It's not easy being green

It poured again today and I drove home from New Hampshire this morning with my windshield wipers on max. Finally this afternoon the rain stopped and the sky brightened a bit. I looked out and saw the center of the road had dried out. So I decided to venture out on foot. I haven't had any real exercise since Sunday and I've been feeling stiff and getting antsy. They're predicting a nice weekend, so hopefully I'll get out on my bike and/or walking plenty.

It's very green out there, greener than I can remember.

Now the sky is beginning to clear. As my Irish-descended grandmother used to say, if there's enough blue in the sky to patch a pair of men's trousers it's going to clear up. I see a big patch of blue up there. (See a variation on this expression here. Interestingly, similar to the woman in the article my grandmother's family came here by way of Nova Scotia and my grandmother grew up not far from Lowell, MA - in Andover.)

4:59:35 PM      trackback [] 

Shopping for others

The famous/infamous independent film director, John Waters, described a game he and a friend used to play in grocery stores called “shopping for others.” (It was depicted in his movie, Pecker – weird movie, by the way, but aren’t they all.) They’d surreptitiously hide items in strangers' shopping carts – like, say, Preparation H in some body builder’s cart – and then watch what happens at the checkout when these items are rung up.

I got to play a different form of shopping for others yesterday when I took my mom shopping for a housewarming gift for her friends. Shopping as a form of recreation lost all its charm for me over my years of self-employment and the past three years’ income drought has made it downright depressing. Except for grocery shopping, which I’m allowed because, hey, I gotta eat, right? Besides, I love to cook. Anyway, I came up with a plan that let me grocery shop while spending someone else’s dough in the service of gift-buying.

I took my mom to the newly opened Philbrick’s Fresh Market gourmet and natural foods store in Portsmouth, conveniently located next to Pier 1 Imports. I reasoned that since her friends, a retired couple who had just downsized into a one-level condo from after living in a large house most of their lives, would not want new “stuff” to have to put someplace. So why not get them consumable goods? Her friend likes to cook, so we – or I should say I, since my mother has neither cooked nor visited a grocery store since I was in high school, I think – picked out several gourmet Italian food items. Then we went next door to Pier 1 and found a nice woven basket to put the foods in, along with a cloth napkin – et voila, housewarming present. I have to say I found it greatly satisfying. And my mom was thrilled.

I actually love gift shopping. So many people complain at Christmas time how much they hate having to buy gifts but I love it. I like to get creative and find things that are unusual and that just fit the person – or persons, in the case of wedding gifts and I had three weddings to buy for last year. I’ve had some misfires but I think overall I’m pretty good at it. But shopping for others – with their money – man, that’s the best! I wish I could find a way to hire myself out.

2:24:48 PM      trackback []