Black Friday

I always dread Black Friday for some reason, all the hype and the buildup, all the crazy people in tents outside Best Buy and Wal-Mart, hungry for the big sale. But truthfully, I am no better than the crazies.

Today I woke up, poured myself a cup of coffee, and opened my computer to check email. Big mistake. 15 different emails from retailers everywhere, claiming to have the deal-of-the-century I didn't want to miss.

Something you should know about my genetic code -- my family is in possession of a rare, sometimes costly, shopping gene. But we don't just shop. We have a crazy bargain-shopping gene. My mother has been known to sniff out outlet malls from 50 miles out. My aunts storm malls on Black Friday like a trained militia. My brother-in-law told me and my sister that we were "our nation's very own stimulus package."

I don't know what it is about a bargain for us, but it must be something to the equivalent of a runner's high, because I can't stop myself. And it's not just on days like Black Friday. Every time I go grocery shopping I grab the receipt and look to see how much I would have spent had I not used my little frequent shopper card. On routine trips to Target and Walmart, those red tags, prices with black marker lines through them, yellow CLEARANCE signs call to me -- I zip to them like a moth to a flame.

Knowing this about myself, I made a point to wake up late, to not get dressed or venture out to the shopping centers. But I still managed to spend $200 before breakfast.

See, I saw that Apple was having an online Black Friday sale and I needed Microsoft Office, and they had knocked it down to $98 from $150. So of course I bought that. I should have stopped there. But then I went over to crateandbarrel.com like an idiot and bought a stainless steel saucepan, a dish towel, and a Wusthof santoku knife I have been lusting over for months. Free shipping. 50-70% off. These words are as special to me as "I love you" and "Marry me."

I'm off to hide my credit cards now. But I'm just gonna check out Amazon and Bestbuy.com first.

When You Least Expect It ...

... you will catch your not-really-a-dog-person husband in a heated conversation with the dog.

Memphis escaped out the back door on Sunday when Matt was grilling, and neither of us noticed she was gone until we tried to call her for her dinner and there was no response. I freaked out, as night had fallen already, and it might be near impossible to spot my black and brown little beagle. I jumped in the car and started yelling out the window. Thankfully, she didn't get very far, and I caught up to her in a neighbor's yard down the street.

I couldn't help being mad at the dog, so I left her with Matt upstairs while I went to check on the laundry downstairs. That's when I heard Matt talking. I thought he was on the phone at first, but then I realized he was giving the dog a lecture.

"You made her very mad," I heard him say. "You have it so easy! I have to put away the dishes in the right place, take out the trash, make the bed even when she's not here, just so she won't get mad at me. All you have to do is stay in the house!! How hard can that be???"

The Power of Positive Reinforcement

Last year, about this time, I was going nuts trying to get the hubs to put the dishes away in the right place. See, everything in our kitchen goes in a certain area (as I imagine most kitchens are organized) and dinnerware lives on the first shelf in the cabinet, where I can reach it, or else I'll starve. Well, Matt was throwing dishes above the stove, in with the food, in that drawer under the oven, you name it. I was at my wit's end. I nagged, I screamed, I cajoled, and nothing seemed to work .... until I read in the NY Times an article about a woman who was a former animal trainer, who trained her husband to put his pants in the laundry basket through positive reinforcement. No nagging, screaming, or crying, just a "good job" and maybe a cookie when he did something she liked.

BRILLIANT.

Last night, we had a breakthrough.

On Sunday, I was watching him put the dishes away, and every time I saw him put a dish in the right spot, I took out an ingredient for chocolate chip cookies.

"Are you making what I think you're making?" he asked excitedly.

"Well, you're doing a great job putting away those dishes, I thought maybe it might be a good idea."

He got so excited he started mopping the floors without prompting.

Then I said, "Ugh, the deck is covered in leaves, and I think we should put the patio furniture in the shed. Think we can do it before the Pats game at 4?"

He nearly fell to the floor. "You want to watch the Pats????" He looked at the clock. 3:30. And sprinted outside with a broom.

I love my life.

wow, long time no see...

I have been absent for a while -- being busy at work = zero time for writing. I had one of those 2-week long, 5-city trips where I would wake up and not know where I was. At one show I said, "Hello, Toledo!" when I was in fact in Cleveland. That kind of thing.

One thing that has mystified me of late is my hubby's penchant for white lies. It's not really a penchant, I actually think it's kind of funny, because he's a horrible liar. It's not in his nature. For example - yesterday, I went to get my jacket because it was cold out, and I found a black fleece with his school logo that I hadn't seen before, hanging in the closet, size XS. "Is this for me?" I said, trying it on. "It's great! When did you get it?"

He paused for a second. "Uhhh, school store, they were having a 40% off sale. Happy Labor Day."

We went about the day, and it wasn't until later when I noticed a couple of stains on the front, like a small coffee spill and some dirt. I shrugged it off until I unzipped the jacket pockets and found an empty banana taffy candy wrapper.

School store my ass.

It took a good 15 minutes of "I won't be mad, just tell me where you got it... did you get it in the school lost and found?" to learn that Matt could not for the life of him figure out how that jacket had ended up in the closet, but that it seemed to make me happy, so he made something up and ran with it.

He gets caught like this often.

My favorite story of him getting caught like this is when I asked him to give me his opinion of a short story I had written that I was planning to take to my writer's group for feedback that evening. Just before I went to the meeting, I asked, "What did you think?"

There's that long pause again. Then, "It was good. I liked it."

The pause gives him away every time. That, and his voice goes up an octave. I decided to play a little bit.

"Oh really? What did you like about it?"

"It was really interesting. It kept me interested."

Like shooting fish in a barrel at this point.

"Did you like the part about the monkey?"

His face brightened. A nugget he could hang on to. "Yeah. What was that all about??"

I smacked him with the pages of the story and walked to the door. "The story was about a soldier in Vietnam, nutbag, maybe you should read it sometime."

babyland

No, I'm not pregnant. Sheesh!

But our friend L.S. is (or, rather, it's now the hip thing to say "they're" pregnant, but I REFUSE), and she and her hubby were over the other night for drinks. The hubs inquired about the state of the nursery.

Hubs: "So where's Babyland gonna be?"
L.S.: "Babyland?"
Hubs: "You know, where you're gonna put the kid."
L.S.'s husband: "Babyland?"
Me (to Hubs): "They'll put it next to Space Mountain and Tomorrowland, obviously."

new vocabulary

The hubs and I went out on a date last weekend, which we haven't done in quite a long time. I got dressed up, which, not surprisingly, I haven't done in quite a long time. But in my strappy dress in the middle of July of this lame-weather summer, I shivered a little. Hubs noticed.

"Did you bring your showel?" he asks.
"My what?"
"Your showel. You know, for your shoulders?"
"You mean my shawl?"
"Oh right. Yeah. Your shawl. Whatever."
"Showel - is that like a cross between a shirt and a towel?"
"Yes. Exactly."

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? We could make millions.

and suddenly, i'm 5 again...

...mostly due to the fact that I've developed swimmer's ear in my left ear and pinkeye in BOTH eyes. Kick me in the face.

A while back I found some nice black triptych frames to put my nieces' and nephew's pictures in. My sister won a professional photo shoot for the kids and turned out some really beautiful pics. I left the frame on the bookshelf near where I wanted to hang it and forgot to put the pictures of the kids in ... actually, I just plain forgot about the frame.

That is, until my husband happened to pass by the frame sitting there, nearly forgotten. He pointed to the bottom picture of a girl lying in a hammock, hands behind her head. He looked at the picture long and hard, as if trying to place this happy-go-lucky college co-ed who had modeled for the frame's inset. Finally, he gave up. "Honey, who's that? One of your friends?"

I could barely point out the shrinkwrap while convulsing in laughter on the floor.