If you are a child under the age of 12, you usually start counting down the days until Christmas sometime in September. That was the only way I got my young children through the evening before the first day of school. I would sit on the edge of their bed and rub their back and whisper, "You know, if school doesn't start Christmas can't come."
When my children were young, I was just as excited as they were about Christmas. It was a magical time and I lived all the childlike wonder through their eyes. We decorated the house right after Thanksgiving, made a gingerbread house together, baked a different cookie every day, filled coloring books with Christmas stickers and counted the days until Christmas on an Advent Christmas tree decoration. Martha Stewart had nothing on me back then.
Now that my children are grown and living on their own, it is harder to conjure up some Christmas spirit. Each year, the Christmas season gets shorter and less magical, so the response to the approaching holiday is much like Mrs. Duggar's response to the news of child #19 on the way. (see this blog posting for September 5, 2009: There's another Duggar on the way!) "Ho hum,(yawn) another one."
I would be fine with simply baking a batch of cookies while some Christmas music plays in the background. That's enough Christmas spirit for me. Write a few checks for the adult children in the family, make a nice roast beef for dinner, and declare the season officially over as I load the last coffee cup in the dishwasher and wash the wine stains out of the tablecloth.
But my husband has a harder time getting in the spirit. He wants all the magic of a child's Christmas. It starts every year with us "discussing" the futility of sending out Christmas cards. He wants to send them to everyone in our phone book. I argue the price of postage and the fact that the greeting card industry is the only one making out on our idiotic adherence to old customs. We compromise: he send his cards, I don't send any.
Then, every year we have to find a "Bedford Falls" town and do some shopping (even though our grown children only want cash) We have to stop to get hot chocolate somewhere. (I get coffee since my gut has become intolerant to dairy products.) In the evenings before Christmas, when I want to finish an episode of Mad Men on our Netflix DVD, so we can return it and quickly get the next episode, he wants to make a fire in the fireplace and read Christmas stories beside the Christmas tree. This year he picked the longest story in the book, so the Christmas season won't be officially over until we have finished it.
Without the giddy joy that young children bring to Christmas, the holiday season is simply an intrusion to my well ordered life. The decorations take over my small living area, the rich food makes my delicate stomach suffer and all the chaos disrupts my disciplined routines. I stop exercising, I overeat, I stay up too late, and, worst of all, I have to go to parties. I hate parties. And the mother of all parties - New Year's Eve - falls in the Christmas season.
When we were younger, my husband and I would come close to arguing about what to do on New Year's Eve. For years he tried to convince me to go to Times Square on New Year's Eve. I would throw a party at home just to avoid the possibility of being one of those crazy people in the crowd standing in the cold waiting for the ball to drop.
I remember my favorite New Year's Eve... I was sick with bronchitis so we had to stay home. There was no discussing our options for New Year's Eve that year. We made popcorn and watched The Sound of Music in bed. "The hills were alive with the sound of music!" But we had lights out at 10:00 PM.
OK, OK, I'm Scrooge. But enough, already! Christmas is over and that's a good thing. Because if Christmas wasn't over, the summer couldn't come. And when the summer comes my husband can get back out on his sailboat. That's my new mantra, and the one I'll tell him as he sadly takes down the Christmas tree next week.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
The Silent Hondler
Our 2007 car lease was about to expire on January 4th, so my husband and I decided to start looking at cars this past weekend. We thought about buying the car we had been leasing. It had low mileage and a slight crack in the right front bumper. It was hardly noticeable to me.
The leasing company inspector wrote it up as “excessive damage,” valued at $650, and informed me that we were responsible for the repair or the payment of $650 in full. After reading the report that evening, my husband let out a few descriptive expletives and vowed to fight this.
“Excessive damage my (expletive)! What about our $1,500 maximum allowable damage?! I’m going to fight this!” I like to see my husband get riled up once in a while. He’s normally so cool and composed and I’m the one ranting and raving about things. It’s nice to sit back and let someone else take on those annoying little battles in life.
“If they want me to lease another car, they will have to waive the damage fee," he ranted on. "I’m not paying it. If they don’t waive the fee, we’ll weigh our options. We’ll look around at other cars; we have time. I’m not going to be pressured by some car salesman.”
In the dealership we listened to the salesman read aloud the fine print on the back of our three-year-old lease contract. “It’s written very clearly here…you owe the money for damages.”
I waited patiently for my husband to begin his rebuttal. Instead, he scratched his chin and bobbed his head in agreement. They were like two old school chums, lounging in matching wing chairs, discussing the finer points of a legal document. I stretched my foot across the floor and poked his shoe, trying to stoke the embers and get the fire started, but he just looked at me very calmly and said, “It’s right there in black and white, I guess.”
The salesman had my husband on his team now and was revved up to make a sale. He pulled out a lined notepad and wrote down a number: $499, and underlined it with a hard bold stroke. “That’s your monthly payment to lease this new car,” he said.
We both stared back at him. Then he crossed out $499 and wrote underneath it: $479, glanced up at us, crossed that price out and wrote $459. “Do you have a good credit rating?” he asked. “If you have a good credit rating," he said, crossing out the previous price, "I might be able to talk my manager into going down to: $439, but I can’t go lower than that!”
We just sat there and said nothing.
“OK, look,” he said, taking a deep breath, crossing out the $439, "I can probably get it down to $429.” I looked over at my husband, and waited for him to say something. He locked eyes with the salesman and didn’t blink once. Another cross-out brought the price down to “$419 -it's the lowest I can do... and you can have the car tomorrow!” The poor man was squirming in his seat, clicking his pen top waiting for some words to come out of my husband’s mouth.
“You folks just wait here a moment; I’ll go talk to my manager.”
“What’s going on?” I asked my husband.
“I’ll be damned if I know. Maybe if we sit here long enough he’ll give us the car for nothing.”
The manager came back and took our orders for refreshments and sent the salesman scurrying off to get them. He sat down across from us, leaned in over the desk and sotto voce asked, “How can we get you in this car?”
My husband finally opened his mouth. “I want to put zero down and have a monthly payment of $330, like we had with the old car.”
“No way! That’s impossible! I would be giving the car away.”
“Well, we’re not ready to lease a car today, anyway,” I said. “We want to go down the street and take a look at the Volvos,” I said, glancing at my watch.
When the salesman came back with our refreshments, the manager asked for my husband’s driver’s license and a major credit card. “Let me see what I can do,” he said, and he took off with the salesman. They both returned, beaming. “You both have an excellent credit score,” the manager said. “How about if we go down to $399? Would that be more reasonable?”
We remained silent, sipping our refreshments.
“$379; that’s my final offer. Can’t go lower than that. We’re taking a huge loss on this car.”
“Let’s take a bathroom break,” I suggested, “and then we’ll test drive a smaller model. We might have to downsize if we can’t afford the model we want.”
After the test drive, I wanted to leave. I wasn’t happy with the smaller car; the engine had no pep, it was already dark out and I was getting hungry. We still had three weeks left on the lease and these salesmen were starting to get on my nerves. What is it about car salesmen? No matter how nice they are, you just don’t trust them. They were both starting to look like sinister characters in a Punch & Judy puppet show.
As if he was reading my mind, the salesman said, “Look, I know you don’t like the smaller model and I want you to be happy. Can you just go up a little bit? – say to $370?”
I just wanted to go home and sit in my recliner, so I blurted out: “$350; that’s the highest we’ll go.” My husband shot me a glance with flames coming out of his eyes and I tried to recant the offer, but it was too late. Our salesman was rushing off to the manager’s office again. “Let me see if I can work with that!” he called over his shoulder.
He returned with the manager who asked us if we needed more refreshments. At this point, I needed a hot meal and a shower, and if he had offered us that option, I would have signed on the dotted line just to go home and be done with it. We had already invested 3 hours in that place. As annoying as they were, I was beginning to feel an intimacy growing. They were trying so hard, I was starting to feel sorry for them. My husband and I opted out of more refreshments and took another bathroom break instead. We met at the water fountain to talk conspiratorially.
“How high can we go with this offer?” my husband whispered. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”
“Me too,” I agreed. “We’ll offer $360 and not a penny more. Jeez, it’s only $30 a month more than we were already paying. And I love the car.”
“Can we cut out $30 a month somewhere?” my ever frugal husband asked.
“We could cut out the movies… going out to dinner…”
“We don’t do those things, anyway,” he said. “What else could we cut.”
“We could stop getting the New York Times weekend edition.”
“But we just started the subscription; I don’t want to cut that. What else?”
We must have been gone too long because our salesman came looking for us. “If I could get you the car for $360, you can pick it up tomorrow. What do you say?” Did they have hidden microphones in the walls? Did he just overhear our conversation?
“Do you have a black car in stock?” I asked.
“No black. We have a nice grey.” I wrinkled my nose. “Let’s go take a look. I have one in the lot,” he said.
“How am I supposed to see colors in the dark?” I called out to him, as we huddled against the cold wind to hunt for a grey car.
“Let’s just humor him,” my husband whispered. “We’ll tell him we don’t like it and then we can leave. I'm starving.”
When we finally found one I repeated, “I don’t like grey, and I’m not walking outside again in this cold weather. I’m tired and I’m hungry and I want to go home.”
“I have a white car. Do you like white?” he called out as he ran through the dark car lot. “I’ll just run out and get it and pull it up to the showroom while you folks wait, nice and warm, inside.”
“We have to buy this car, please,” I whined. “We’re never going to get out of this place alive if we don’t buy a car tonight. I don’t even care about the $30 extra a month. I’ll take on a new client if I have to. Say something, will you?!”
I turned to look at my husband who had a big smile across his face. “I know where we can cut $30 a month out of our budget,” he said. “We’ll cut out meat and chicken and eat more tofu!”
“Well, what do you think?” the salesman said, walking us around the white car.
“We’ll eat tofu!” I said.
“Huh?”
“We’ll take it.”
The leasing company inspector wrote it up as “excessive damage,” valued at $650, and informed me that we were responsible for the repair or the payment of $650 in full. After reading the report that evening, my husband let out a few descriptive expletives and vowed to fight this.
“Excessive damage my (expletive)! What about our $1,500 maximum allowable damage?! I’m going to fight this!” I like to see my husband get riled up once in a while. He’s normally so cool and composed and I’m the one ranting and raving about things. It’s nice to sit back and let someone else take on those annoying little battles in life.
“If they want me to lease another car, they will have to waive the damage fee," he ranted on. "I’m not paying it. If they don’t waive the fee, we’ll weigh our options. We’ll look around at other cars; we have time. I’m not going to be pressured by some car salesman.”
In the dealership we listened to the salesman read aloud the fine print on the back of our three-year-old lease contract. “It’s written very clearly here…you owe the money for damages.”
I waited patiently for my husband to begin his rebuttal. Instead, he scratched his chin and bobbed his head in agreement. They were like two old school chums, lounging in matching wing chairs, discussing the finer points of a legal document. I stretched my foot across the floor and poked his shoe, trying to stoke the embers and get the fire started, but he just looked at me very calmly and said, “It’s right there in black and white, I guess.”
The salesman had my husband on his team now and was revved up to make a sale. He pulled out a lined notepad and wrote down a number: $499, and underlined it with a hard bold stroke. “That’s your monthly payment to lease this new car,” he said.
We both stared back at him. Then he crossed out $499 and wrote underneath it: $479, glanced up at us, crossed that price out and wrote $459. “Do you have a good credit rating?” he asked. “If you have a good credit rating," he said, crossing out the previous price, "I might be able to talk my manager into going down to: $439, but I can’t go lower than that!”
We just sat there and said nothing.
“OK, look,” he said, taking a deep breath, crossing out the $439, "I can probably get it down to $429.” I looked over at my husband, and waited for him to say something. He locked eyes with the salesman and didn’t blink once. Another cross-out brought the price down to “$419 -it's the lowest I can do... and you can have the car tomorrow!” The poor man was squirming in his seat, clicking his pen top waiting for some words to come out of my husband’s mouth.
“You folks just wait here a moment; I’ll go talk to my manager.”
“What’s going on?” I asked my husband.
“I’ll be damned if I know. Maybe if we sit here long enough he’ll give us the car for nothing.”
The manager came back and took our orders for refreshments and sent the salesman scurrying off to get them. He sat down across from us, leaned in over the desk and sotto voce asked, “How can we get you in this car?”
My husband finally opened his mouth. “I want to put zero down and have a monthly payment of $330, like we had with the old car.”
“No way! That’s impossible! I would be giving the car away.”
“Well, we’re not ready to lease a car today, anyway,” I said. “We want to go down the street and take a look at the Volvos,” I said, glancing at my watch.
When the salesman came back with our refreshments, the manager asked for my husband’s driver’s license and a major credit card. “Let me see what I can do,” he said, and he took off with the salesman. They both returned, beaming. “You both have an excellent credit score,” the manager said. “How about if we go down to $399? Would that be more reasonable?”
We remained silent, sipping our refreshments.
“$379; that’s my final offer. Can’t go lower than that. We’re taking a huge loss on this car.”
“Let’s take a bathroom break,” I suggested, “and then we’ll test drive a smaller model. We might have to downsize if we can’t afford the model we want.”
After the test drive, I wanted to leave. I wasn’t happy with the smaller car; the engine had no pep, it was already dark out and I was getting hungry. We still had three weeks left on the lease and these salesmen were starting to get on my nerves. What is it about car salesmen? No matter how nice they are, you just don’t trust them. They were both starting to look like sinister characters in a Punch & Judy puppet show.
As if he was reading my mind, the salesman said, “Look, I know you don’t like the smaller model and I want you to be happy. Can you just go up a little bit? – say to $370?”
I just wanted to go home and sit in my recliner, so I blurted out: “$350; that’s the highest we’ll go.” My husband shot me a glance with flames coming out of his eyes and I tried to recant the offer, but it was too late. Our salesman was rushing off to the manager’s office again. “Let me see if I can work with that!” he called over his shoulder.
He returned with the manager who asked us if we needed more refreshments. At this point, I needed a hot meal and a shower, and if he had offered us that option, I would have signed on the dotted line just to go home and be done with it. We had already invested 3 hours in that place. As annoying as they were, I was beginning to feel an intimacy growing. They were trying so hard, I was starting to feel sorry for them. My husband and I opted out of more refreshments and took another bathroom break instead. We met at the water fountain to talk conspiratorially.
“How high can we go with this offer?” my husband whispered. “I just want to get the hell out of here.”
“Me too,” I agreed. “We’ll offer $360 and not a penny more. Jeez, it’s only $30 a month more than we were already paying. And I love the car.”
“Can we cut out $30 a month somewhere?” my ever frugal husband asked.
“We could cut out the movies… going out to dinner…”
“We don’t do those things, anyway,” he said. “What else could we cut.”
“We could stop getting the New York Times weekend edition.”
“But we just started the subscription; I don’t want to cut that. What else?”
We must have been gone too long because our salesman came looking for us. “If I could get you the car for $360, you can pick it up tomorrow. What do you say?” Did they have hidden microphones in the walls? Did he just overhear our conversation?
“Do you have a black car in stock?” I asked.
“No black. We have a nice grey.” I wrinkled my nose. “Let’s go take a look. I have one in the lot,” he said.
“How am I supposed to see colors in the dark?” I called out to him, as we huddled against the cold wind to hunt for a grey car.
“Let’s just humor him,” my husband whispered. “We’ll tell him we don’t like it and then we can leave. I'm starving.”
When we finally found one I repeated, “I don’t like grey, and I’m not walking outside again in this cold weather. I’m tired and I’m hungry and I want to go home.”
“I have a white car. Do you like white?” he called out as he ran through the dark car lot. “I’ll just run out and get it and pull it up to the showroom while you folks wait, nice and warm, inside.”
“We have to buy this car, please,” I whined. “We’re never going to get out of this place alive if we don’t buy a car tonight. I don’t even care about the $30 extra a month. I’ll take on a new client if I have to. Say something, will you?!”
I turned to look at my husband who had a big smile across his face. “I know where we can cut $30 a month out of our budget,” he said. “We’ll cut out meat and chicken and eat more tofu!”
“Well, what do you think?” the salesman said, walking us around the white car.
“We’ll eat tofu!” I said.
“Huh?”
“We’ll take it.”
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Dinner - Simple and Quick
Were you ever so tired that you didn't care if you ate dinner? You toss the words around in your head a few times to make up your mind: eat? or sleep? sleep? or eat? I only had about four hours sleep last night, put in a full day at work and came home in the dark. The last thing I wanted to do was cook dinner. But I've been trying to eat healthy lately after I recently failed my blood test - that's my father's joke: "I have to study tonight; I'm having a blood test tomorrow." Har! Har!
My cholesterol levels came back high (what else is new?) and my triglycerides were creeping up too. Maybe it was the tub of chocolate covered almonds I hid from my family back in October? You know the behemoth size container you buy in the Price Club? I ate it all by myself. I started with one, then three, then ten, until I lost patience with that game and just said the hell with it! and grabbed a fistful every time I passed the cabinet where they were hidden. When I put the empty container by the back door for my husband to add to the trash one night, he looked quite surprised.
"I didn't know we had these in the house," he said, turning the empty container upside down.
"We don't," I answered, and walked upstairs to weigh myself.
So now I'm trying to eat healthy and move around a little more. I wouldn't exactly call it exercising because I stop the minute I feel the sweat coming. I hate sweat. But I hate taking medicine even more. I cringe when I hear folks my age at a party excitedly comparing their cholesterol medications and shouting out their HDL vs LDL numbers, like they were competing with each other. I refuse to get sucked into that medicine spiral where you take one medication for something and you get a side effect that drives you to take another medication. Ugh! Pass the chocolate covered almonds and watch a funny movie. That's my kind of medicine.
My cholesterol levels came back high (what else is new?) and my triglycerides were creeping up too. Maybe it was the tub of chocolate covered almonds I hid from my family back in October? You know the behemoth size container you buy in the Price Club? I ate it all by myself. I started with one, then three, then ten, until I lost patience with that game and just said the hell with it! and grabbed a fistful every time I passed the cabinet where they were hidden. When I put the empty container by the back door for my husband to add to the trash one night, he looked quite surprised.
"I didn't know we had these in the house," he said, turning the empty container upside down.
"We don't," I answered, and walked upstairs to weigh myself.
So now I'm trying to eat healthy and move around a little more. I wouldn't exactly call it exercising because I stop the minute I feel the sweat coming. I hate sweat. But I hate taking medicine even more. I cringe when I hear folks my age at a party excitedly comparing their cholesterol medications and shouting out their HDL vs LDL numbers, like they were competing with each other. I refuse to get sucked into that medicine spiral where you take one medication for something and you get a side effect that drives you to take another medication. Ugh! Pass the chocolate covered almonds and watch a funny movie. That's my kind of medicine.
In the past, when I would come home so tired, we would order some take-out food or drive to the local diner. Tonight I remembered some tofu that I had in the refrigerator. I usually buy the stuff with all good intentions and end up tossing it, unopened, a month after the expiration date. But I'm really trying to be good these days, so I pulled out the package with the most recent expiration date (I found 3 packages buried back there!) drained all the liquid and put the square of extra firm tofu between two paper towels to dry it out a little. I cut it into 1/2 inch segments, across the length of the block, dipped the segments in egg, then bread crumbs. (I mixed about one cup of 4-C Ready Flavored Bread Crumbs with 2 teaspoons of powdered cumin, one teaspoon of curry powder and some salt to taste)
Next, I cut up 3 small zucchini squash and 2 yellow squash into 3/4 to 1 inch chunks and tossed them into a large baking pan with a little olive oil, and set them in a 450 degree oven to roast for about 15 minutes, turning them to brown evenly, after about 7 minutes.
Often when I cook a meal, I think about the color presentation at the table and that will serendipitously create a natural, very pleasing flavor combination. Tonight I needed something dark for color contrast, so I pulled out an 8 oz package of fresh small Portabello mushrooms, plucked the stems off and rinsed the caps. They would be fried in some olive oil and butter and sprinkled with salt, pepper, paprika (for color and flavor) and topped with fresh, bright green parsley.
The mushrooms were frying in one pan at the same time that I was frying the breaded tofu rectangles in some fragrant virgin olive oil in another pan. After about 12 minutes in the oven, I added some cut up fresh Campari tomatoes, a sprinkle of sea salt, pepper and dried basil to the roasting squash.
The entire meal, from the moment I decided to eat instead of sleep, took about 30 minutes. You couldn't get a take-out meal delivered that fast. It was colorful, delicious and healthy. I felt satisfied, but not stuffed. There was room for dessert or chocolate covered almonds - if I wanted them. But, I repeat...I'm trying to be good. I'm trying to be good. I'm trying to be good.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
No Backsies
I went to a Christmas fair two years ago and purchased some plates that were on a white elephant/flea market table. They only cost about $5. Here’s how the deal went down. The plates caught my eye first. They were cute. There were five of them and each one had a different woman posing in early 1900’s fashion painted on the front. What caught my eye was the perfect condition of the plates and the fact that there was a signature on each one. My first thought was, “Hmmm; these might be valuable,” as in treasure found on the Antiques Roadshow.
My mother was with me and I showed her the plates. “Oh! Those are so nice,” she said. “If you don’t buy them, I will.” As she uttered the words, they suddenly looked nicer and even more valuable to me. My mother never buys anything with such sudden convic
tion. It usually takes several trips to a department store for her to be sure about something, and, even then, it must be marked down before she will commit to the purchase. I paid the $5 for them. They were mine. Five minutes later I was doubting my purchase. “If you don’t like them,” mom said, “you can give them to me for Christmas. I love them.” Great, I thought, mom is so hard to buy gifts for; problem solved for this year, I’ll give her the plates.When I got home I decided I really didn’t like them at all. I could happily part with them. Mom got the plates all wrapped nicely for Christmas and I didn’t hear a word about them until just the other day when she e-mailed me to ask, “Remember those plates you bought at the Christmas fair a few years back? I’m thinking I’ll put some of my homemade cookies in them and give one
to each of the girls in the family for Christmas this year. What am I going to do with them?"At the thought of her giving them away, I suddenly wanted them back. “Let me take a look at them one more time,” I replied, “I’ll pick out one that I like for myself.”
As I was looking at them one more time I realized that the young people in the family wouldn’t like them anymore than I do. They are too old fashioned looking. I turned the plates over to see the manufacturer’s name, Villeroy & Boch, and I suddenly became very interested in them again. I had recently purchased a set of Villeroy & Boch everyday dishes and I knew how expensive they were.
“I’ll take these off your hands,”
I told mom. “Let me do some research on these. Maybe they are worth something.”“If they are, I want them back,” she said.
“Nope,” I told her. “You wanted to give them away a minute ago. No Backsies!”
“You didn’t even like them a minute ago!” she said.
“Too late; they’re mine now. No Backsies!”
Some preliminary research on the internet made me like them even more. In fact, given their value, I’m going in search of additional pieces at the annual Christmas fair this Saturday.
St. Peter's Episcopal Church Annual Christmas Fair
500 South Country Road
Bay Shore, NY 11706
Bay Shore, NY 11706
Saturday, December 5, 2009
9:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Cookies, Wreaths, Books, Poinsettias
Vendors, Toys, Baked Goods, Jams & Jellies
White Elephant Table (where valuable dishes were found!), Christmas Items, Raffles
and for the children
Breakfast with Santa
9:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Tickets: $5.00Includes a photo with Santa.Santa will be serving juice, bagels, donuts, coffee and tea.Stay for hours of fun at the Christmas Fair! For information and reservations for Breakfast with Santa.
Please call the Church Office at 631-665-0051
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