New Thanksmas Eve Day

I get it. The earlier retailers get you in the stores to do your holiday shopping, the more you’ll spend and the more likely it will be (in this rotten economy) for them to make a profit this Christmas season. That’s always been the case. I’ve watched over the last few years as Christmas decorations have appeared in store windows and holiday items on the shelves earlier and earlier. First, it was right before Thanksgiving that you’d start seeing Santa on display to get you in the buying spirit. Then it was November 1st, before you even had time to take down your Halloween decorations. But this year, I spotted a snowflake or two decorating the toy aisle at Walmart, some time in early September while finishing up my back-to-school shopping.

That was just the start of the new holiday season timeline. We no longer have Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Years. The retailers have found it more profitable, and we as consumers have bought into it, to condense them all into one holiday that my family has started calling, New Thanksmas Eve Day. It’s out of control. The first and second week of November, Disneyland and a high end mall in L.A. called the Grove, both held their tree lighting ceremonies, complete with Santa and faux snowflakes falling from the sky. All the store ads and television commercials are hawking Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales weeks before their real dates – the Friday and Monday AFTER Thanksgiving. And to make matters worse, driving home last night, we noticed that more than a couple of houses in our neighborhood have already turned on their Christmas lights.

What ever happened to Thanksgiving? We’ve skipped over it all together for the sake of creating a more robust economy. Because of all of this pressure to rush into Christmas, my daughters and I have made a conscious effort to put the brakes on and not race over November 24th. We’ll take a moment to be thankful for the family and friends around us, our health, and a roof over our heads. We’ll chow down on some turkey, sip some cider, read a book or two about the pilgrims (remember them?) and have the dishes washed in time to rush out to the midnight opening of Target! I might be frustrated about the rush into the holidays, but I’m not going to miss out on the savings either.

But clearly, my family isn’t up-to-speed on this New Thanksmas Eve Day tradition the stores are trying to start. Natalie, my eight year old, asked me what Black Friday was. I asked her what she thought it was and she said, “Black Friday is the day that they celebrate Black people.” I laughed and said, “No, that’s February, we get a whole month, not a day.” Nicole, my eleven year old, quipped, “…the shortest month.” So my kids aren’t shopping savvy, but at least they have a strong sense of irony.

Happy New Thanksmas Eve Day to all of you!

Extreme

I don’t like reality shows. Cheaper to make and often much more profitable, they have just about killed scripted television and the incomes of those who work in it while simultaneously rotting our collective American minds. Who today doesn’t know who Snookie is, whether they want to or not? But ask them to name the senator from their state and they’ll stare at you blankly. Reality t.v. has created stars out of ordinary people, rich kids, experts in obscure fields and B-list stars seeking a comeback, people who in many cases have no particular talent other than a willingness to exploit their personalities and, as my grandma used to say, “Act the fool,” for the camera, inviting millions of people into their lives as housewives, bigamists, extremists of any kind, hoarders or residents of a house by the shore.

My daughters forced me to watch two of the competition type reality shows with them and I am slightly embarrassed to say I enjoy them, despite my rallying cry against reality. But at least dancing and singing take talent and passion and watching people struggle to get a routine or wow a judge shows honest effort and sometimes real defeat – something that I think is often missing from television today, both scripted and reality. As much as I love Law & Order, the detectives always get the perp and the prosecutors always win their case. Unfortunately, it’s not so in real life.

I was laid up in bed in recovery mode, drinking a Diet Coke and munching on one of my homemade cookie creations, a “faux nut” butter cookie – a recipe I created to satisfy my desire for a good old fashion peanut butter cookie for someone who can’t eat peanuts or wheat. Natalie curled up in my lap and started channel surfing and together we happened upon a new show, “Extreme Couponing.” Natalie and I looked at each other, both wondering how watching people who cut coupons could be an interesting t.v. show. We had to watch. They profiled a woman who spent 4 hours a day cutting coupons from the 9 newspapers she subscribed to (not to read the papers, of course, but to get the insert coupons – why be bothered with all that current affairs dribble?), and then spent 6 more hours of her day prowling the aisles of her local grocery store checking on special in preparation for her shopping day! She bragged that she usually put close to $1,000 in items in her shopping cart and usually only paid, after coupons, $5 to $10 dollars for all of it. Now while that savings is impressive, hell, it’s extraordinary, she complained about not being able to spend time with her husband and children because she was couponing, and how her house was being over run with the 2 year stockpile of products that she had. One woman they profiled even had a very expensive, complicated looking rack (which I think she designed herself) made to store her purchases in a way that the items with the oldest expiration date were pushed to the front so nothing would spoil. All the couponers complained of running out of room in their homes – one woman had 1,000 rolls of toilet paper stuffed under her son’s bed - in the same breath that they boasted of saving $40,000 or more a year on groceries.

As much as I’d like to cut back on the cost of my groceries, that kind of effort, time, dedication and ingenuity (a specially designed rack???) is being wasted on shopping. And despite the fact that they had stockpiles which would see them through five natural disasters with enough to feed the entire block, they still continued couponing and shopping. I had to turn the show off. Their obvious obsession was difficult to watch. As much as I was fascinated, I was also repulsed. It’s like the hoarder show – amazing to get a glimpse into their minds and their homes, but it’s a little uncomfortable once you’re inside.

I tried to watch the couponing show again, but I had the same response. I was talking with another friend of mine about it – he’s a reality show devotee who keeps up with several of them – and he told me that some of the coupon women actually use their “talent” to get groceries for free (or nearly free) and then donate the grocery items to charities/shelters, which made me feel slightly better. I mean how many families need a two year supply of dishwasher soap?

But I guess if it wasn’t extreme, it wouldn’t work on t.v. Who wants to see me go to Ralphs, fumble through my purse at check out for the three coupons I managed to tear from a mailer tossed on my lawn, to find that only one of the three coupons was for an item I actually purchased? I got $1 off because they doubled the coupon and I felt like a winner. But that’s how most people deal with coupons in real life. And real life would never work well on reality t.v., now would it?

Bad Day at the Grocery Store

Not that going grocery shopping is ever a really pleasant experience for me – I generally hate it – but last week I had a particularly rough time. I’m not one of those people who actually enjoy strolling the aisles, looking for new items, sampling the cut up fruit in the produce section, seeing what’s cooking in the deli. I usually am sandwiching my grocery run between work or school or some other unmovable deadline and have about an hour to do two weeks worth of shopping. I have so much to get because most of the time I wait between shopping trips until my cupboards are bare and I’m sending my kids to school with marshmallows as a snack and trying to pretend there’s some type of nutritional value in it.

I hate being rushed and every time I am in the store, I am rushed. Rushed or badgered. The badgering usually happens when I make the mistake of bringing my children with me and I have to endure trying to hurry through the store while fending off pleas for Pop Tarts and Doritos which they try to surreptitiously sneak into the cart while they think I’m not looking. But I’m always looking – that thing about mothers having eyes in back of their heads – never believed it when I was a kid, but now that I’m a mother, I know it’s true!

Then there is the price issue. I hate that everything is so expensive. I know that I’m frugal, not only out of need, but by genetics. I come from a long line of cheap on one side of my family – cheap to the point of ridiculousness in some cases, as I remember my father wearing his shoes until he had holes in them…really, on a doctor’s salary??? And I know I have to curb that instinct in myself. But I do find the price of food at the grocery store so irritating, particularly these days – a buck each for an apple, $5 for butter, $25 dollars for a value pack of steaks – where’s the value in that??? Also, I’m so appalled by the prices of everything that I walk through the store talking (often to myself) about the price of the items (which incidentally seem to be put in smaller size packages just as the prices are going up).

Then at check out, I leave the store with over two hundred dollars of groceries in about a bag and a half - bags which I had to supply myself. I hate it. So basically, a trip to the grocery store for me is about being rushed, frustrated and talking to myself to the point of looking like a lunatic. You can see why the overall experience doesn’t thrill me. But now, I have something else to worry about at the grocery store – my daughter.

I ran into the store last week to buy a few items and dragged Nicole with me. At the check out line, I started chatting with the grocery clerk, an affable guy who is probably as old as some of the shoes I have in my closet (remember my father and the holes???). We talked about movies and the weather, he gave me my receipt and I pushed my cart filled with the bags I brought and about enough food to feed us for a day, to the elevator. As the door closed, Nicole said, “Oh, I wish I were ten years older.” I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. I couldn’t even imagine. And then it hit me…the grocery clerk. After picking my jaw up off the floor I asked her to repeat what she said to clarify. I have this paranoid fear that I’m losing my hearing or going slightly crazy (a fear which didn’t develop until I had children), so I often asked my kids to repeat what they’ve said so I know the crazy is coming from their mouths and not me. Nicole rolled her eyes and repeated the horrifying words she’d said only a moment earlier, “I wish I were ten years older…” Brain cells were misfiring as I tried to figure out if I should show her how horrified I was by her statement, be angry or act calm. I felt I had to have the right response, I just had no idea what that was. Instead I said the oh-so-mature and well thought out response, “Yuck.”

I realized the phrase, “Oh, I wish I were ten years older,” is one of many phrases that I really don’t want to hear from my kids as they grow older. It started me thinking about others that are on my list of phrases you never want to hear your child say:

I woke up with this weird tattoo.

A lot of girls do it at this age.

It was only 3 or 4 grams.

They said it would be off my record in six months.

He does not wear more makeup than I do.

Spring break in Vegas!

I’m sure there are others, many others I will shudder to hear. For now, suffice it to say, I won’t be going back to that grocery store for a while. I could try online grocery shopping with at home delivery. But I’m afraid of what she’d say about the delivery guys.