the drugstore, too.  She opened the sealed package, and poured out her first dose.  That’s when Mona’s ticket to Manitoba was punched.

Because when she dumped out that first pill into her hand, she also poured out a tiny crunchy plastic package about a half inch square.  It contained salicylic acid – packages like that are put into many products to help keep the contents dry and to prevent mold.  The little package in her hand said “DO NOT EAT.”  So she didn’t.  At all.  She didn’t eat for 30 days while she took her medicine.

She didn’t call her doctor and scream:

          “You never told me I couldn’t eat!” 

She did not call the pharmacist and say:

          “Can I at least have toast?  Or Jell-O?”  

And when she got very ill from (1) being stupid and (2) not eating for 30 days, did she feel embarrassed?  Did she pack for Manitoba?  No.  She sued the pharmacy and the drug manufacturer for millions of dollars for pain, suffering, and lost wages.  She won.

So Mona goes first.

And the woman who fell into the shopping mall fountain while texting and then sued the shopping mall?  You saw her.  She went onto local and national news shows to tell the story and to complain that no one helped her after she fell.  She said repeatedly that she was embarrassed that everyone she knew had seen her fall into the fountain on YouTube.  She was upset at being called “Fountain Lady.”  She appeared on television voluntarily, where they replayed the video three times for people like me who hadn’t yet enjoyed it.  She made absolutely sure that “Fountain Lady” was unmasked, because this caption appeared at the bottom left of the TV screen:

CATHY CRUZ MARRERO

“FOUNTAIN LADY” FIGHTS BACK

Her ticket is printing now.

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