The Cat in the Bag

I love Halloween. What’s not to like? It’s a holiday of a sort, adults get to dress up in costume and no one thinks it strange, there’s candy, and it doesn’t involve family stress like Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s like a stag/hen night in a way, your last night of freedom and fun before a lifetime of marriage and commitment (or insert here “two months of present shopping, gift-wrapping, party-going, overeating, traveling and family dys”fun”ction).

My mother knows how much I love Halloween so despite my middle age she sends me a card every year in honor of the day. I still think she sends it out of guilt as one year she made the off-handed comment that she wouldn’t be buying candy that year because she didn’t have any children. We may not be much, but my brother and I took umbrage with the comment. She quickly tried to cover the gaff by saying she meant that she didn’t have any children “that came to her neighborhood”, but words hurt.

I elaborately carve at least two pumpkins and alight them at the front door to beckon the kids. We only buy “good candy”; brand name chocolate bars and such, nothing that I would have scoffed at when I was 12. And despite the fact that the doorbell is akin to a starter pistol to our dogs, we settle in to spend 3 hours listening to them bark uncontrollably from the back bedroom while we pump the neighborhood kids full of empty calories and admire the year’s costumes. Our all-time favorite is still the two pre-teen boys who came to our door a couple of years ago; one dressed as Tony Romo, the other as Jessica Simpson with fake ta-tas, mini-skirt and a blonde wig.

A few years ago my Halloween card arrived in a box along with a pumpkin decorating “kit” in it. I put the word “kit” in quotes, because I use the term VERY loosely. The “kit” consisted of a few pieces of stamped metal in a bag. When you laid them out it was apparent that it was a cat – or at least part of a cat – the body of the cat is where the pumpkin comes in. That’s it. No instructions. No picture of how cute your pumpkin kitty will be after you quickly and professionally stab the various metal parts into your pumpkin “as shown in picture”; just a bag of body parts. Now before you think my husband and I are complete idiots, the head and the tail were obvious, however the 4 feet/leg pieces were shaped like nothing I’d ever seen on a cat before. It was enough to make a veterinarian scratch his head.

I figured that once we had the actual pumpkin, assembly would become apparent. Nope. After an exhaustive search (I do recall my husband mumbling “just shoot me now” once or twice) for the perfectly shaped pumpkin body for our cat, we (two grown adults of average intelligence) spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out how the 4 feet/legs were to be installed onto our amputee kitty. We finally settled on a configuration that looked the most anatomically correct however it didn’t provide the necessary stabilization to keep the cat from occasionally tipping over. On more than one occasion I left the front door to find our kitty face down in the entryway as if in a drunken stupor.

It was our UPS man that eventually pointed out that while cute, he thought that the cat would look more normal if we swapped the front legs to the back and vice versa – and that might also keep kitty from face-planting. Worked like a charm, and yes kitty did look more normal afterward too. I took a picture so that I would have it as a reference the following year on how to assemble kitty; I was going to attach it here but I can’t find it. I don’t see kitty making another Halloween appearance until I do; we’ve had the same UPS man for years.

WAY too footloose

I’m throwing my hands up; we need to talk about feet. On a gradually increasing basis the general public is being afflicted by feet, and afflicted is the right word: to distress with mental or bodily pain; trouble greatly or grievously.

I can’t put my finger on the exact moment, but somewhere along the line it became OK to just let your feet hang out there – in all their glory, or grotesqueness - in public. Case in point the attached photograph; I was graced with these little beauties at the gate of a major US airport (the thought of this individual sitting next to me on a sealed aluminum tube for a few hours makes me throw up in my mouth a little). Note the (not-so-white) bandage around the right big toe and the manky (Google it, it’s a word) Birkenstock sandals that he tossed off in my direction. This is not OK. I don’t want to see your Barney Rubble feet, and I certainly don’t need to know about your podiatric medical issues. Put a sock “on” it, literally!

And if you think this is strictly an issue with men, let us not forget the Northwestern University’s national championship women’s lacrosse team whose 2005 visit to the White House had four of the nine team members pictured in the front row wearing flip flops. Politics aside, flip flops to the White House? It was widely reported that family members (mothers in particular) were horrified. Is this something that we’re going to have to add to “and remember to wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident”? “Don’t leave for Washington in flip flops; you might get invited to the White House”.

Airplanes seem to generate a strange sense of privacy in people; I can’t remember a flight where someone seated near me has not slipped off their shoes, exposed their bare feet and rolled them around on the carpet for a while. Nice visual, huh? Or even worse, those seated in the bulked row putting their bare feet on the wall for everyone in the 10 rows behind them to view! A girlfriend had what was, up until last week, the worst (or best, if you’re grading on a curve) foot story; mid-flight, a man sitting next to her took out a bottle of lotion, slipped his feet out of his sandals, and proceeded to lather them up. For her, this topped even the lady who clipped her (finger) nails on a flight (yeah, I can’t even go there on that one, those suckers fly everywhere!). See, I told you, people do things on airplanes that should strictly be reserved for your bathroom at home, and NOT in front of your spouse!

But the worst/best foot story position is now occupied by the man who sat next to my husband on an international flight last week. Every seat on the airplane was equipped with a personal video screen on the seat-back in front of you. The screens are touch-sensitive. You know what’s coming, don’t you? Yep, the guy reclined his seat, took his shoes and socks off, and navigated the touch screen with his big toe. They just don’t clean aircraft well enough for that.

Unneccesary Plastic Objects

On her live album, “One Fair Summer Evening”, Nanci Griffith tells a wonderful story before the song “Love at the Five and Dime” about the first time she toured in Europe. While driving through London they came upon a Woolworth store and she wanted the driver to stop the car so that she could go in and “fill up my suitcase with unnecessary plastic objects”, and with that my addiction had a name. Few words in the English language make my heart race more than “storage solutions”. I-have-a-problem. I am addicted to plastic organizers, storage objects, solutions, tools, etc. – and my husband deems them ALL unnecessary.

Any trip to Target for “a couple of things” resulted in an hour-long stroll through the store and at least $40 in various organization and storage accessories purchased as well. The feeling of coming home with an $8 item that’s assured to bring peace and calm to your everyday life, what’s not addictive about that? Just the promise alone became lure enough to upgrade. The “new and better” junk-drawer organizer was purchased because it promised even more than the “old and lousy” version.

Then I learned that Home Depot also had a “Home Organization” section and my husband never went there alone again. He’d shop for whatever was needed for our latest home improvement project and I’d shop for a new shoe rack, wreath storage unit, etc. There was more than one awkward moment in the checkout line when he’d see my selections in the cart and ask, “What’s this?” “It’s an impenetrable plastic storage container made especially for a Christmas wreath, see?” And I’d lift it up and show him the features and benefits in such a way that could have landed me a gig on the Price is Right. “We already have a storage container for the wreath, it’s called a Hefty bag.”

It was about this time that even I had to admit I had a problem. This was more than just wanting order in my life; my constant search for the perfect closet, drawer, office and garage organizational had became all-consuming. If I found something good in April, it would soon be replaced by something better in July. One day my husband (figuratively) had to slap me out of a-la Cher in Moonstruck. No more trips to Target. For the next few months he’d be going to Home Depot alone. I had to quit cold turkey; there was no other option.

Then a friend told me about The Container Store. If you don’t have one near you, I’m sorry. It is like crack cocaine to someone like me. It is storage solution heaven. It is organization tool nirvana. I can’t even describe it to you but to say that I’d rather go to The Container Store than buy a new pair of shoes or tube of lipstick – and for any woman, that’s saying something! Whatever you need to put away, The Container Store has the most perfect thing to nestle it in.

Needless to say I fell off the wagon and let it roll right over me. There were a few tense months in our house as white bag (with huge, bright pink lettering saying “The Container Store”) after white bag came through the front door, until I finally came to terms with my addiction. A trip to The Container Store is still enough to make my heart skip a beat, and I can easily drop an hour roaming the aisles, but I’m much more reserved now with my purchases (a small house will do that for you).

Recently I discovered that the corporate headquarters were in my own town, and that they regularly rank in the top 100 best companies to work for; I now harbor a secret desire to work there (and enjoy an employee discount) so that I can spend my entire day surrounded by unnecessary plastic objects. The first suggestion I would make as a new employee is to get rid of that huge pink lettering on the bags, you can’t sneak anything into the house with that!