A Penny Saved Is Still Worth One Cent

     I was browsing the Internet one boring afternoon when I stumbled across an article entitled, “Five Ways to $ave Big Money!”  My interest was piqued, partly out of irritation at the use of the dollar sign in a flagrant attempt at being cute.  I was further irritated when I saw the article was written by someone named “Penny”.  I know the poor woman can’t help what her parents named her, but I couldn’t help but have a distinctive feeling that this entire article was staged.  After scolding myself for being pessimistic, I clicked on the article and decided I would read with an open mind and a firm resolve to do whatever the article suggested.  After all, “Penny’s” bio indicated she was a successful stock trader and author.

      Tip #1: $ave money on your water bill by showering at the gym.  My shoulders shook with an acerbic, snide chuckle as I read this first tip, but I had determined that I would follow these tips as penance for pessimism at the outset, so I got on the phone.  I called the gym with the reputation for being the largest, most state-of-the-art facility in the city: “Hi, I was wondering if you could tell me if you have showers at your facility?  You do?  Wonderful.  Also, do you have early morning, late evening, and weekend hours?  Yes?  Fantastic.  Now, do I have to call and make an appointment for a shower or do I just show up whenever I feel dirty?  No, not that kind of dirty.  What? … I assure you, madam, I am not a prank caller.  I just read an article on how to save money and … I see.  No, no you don’t need to call the police.  I was just looking at this website and … hello?  Hello?”  So much for my water bill. 

      Tip #2:  $ave money by reusing your sandwich bags.  This one sounded more optimistic than that last fiasco, so I decided to take a serious look.  I quickly estimated how many sandwich bags I use in a year.  I then figured that at least half of them were filled with greasy, messy, mayonnaise-y, peanut-buttery messes so those would have to be discarded.  Of the other half, at least half of those were split down the side by The Yankee’s firm belief that sandwiches need to be filled to the point that they cannot fit into the average human mouth in one bite.  That leaves us with one-fourth of the sandwich bags in our household that might possibly be reusable.  If I washed those sandwich bags, taking out money for soap and my water bill (which is now higher than I was hoping, thanks to the skittish receptionist at the gym), I would save approximately $2.44 per year!  Oh my gosh!  Thank you, Penny, thank you!  If I put that money in a high-yield account and promise not to touch the principle, at the end of the decade I can treat myself to a small cola at the movies.  And all because I took Penny’s insightful advice.  Oh, Penny, you are a marvel.

      Tip #3: $ave money on parking meters by having your driver circle the block while you pick up your Egyptian cotton sheets from the laundry service.  I think milk came out of my nose when I read this one.  Driver?  My experiences with “drivers” are limited to: 1) my bus driver in elementary school who blew a whistle whenever the whippersnappers was a-gettin’ too loud, 2) the guy with the gold tooth who swerved his taxi so hard, I grabbed his dreadlocks and screamed, “Here’s 20 bucks!  Pull over!  For the love of mike, PULL OVER!!”, and 3) riding with The Yankee through inner-city traffic and praying I would make it home alive.  When he looked over at me and said, “Why are you so limp with your eyes closed?”  I said, “I’m totally relaxed because I heard that’s how the drunks survive crashes.”  Seriously, does “Penny” really think the average Joe has a “driver”?!  And “laundry service”?  This woman is funnier than most of the comedians on TV!

      Tip #4:  $ave money on vacations - consider flying coach.  I’m definitely sure milk came out of my nose when I read this one.  After I looked up the word “vacation” in my dictionary to be sure I knew what that actually was, I flipped back to the letter “F” and looked up “flying” … wasn’t sure what that was either.  The last time I went on a real, honest-to-goodness vacation, my dad said good old American pay phones would always trump something as faddish and fly-by-night as a “car phone”.  Then he picked up his folded map, mockingly held it to his ear, and pretended to talk to the president.  My brother, Wolverine, who was sitting in the back window cutting his teeth on that belt thing bolted to the seat, laughed along with the rest of us.   

      Tip #5: $ave money on lunches by having your waiter put half of your dinner in a box for tomorrow’s lunch.  This time, I laughed so hard, I fell down and hit my head.  Concussion or not, I had promised myself I would follow through with each tip, so I decided that since we eat dinner out about 4 times a year, I would have to commit this tip to memory.  Sure enough, 3 months later, we were having our special night out and I remembered this valuable tip.  I asked to have half of my meal in a box for tomorrow’s lunch.  Tonya, my favorite drive-thru manager at the “Sammich Hut”, drummed her six-inch fuchsia fingernails on her wireless headset and said, “You want yo sammich cut in half, you take it home and cut it all by yo bad self.” 

      Well, Penny, I tried.

© Bertha Grizzly 2011.  All Rights Reserved.  No duplication or distribution.

Freud Chicken

     I’ll admit it: I’m a foodie.  A dyed-in-the-wool, totally engrossed, completely immersed foodie.  I love everything there is about food, cooking, and the culture of eating.    There is nothing like the thrill of a perfectly executed roulade or helping a stranger in a grocery store understand that avocados, aspic, and artichokes are not even remotely related.  It made me a nerd in high school and college, though.  While all my friends were learning the facts of life in the basement of a fraternity house, my dateless self was at the library reading everything I could find on cuts of meat and the secrets to perfectly flaky pastry.  It was my hobby, my passion, and I thought everyone liked to eat. 

     I should have known better.

     It’s nice to be known as the “food guru” in your own social circle, but the fun is somewhat diminished when you are alone in your excitement.  Take The Yankee’s dad for instance.  Harmon is the opposite of a foodie.  Of the nine foods in our solar system that do not send him to the men’s room for two hours at a time, there are at least eight of them that he prefers to be absolutely ruined beyond repair (burned, dried out, overcooked, etc.).  He and my mother-in-law, Ursula, came to visit before Buttercup was born.  Having grown up in a household where extravagant hospitality was heaped upon every guest, I was eager to show Harmon and Ursula the highlights of our little spot in the South East USA.  Taking our meager newlywed purse, we showed them the local sites and restaurants.  Not only did Harmon refuse to go anywhere that didn’t have a men’s room strategically located every 10 feet, he insisted we take him to restaurants willing to serve a cheeseburger at all times.  This cheeseburger must be cooked for at least 45 minutes so that any trace of flavor, moistness, or recognizable texture would be a dim memory by the time it reached his plate.  The burger, now in its hockey-puck glory, must be coated in American cheese: the cheaper, greasier, and more yellow, the better.  Condiments would be limited to mayonnaise and mayonnaise alone, thank you, and if you DARED introduce a gaseous, revolting vegetable on his burger, his plate, or the real estate bordering his plate, he would retreat immediately to the port-a-potty we stole from a construction site and tied to the back of the car. 

 
     I decided I didn’t like Harmon.  Not one bit.

     Maybe Ursula would be a better companion.  After all, she seemed the type who might enjoy the subtle nuances of resin-y rosemary present in the perfectly al dente Chanterelle Risotto.  WRONG.  Ursula disliked all spices, flavors, and … well … food in general.  She gagged at the mention of pork, declared our tap water “too spicy”, and snarled her lip at the horror of a freezer devoid of frozen macaroni and cheese (which she pronounced “chee-see mee-yack”).  No meal I could prepare, no restaurant I could take them to would satisfy Ursula’s underwhelming palate.  When I excitedly presented a dinner of The Yankee’s favorite fried chicken, Harmon cut into his chosen portion and threw his fork across the room.  “This chicken has WATER in it!” he cried.  “There’s no water, Harm.  I assure you it is just the natural juices of the chicken because I didn’t overcook it.”  As he packed his bags, Ursula hastily chewing an antacid thanks to my “spicy” tossed salad, he continued to rant.  “Chicken is supposed to be CHEWY!  It’s supposed to be crunchy to the bone and you put WATER IN IT!!”  Ursula popped another antacid, “And you don’t even have chee-see mee-yack in your freezer!”  They slammed the door, squalled tires out of the driveway, and never looked back. 

      That was 10 years ago, and we haven’t heard from them since.

      I learned a lot about food that weekend.  Food is more than the substance we ingest for the purposes of physical survival.  If that were the case, science could have invented a replacement pill a long time ago.  It is the substance of tradition, the pathway to bonding, the litmus test of a relationship.  Were Harmon and Ursula generally disagreeable in other aspects of life?  Absolutely, but their ungrateful attitudes, their hateful xenophobia, their outright disdain for adventure was never more evident than it was at the table.  I guess that’s the other side of being a foodie that attracts me; foodies are often amateur psychologists.  We can tell a lot about people by their habits.  The control freaks who have to have even numbers of ice cubes in their glasses.  The daring lovers of life who will try the hot sauce with the devil on the front of the bottle just for the fun of it.  The kind soft-hearts who generously compliment whatever you put in front of them out of sheer gratitude for the effort.  It’s an interesting perch being a foodie, and I love every second of it.  But not as much as I loved sending a port-a-potty coffee mug to Harmon for Christmas. 

© Bertha Grizzly 2011.  All Rights Reserved.  No duplication or distribution.

Somebody Bring Me My Running Shoes

     I checked my mailbox recently and found I had been chosen as the lucky recipient of a complimentary issue of a “healthy lifestyle” magazine aptly titled, “Gaunt With the Wind”.  The model on the front cover was a well-known actress in $1,200 designer shoes with an angular smile so bright I’m sure she could read by the glow.  As I flipped through this wholly unsolicited publication, I suddenly found myself engrossed in its content. 

      Apparently, 106 pounds is the cut off for appearing “healthy”.  If you are unlucky enough to carry a weight beyond that of a slender Whippet, the elite members of “Club Gaunt With the Wind” begin to offer forth all manner of advice on how to join their ranks.  I’m all for being healthy, but the advice proffered is so stupid, I had to write about it.  It’s what I do.

      One of the contributing writers for “Gaunt With the Wind” had written an article about different restaurant dishes that contain “SHOCKING HIDDEN CALORIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”, or so the title claimed.  The flagrant abuse of the exclamation point caught my attention so I decided to read this “shocking” expose’.  Are calories really hidden?  I mean, is there a diabolical agenda of the super-sized underworld to pump us full of “hidden” calories so we will eventually be forced to succumb to their slick advertisements for seatbelt extenders and toilet paper wands?  Can’t people look at the ingredients in some of these menu items and just tell they have lots of calories?

      Whatever the reasoning for writing it, the author offered some helpful “substitutions” for fattening menu options.  As I sat reading this article and its ever-so-helpful suggestions, I started snickering to myself.  Don’t order the triple cheese chili cheese fries with cheese … order a small side serving of steamed broccoli, no butter or salt, and split it with 5 other people.  Don’t order the Fajita Salad with lettuce, two deep fried chicken breasts, tortilla chips, creamy chipotle dressing, cheese, sour cream, and guacamole-lard-mayonnaise … ask the chef to ladle a bit of fat-free, sodium-free chicken broth into a condiment cup.  Did you know there are enough calories in a super-extra-holy-crap-mega large order of fried cheese sticks smothered in a roasted tomato pizza sauce and a 2-inch layer of secret 12-cheese-blend to feed an entire country for an afternoon?!?  Isn’t that SHOCKING?  You should just order the child’s side salad with a light squirt of fresh lemon juice, no dressing for pete’s sake, ask the server to put 2/3 of it in a box for later, and then take a brisk 90-minute run around the perimeter of the local metro area instead.   

      Do people really listen to this crap?  By the time I got to the “brisk 90-minute run”, I was laughing so hard, there was mascara running down my face that I hadn’t even applied yet.  This article was “exposing” one insane extreme and replacing it with another.  The dishes and portion sizes being used as examples were nauseating in their grease-laden richness while the healthy options were bland, unappetizing, and nearly microscopic.  No one, with the exception of an ailing infant grasshopper, could subsist on the foods being suggested as reasonable alternatives to this flab-fest.  Whatever happened to balance?  Whatever happened to a middle-of-the-road approach?  It was irritating to know that some poor soul desperately trying to drop a few pounds could read this and believe the only road to health is paved with salt-free, fat-free, calorie-free, carb-free, sugar-free, egg-free, wheat-free, dairy-free, meat-free, preservative-free, hormone-free, alcohol-free, soy-free, allergen-free, fragrance-free, tree nut-free, taste-free foods. 

      After I wiped the tears from my eyes and stopped snorting and laughing every time I would think of the words “brisk 90-minute run”, I resumed flipping through the magazine.  Another article grabbed my attention.  Entitled, “Yes, YOU Have Time to Exercise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (more exclamation point abuse), the model pictured in the helpful “how-to” photos was a woman approximately 25 years old, with approximately 1% body fat, approximately zero children, and was wearing a $700 bikini approximately the size of a postage stamp.  Her name was “Tyffani” (raise your hand if you’re shocked) and she strongly advocated walking to work, skipping lunch in favor of simultaneously walking and snacking on pre-portioned raw vegetables, and using one’s purse and briefcase as bilateral dumbbells.  Perhaps, she reckoned, it would be helpful to take “the long way” home in the afternoons to sneak in a brisk 90-minute run.  (Why do all these magazines think everyone in America lives in New York City?  I live so far out in the sticks, the pizza man put me on speaker phone for a laugh when I called about delivery.)  Tyffani even suggested a few moves that could easily be done to promote balance and “core strength”.  I turned the page and started shrieking in laughing hysterics as she modeled how to balance oneself on a street-corner postal drop box.  I pictured myself in that position and the thoughts of a postal drop box with a dent in the top made me guffaw even harder.

      I burned more calories laughing at “Gaunt With the Wind” than I would have burned on that brisk 90-minute run mentioned on every page.  I had laughed myself into a coughing fit when The Yankee walked into the house, eyebrow raised.  “What’s wrong with you?”, he asked.  “Oh nothing,” I said, my eyes still watery from the laughing, “I’m just going for a brisk 90-minute run!”

© Bertha Grizzly 2011.  All Rights Reserved.  No duplication or distribution.

Tick-Tock, Please Be a Bomb

     So I’m trying to eat lunch at a local restaurant a few months ago.  Daylight Saving Time had just come to an end and I was feeling the cranky grog that overcomes night owls like me when forced to rise and shine before the sun thinks it’s a good idea to follow suit.  I ordered a spicy lunch and settled down with a beverage and a book.  Just as I was getting into the first chapter, the hostess walked by with two women in tow.  The first woman I’ll call “Gloria” looked like a leftover relic from the seventies.  Looking far older than her 55-60 years, her gray hair hung in long, limp layers that had been haphazardly rolled around a curling iron.  Her gray suit jacket matched her hair and did nothing to help the drab brown blouse she had paired with mousy green pants.  Her face was free of makeup and her reading glasses hung around her neck by a tarnished “gold” chain.  The second woman I’ll call “Jean” was the antithesis of Gloria.  Jean’s navy pantsuit was beautifully matched to a delicate white blouse, sapphire ring, and modern eyeglasses.  Her makeup was perfectly applied and her soft face belied the age I supposed to be around 65 years.  The hostess seated Gloria and Jean at a table right behind me.  With these two characters within earshot, I knew reading was going to be an exercise in futility. 

 

     As they mulled their menus, I could hear one of them chattering for quite a while about nothing in particular.  The voice was excited and happy, but not obnoxious in any way.  I assumed this voice was Jean’s.  I was able to get the entire first chapter read and welcomed my lunch in this amount of time.  As the server left for the kitchen with Gloria and Jean’s order, I was already heartily enjoying the uplifting spice of my chicken dish.  I thought, “How nice to have a friend like Jean who can sit with someone as dour as Gloria and talk about everything and nothing all at the same time”.  I smiled to myself and kept reading.             

     Then, it happened.

     I heard a long sigh followed by a snort: “Don’t you just hate the time change?  I mean, can’t they leave it alone for once?”  I assumed Gloria was complaining with a mundane voice as drab as her wardrobe.  “I have so many clocks in my house and I had to change them all.  First there was the clock right by my bed.  George bought that thing and I always struggle with changing the time on it.  Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned wind up clock?”  I stopped my attempts at reading and thought to myself, “Perhaps that ticking drove some people crazy to the point the digital clock caught on, hmmm?”  Gloria kept going while I ate my chicken, “Then I had to change the clock on George’s side of the bed which is as hard to change as mine is.  Then I had to change the clock on the back of the toilet.” 

     This made me pause and almost snicker out loud.  Who has a clock on the back of the toilet?  Apparently, George and Gloria do.  By this time, the server brought the small appetizer they had decided to share as their meal and Gloria was not phased in the slightest, “Thank you.  That looks a little smaller in real life than it does on the menu.  Anyway, then I had to change the one in the laundry room with the birds on it.  You know that one George gave me that makes a different bird sound every hour?  And then I had to change the one in the kitchen that is right by the pantry.  Well, it’s not right by the pantry but it’s pretty close.  You know that picture I have of the apples?  It’s hanging very nearby with different kinds of fruit on it.  So that took a few minutes and then I had to wash it off because it was starting to get dusty.  Then I had to change the one on the living room mantle which always scares me because it’s so old.” 

     By this time, I had finished my chicken and was silently begging my server to come back so I could pay and leave.  Gloria’s droning about her clocks was giving me that feeling I get when I hold my breath too long under water … slightly fuzzy with a headache and lung burn that threatens to push me into acts of desperation.

     “Then I had to change the one in the formal living room that I say is a grandmother clock but George swears is a grandfather clock.  Whatever it’s gender, I hate changing it.  Then I had to change the one by the front door that has the pictures of flowers painted on the frame.  I mean the clock has the painted flowers, not the front door, but you know what I mean.  Then I had to change the one in the hallway outside the room where the girls used to sleep.  Then I had to change the one dining room …”

     Now I had written a threatening note with some lip liner on the back of a takeout menu and dared the server to take another second bringing me my check. 

     “Then I had to change the one on the back porch that matches the barometer next to it.  I wish it wasn’t green, but you know how much George loves green.  And then I had to change the one in my car.  And then I had to change the one in the garage.”

     The server got the message and brought me my check.  I told him there would be a big tip involved if he hurried the heck up. 

     “Then I had to change the one in the kitchen window because I got so busy cleaning the dust off the fruit clock that I forgot about the one in the window.  Then I had to change the one on the microwave.”

     Why does this broad have so many freakin’ clocks!  Get me out of here!  I kinda wanted dessert today but forget it now. 

      “Then I had to change the one in the guest bedroom, not that we ever have any company.  Then I had to change the one in the guest bathroom.”

     Two bathroom clocks?  Who times their poo poos?  Every second you delay this check is another dime off your tip there, Server Dude. 

     “Then I had to change the one in George’s car because he’s perfectly happy to drive around town with the wrong time on the clock and I just can’t stand that.  Then I had to change the one basement near the furnace room.  Then I had to change the one …”

     Now the server had brought me my change.  I flung a few bucks on the table and proceeded to sprint as fast as I could without looking like a woman possessed.  I turned to take one last look at the table of doom before raced to my car when I was struck by something amazing.  Madame Boredom was not the drab, boring Gloria.  It was Jean.  Behind that perfectly coiffed hair and $800 eyeglasses was the most dry, pitiful, whining specimen ever imagined.  The first voice I had heard, the happy fun-loving voice I had so admired, had belonged to Gloria, muddy colored clothes and all. 

     I learned three valuable lessons from this lunch of terror:

1) Just because I try to match my clothes to my personality does not mean I can use that as a measuring stick for everyone else.

2) It is OK, not to mention merciful, to interject comments and change the subject if necessary.

3) When I am of retirement age, I will sign up for a salsa dancing class, a self-defense class, a vagina-pride rally … ANYTHING shocking or weird just to remind me that there is life outside of my petty complaints. 

And I will NOT have that many clocks, I don’t care how old I get.

© Bertha Grizzly 2011.  All Rights Reserved.  No duplication or distribution.