Maybe Next Year

I have a house full of folks, meals to cook, wine to drink and stories to be told. So I’m neglecting my blog. Yup, me.

So here is my very favorite post, from Long, Long Ago, when I was a baby blogger, in case you desperately ~~need to get a life!~~ need to hear my voice.

Happy Easter! Happy Spring!

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. And then it wasn’t cheaper at all. 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.

57 Comments

Filed under Conspicuous consumption, Family, Humor, Real Estate, Stupidity

Tagged as Aging, Family, Humor, Marriage

October 1, 2011 · 0:00

Excuse me?

Whenever I go to a bridal shower, I always give two gifts: one real gift of something nice or useful (and boringly chosen from the registry), and one joke gift. When my friend Judy got married in 1985, she got cold cream and foam curlers. That gift was such a hit that it became my standard joke gift until about two years ago.

That was when I realized that all men mumble so much that I needed a way to warn women what they were getting into in a relatively lighthearted way. Q-tips.

You know as well as I do that all men say vitally important, life changing things to you while walking 5 feet ahead and facing in a completely different direction. Lip reading isn’t an option. Have you ever known one who doesn’t?

And then they then get, well, testy when you say,

“Oh, sorry, honey. I couldn’t hear you. What did you say?”

So these days, I make sure to give the bride a box of Q-tips. And I tell them that once they are married, they will need to keep their ears very clean or their marriage will not last.

I’m only partly joking.

There is just something about guys that they think that they only need to say something once, and the entire world hears, comprehends and hangs on their every word. Whether it is, in fact, comprehensible or not.

My husband, my son, my brothers, they’re all like that. Male friends, too. Well, they’re probably former friends after that comment, but they still mumble. My co-workers may mumble like that too, but they hide their annoyance better.

There is just something about asking a guy to repeat something, to say it again, that makes them, ummmm, crabby. And just because, well, perhaps you were in another state when they said that thing you didn’t hear, well, it is entirely your fault that you just didn’t hear it.

Hence Q-tips for the bride-to-be. I think it is important for people to understand just what they’re getting into. And just opening a silly gift like that stops the stupid-ass bridal shower games and starts a conversation that lets the bride-to-be understand what she needs to be a good wife: bionic hearing. Surprisingly, no bride has yet run screaming from the room.

Actually, I wonder how many divorces do revolve around this irritation. I’m sure that in divorce court, this issue comes up all the time. And I’d bet it plays out differently depending on whether the judge is female or male.

When the husband stands before the judge and says:

“Your honor, she drove me crazy. She was always asking me to repeat myself. She said I mumbled.”

A female judge would respond:

“I’m sorry, Mr. Smith. I couldn’t understand what you said. Would you repeat that please?”

A male judge, alternatively, would respond:

“Divorce granted. Take it all, Smith. You’ve given her enough over the years. Leave her a box of Q-tips so she can clean out her ears so she can hear the next poor sod.”

So I figure it’s actually a kindness for me to warn brides-to-be of what’s ahead of them. Don’t you?

But come to think of it, I haven’t been invited to too many bridal showers lately. Maybe they’d prefer cotton balls.