I fear I may be a totally frivolous person. *Sigh*

I think I may have a small shopping problem.  I have had it for awhile… well, actually, for about 40 years.   I was 16 when I got my first paycheck and I had to turn it over to my boss to cover my purchases.  I worked in a milliner’s shop.  Isn’t that charming and quaint?  I don’t think millineries even exist anymore.  The merchandise was charming and quaint as well, hence my incredible vanishing paycheck.  

For a great deal of the past 40 years, I was able to control the urge to splurge fairly easily.  I had no money.  Since we moved to Tennessee, however, our standard of living has just gone up, up, up.  I have been doing my best to ensure that my spending keeps pace with Dave’s earnings, but lately, I have become aware of some warning signs that maybe I am being just a bit, shall we say, OVER THE TOP about the whole redistribution of wealth thing.

First of all, local merchants have begun sending me cards if they haven’t seen me in awhile.   I’m not talking about the standard sales notifications, or general “special invitations” that thousands of others also receive.  No, no, no, no, no, I get handwritten notes.  

Second, I noticed that I got a LOT of Christmas cards last year from merchants, thanking me for my business.  I think I got 987, if I remember correctly.

Third, I am now getting gifts.  There is this absolutely wonderful shop here in town called “The Purple Cabbage” that, among other things, sells handmade and monogrammed clothing for children- all the things that drive a Granny wild, especially if Granny has four adorable granddaughters and the youngest two are a “girly girl” and a baby who adores dresses.  Today, because of my extreme loyalty to The Purple Cabbage, I was inducted into the “Kiss Club”, which means I will receive special invitations and advance notice of sales.   As a token of my new status, the lovely women who run the shop gave me a giant Hershey’s (best chocolate in the world) kiss.   So, okay, maybe not the best gift for a diabetic, but they LIKE me, they really, really like me.

Peebles likes me.  Macy’s likes me.  Dillards likes me.  Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Williams-Sonoma… and don’t get me started on craft and scrapbooking stores, which ADORE me.   And I love them in return, though sometimes my love is unrequited.  For example, I single-handedly put Amazon.com into the black.   I was one of its first customers and, to this day, must be one of its best.  In the early days, when the company was struggling, my patronage was appreciated.  I used to get Christmas gifts from Amazon.com.  I still have and use the to-go cup I got one year, but you know, when they get big, they forget the little people who helped them on the way up.  JEFF BEZOS, YOU BROKE MY HEART IN 17 PLACES!

But I digress.  Lately, I have begun to wonder if I am using shopping to compensate for something lacking my life.  Obviously, things are not what I am lacking.  I am awash with things… and so, thanks to me, is everyone else in my immediate emotional vicinity.  I thought about it in great depth, and finally decided that I needed help-   Shopper’s Anonymous or some kind of a 12-step program.  And I found one!  The brochures were very heartening.  I was happy to learn that I am not alone, I am not a bad person, and, since I don’t put us in debt, I am not destined to be locked in a room by an irate husband and forced to undergo retail deprivation.  It really sounded like just the program for me, so I signed up.  And paid for a year in advance.

Sadly, I have not made it to a single meeting.  Some genius booked them into the mall.

Ciao, bellos.  There is a mocha frappuccino and some leather Italian sling-backs calling to me.   I’m coming, dahlings!

They need to go home

My husband is a second generation American. His grandparents came to the United States LEGALLY in the early part of the 20th century. My friend Sandie was born in Italy. Her family immigrated LEGALLY when she was a child. Waves of people from other countries have LEGALLY swelled our population over time from every culture on the planet. They all had several things in common:

• They came into this country LEGALLY. Things in South America cannot be worse than they were in Poland during the Second World War, or Europe around the WWI, or China NOW, and yet people filled out the proper forms, went through channels, waited if waiting was a requirement, and came into this country with honor and honesty, not by stealth and criminality.


• They had no sense of entitlement. Prior immigrants didn’t come to this country expecting all the rights of citizenship without first becoming citizens. I cannot tell you how offended I have been by the Latino protests over immigration. What next? Felons on parade? The temerity, to come here illegally and protest our justified concern over their illegal actions, never ceases to amaze me.


• They had to learn THE language… which until recent times was without question ENGLISH. Dave’s folks had to learn it. So did Sandie. So did millions of other people. When the Irish came over by the millions- legally- stores did not advertise their wares in Gaelic for their convenience. When the Indians or Pakistanis immigrated, Lowe’s did not put up signs in Farsi or Hindi. Outside of ethnic neighborhoods, the language of the land was ENGLISH. It pisses me off every time I walk into a Lowe’s to see all the signs are bilingual. What are we, Canada? Belgium? Those countries deal with expensive, bureaucratic nightmares because of bilingualism. Do we really want to go there?


• They became Americans. Everyone has ties to their homeland. Hell, my mom’s family came from England in the late 1600’s, and my dad’s came during the Great Potato Famine, and we still have respect and pride in our ancestry. But we are AMERICANS. Not Irish Americans, not English Americans… Americans. We salute one flag. We recite one pledge. Each wave of immigrants prior to the Latinos strove to become American. This wave is another kettle of fish.

In my humble opinion, people who enter this country illegally are criminals. We have immigration laws. They should either be enforced or repealed. Mexico, in particular, will never be compelled to solve it’s own social and economic problems as long as its citizens can cross our borders and benefit from the society generations of legal immigrants have created here. Illegal immigrants are not vested in America. If they can’t or won’t become naturalized Americans, they need to go home and help solve their country’s problems. And we need to help make that happen.

The Turn of a Phrase

More and more, it seems that archaic phrases are creeping into my vocabulary. Well, at least they must seem archaic to anyone not in my generation. But the generations ahead of mine used these phrases to good effect. They were communication tricks, and moral lessons, and good indicators of which was the right path. And they were colorful.

For example:
“If you lie down with dogs, you will rise up with fleas”. I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. It was said with a self-righteous sniff, usually after one person had been wronged by another (as expected and predicted), to the person who had been wronged. I am sure it was meant to be comforting.

“Birds of a feather flock together” was another favorite. It often went hand in hand with “Water seeks its own level”, meaning that the people being discussed were no better than they ought to be and probably a whole heck of lot worse.

It was very important when I was growing up to “earn your keep”. My husband and kids hate this phrase, but it’s so ingrained in my psyche that I use it without thinking. “Make yourself useful” is tolerable, but “earn you keep” seems to smack of dependency and servitude, and impending homelessness if you don’t toe the mark. Well, it did when I was a kid, too, and I was never fully confident that my folks weren’t going to sell me to the gypsies at any given moment, so I tried very hard to earn my keep, and they kept me, so there you are. People don’t threaten their children with the gypsies anymore, do they? Are the gypsies gone, do you think, or have they just stopped buying children?

There were special phrases descriptive of being unwell. “I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet” harks back to the day of the horse, I guess. Or “She looks like death nibbling on a cracker.” I just love that one. Wonderful imagery and it makes no sense whatsoever. People were genuinely concerned when the illness was real, but had no patience with “malingerers”. I am sure folks still malinger, but you don’t hear that phrase much anymore.

On a tangent: I am a whistler. I am a damn fine whistler, but it drives people crazy, except Mama, who loves my whistling, and wants a recording of it to listen to when I go to California. I became a whistler in imitation of my Grandma Brooks, who was a virtuoso whistler out of defiance. HER grandma had told her that whistling was a bad habit, and meant the devil was after her soul. Her mama told her the “whistling women and cackling hens always come to very bad ends.” Well, Grandma did not come to a bad end at all and lived a rich, full, and productive life of service, so her defiance seems justified. I whistle just to be near her again, and it has become such a habit I don’t even know I am doing it most of the time. I think every life deserves its own soundtrack, and I am whistling mine. I think of it as “making a joyful noise”.

There used to be phrases in school that they don’t use anymore, and it’s a shame, because they were so very useful. My favorite is “I before E, except after C, or when sounding like “A”, as in neighbor or weigh.” That one is wonderful! Or in housekeeping” “The way to set the table right is forks to the left, all else to the right,” Lousy poem, but good way to remember. Do people even teach their children to set the table properly anymore? Or even make them do it? Do kids have to do chores nowadays?

I know I did. When I was a child of about 8, my mother and grandmother started me off with simple tasks- drying the dishes, dusting the furniture, ironing the hankies. Yes, Virginia, we really did carry handkerchiefs and we really did iron them. I had chores because “idle hands are the devil’s play ground.” Over time, I graduated to doing the dishes and running the vacuum and ironing pillowcases and sheets… stop rolling your eyes, there was life before perma-press. I was taught simple sewing and mending because “A stitch in time saves nine” and mending saves money. To this day, I mend things, so I guess I really am a cultural dinosaur.

I learned to “separate the wheat from the chaff” and to “skim the cream from the milk”. I was expected to “put my best foot forward” and “walk the straight and narrow.” I was told that “the truest steel is tempered by the fire” and that God never “gives us burdens unless we have the strength to bear them.” I never “hid my light under a bushel” and always tried, as my grandmother admonished me, to “lighten the corner where you are.”
I don’t know how well I have succeeded, but if “a workman is worthy of his hire”, I think I have earned my keep. I’m rather proud of myself. I must look like the cat that ate the canary.