Susan's Scribblings the Blog

The old adage “you get what you pay for” is like a biblical quote in consumerism happy America.  There seems to be something in the latest must-have gewgaw for every income level, and sometimes the expensive item doesn’t look different when stood against the cheap one (especially from several feet away).

Every year I take at least one bus trip to New York, and inevitably a bunch of dudes toting bulging bundled bedsheets, like a bunch of off duty Santas, walk down the street with some followers in tow,  set the bundles down on a patch of pavement, and hordes of people swarm around to buy the knock-off illegal replicas of handbags inside them.  These are the type of bag that would set the penny-pinching customers back a few hundred dollars in Macy’s.

I have no idea what type of bargain these rip-offs would be, but then I have a $50 price limit on any handbag I buy, so Coach and Dior won’t make a thing on me even if they are on sale.  Besides, I would never plunk down a cent on a handbag I knew wasn’t legit.  I don’t think it’s right to flash somebody’s name around if I don’t know how the name got on the merchandise:  sometimes these knock-offs are made by abused slave laborers.  They may even generate profits for drugs or weaponry.

A few people I’ve known over the years have taken the opportunity to carry around one of the real satchels through a rental service online that sends a new bag to you to use for a monthly fee, and then return it for a newer one.  The people who indulge in this unique phenomenon like to show off their purses to co-workers and other admirers.  Usually the response is “Wow.”  At any price, that seems like a pretty expensive and shallow way to get recognition.  My lipstick and pocket change fit just fine in a $50 handbag.  By the way, I also buy my bags at Macy’s, right beside the expensive ones.

It’s tough to think about the fact that we are all illegal immigrants in the United States.  Even the original native Indians probably were on the continent because they were landlocked once the original “big continent” called Pangaea split apart.  That being said, the people who stayed on the land, survived and colonized it are the true legal residents.  Anybody else who comes in from elsewhere is an intruder until such time as they are joined to the main population (by marriage or whatever accepted means are used at the time, such as documentation or verbal agreements).

Over the years the Pilgrims conquered the Indians, the European immigrants set up shop, the North fought the South because nobody liked what the other side had or didn’t have, we’ve fought several major wars and established all sorts of general principles which are supposed to help us live peacefully.  We then go all out to destroy those principles.

Folks, North America only has so much room, and business and industry only has so many jobs to keep people living decently.  Our unemployment rate is too high, as are our demands on the taxation and compensation systems put in place to help the elderly, the unemployed and the destitute.  Yet we have people carrying signs and suggesting that we should add to the public burden by allowing more people into the country illegally.

During the 2010 census, people grumbled about being counted, as if we were in the schoolyard and trying to cover for the boy who snuck off to have a smoke by confusing the teacher’s head count.  Sure we want to keep good workers of any origin, and keep out the criminals, but leaving the barn door open in this case will let in the horses and the bobcats that will kill the other livestock.

The law Arizona is trying to pass is not trying to make the state a police run hotbed of searches and seizures:  they’re just trying to prevent the bankruptcy of the system which is trying to take care of our own.  Sure the rule has flaws, but if everybody wants to view the citizenship of this country as either “open to everybody or to nobody,” nothing constructive will get done.

We do need to turn within and tend to our own people.  We need to build strong math and science skills in our youth.  We need to get an economy in which a paying job pays the bills.  We need to employ our own before we can take care of anybody from the outside.  Most of all, we need to compassionately tell those who want to run away from their problems in their own countries to turn back within their own borders and make changes for themselves as we did for ourselves.  We did fight a war between the North and South and both sides grew from the experience.  The French citizenry stormed the Bastille and overthrew their tormentors to make the changes they needed.  I’m not condoning war:  I’m saying change can only come when we stick together and work it out from within.  Once we fix ourselves, we can stand again as an example of what works, and our doors can open a crack for more folks to seek the same things we’ve fought so hard for.

Sometimes a person can learn something in the strangest places.  While sitting in traffic in my neighborhood, I came across a bumper sticker on the vehicle ahead of me which claimed membership in something called the International Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning Association.  The what?

You better believe I looked it up.  It’s an entity founded in 1989 to provide professional and safety code quality professionals who can clean and maintain restaurant kitchen exhaust equipment.  According to the information on their website (ikeca.org), many eatery kitchen fires that could get out of control can be prevented by having a clean exhaust system.  The organization trains and certifies technicians to do this job.

This is a country full of clubs, organizations and groups (I don’t even have to mention politics, religion or Lady Gaga), but in our world of micro-tasking is it so unusual to separate the kitchen exhaust from the appliances it supports?   When a repair technician arrives at a restaurant, would (s)he go the extra step to check the exhaust, or would it be ignored because an organization like IKECA exists and it’s “their job, not mine” to do that?

It’s good to have specialists, but throw in too  many and it can look like the Monty Python “Gas Cooker Sketch,” with umpteen people in your kitchen discussing your exhaust while your risotto burns.

As in the world of medicine, it’s good to have general practioners and specialists in many other fields.  A stove repair technician should have some knowledge of a kitchen exhaust, and a direct dial to somebody from IKECA in case of emergency.

Writing can be painful sometimes, especially when you’ve decided to move away from a part of your manuscript because you’ve realized it isn’t meeting your expectations and you’re spending too much time trying to make it right.  As in many things in life, sometimes you have to put it down, walk away and get back to it.  Approaching a problem with a fresh mind, and after a looooong break, can help bring the solution to light.

In the case of my manuscript, I had this particular pivotal chapter down on paper for quite some time, but it wasn’t what I really expected it to be.  So I put it on the back burner and got tied up in other chapters instead.

This afternoon, in an aisle at Staples, an answer came to me, as if an angel of creativity whizzed by my ear and delivered a kernel of hope.

It’s a brilliant solution to a problem that stopped my drama dead in its tracks.  The problem had brought the entire story to a halt like a sledgehammer to the kneecap, and by some miracle the idea came along like a knee surgeon and fixed it like new.

Now, revitalized, I can stop blogging about it and go get that pivotal chapter back on its feet and marching toward the end like a true Marine fresh off the disabled list.  Oooh-Rah!

We spend a lot of time working at our place of employment.  This past week I feel like I’ve spent 80 hours working what is supposed to take about 37 1/2.  A holiday weekend doesn’t help matters, but any cubicle dweller knows the feeling of cramming an extra day of work into a four-day week.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says that men worked about an hour more than women in the workplace in 2009.  I don’t know how they figured that out, because it seems men dole out many responsibilities to women on the job.  Maybe doling counts.

My job includes meeting the demands of several people at once while I am only endowed with two arms.  I’ve learned to juggle file folders with my feet and mentally shut down any hunger pangs until I’m within five feet of a vending machine.

They really needed me at work this week, because like a fool I didn’t put in for vacation, so the others grabbed the chance to bail for the beach while they had the opportunity to escape.  Strangely, on Tuesday (the day after our and many other business’ holiday closure), things were calm.  Wednesday everybody apparently came to life (or used Tuesday to recover from the three-day weekend) and business overflowed.  I was bombarded from three or four people at once, all wanting something that was due, overdue or just needed yesterday.  And they all needed me to give them my attention.

It was comforting to know that, elsewhere in cubicle land, another person was cramming 80 hours into a four-day week.  They also called me toward the end of the week for feedback.

The only thing worse than the four-day week is the week before and after a week’s vacation.  I put in for one, like a fool, knowing I’ll have to deal with cramming 75 hours into two weeks book-ending the down time.  At least there is no holiday coming up that could make it worse.

I keep saying I’ll never take vacation again.  Why do I do this to myself?

234 years after a group of officials gathered in a tiny room in Philadelphia and decided to turn the newly minted colonies into one big land of free agents, our country has gone up and down in popularity and effectiveness.

We keep building and breaking down what the founding fathers tried to do.  Sometimes we take a step forward and other countries hate us.  At other times we take a step backward, and other countries laugh at us (and still hate us).

We really shouldn’t base all of our decisions on what other people think.  We started the country because we wanted to worship in our own way and make our lives without looking over our shoulders to find somebody coming our way wanting to take it from us.  That hasn’t changed, only now the monarchy in England sends envoys instead of redcoats, and the true enemies come from other places that should know better than to mess with the American democracy.

Now that we’ve been here for awhile, we have established, challenged, and modified our documented rights to modernize our lives and try to maintain guidelines by which almost everybody can co-exist without much turmoil.  Naturally some people don’t like rules, and some have their own rules which, within the confines of their own physical and psychological boundaries, may work for them but not for others.

People who don’t want to live by the rules have the choice to conform, deal with any consequences of not conforming, or leaving and finding someplace in which they can live by their own rules.

Even anarchy has rules, though they may differ with each person.  The problem is, nobody knows anybody else’s rules, so everybody must break rules frequently in an anarchical society.

If we want to have co-existence, some rules are inevitable.  Our original document–the Declaration of Independence–simply made it official that we weren’t going to abide by the rules of the place we left behind, and the Constitution set up the first of our own set of rules.  They are not perfect, but they are necessary.  If the people want to alter the rules, they can do so in a democracy with the popular vote.  Those who don’t like the rules have the choices already mentioned.  Anarchy did not get us to where we are 234 years later.  Forgetting what we went through to get here won’t help either.

It’s tough to work on a book with other people, especially if they’re scattered all over the place and never have more than a few hours each month to get anything done.  For the past few months, I’ve been working with some fellow writers to put out an anthology.  A project like this takes lots of time, dedication to the craft of actually writing something meaningful down, an anal retentive eye for accuracy, loss of sleep and a skinny wallet.  None of us is Stephen King or Stephenie Meyer, so even though those great best-selling authors work hard, we work another kind of hard and without the backing of an agent or a waiting list of anxious fans.

We’ve pumped out pages of manuscripts.  We’ve picked the pages clean of passive sentences, and reviewed them over and over until our eyes are dry.  Now the time has come for the details outside the manuscript, such as what will go on the back cover and in the spaces between each writer’s manuscript.  We each must do a bio page in which we condense our writing-related accomplishments into a short paragraph or four.  It’s taking longer than we anticipated.

Along with the trauma of having to speak well of oneself (which I covered in a prior blog about performance reviews), this exercise requires a trip back in time to when none of us came even close to being true writers (which we may still not be now).  That is hard.

I remember back in elementary school when a teacher told me that I had been selected to go to an advanced writing workshop at the high school.  They made it sound like either a death sentence or the worst piece of news they could break to me.  I was ecstatic at the news, and the workshop was (in my mind) a validation of my talent.  In a place where a select few adults chose the select few children, this meant something.  The way they communicated it to me, though, I realized that it didn’t mean I was special.  Of course not.  I was a kid, and there were great authors out there well beyond their tween years.

Realistically, writers are a special breed.  Not many become Stephen King or Stephenie Meyer, and the few spots open for other good craftspeople are tough to get into.  When it comes to talking about myself as a writer, I think about how that faculty member told me the news that I was chosen for something related to writing.  I then take a deep breath, start tackling those non-passive sentences, and review them until my eyes are dry.

Every once in awhile my mind works in funny ways.  It’s a writing thing.  I decided to put a small piece of an idea I had for an unusual type of storytelling here for readers to look at.  Try your hand at the following:

Ape rises a furred ford a reed or hook candy sigh ford this intense.

If you figure it out, pat yourself on the back for finding something different on an Internet blog, and pass it on to your friends to try.  A good command of English helps, and don’t be afraid of public speaking.  Hope it’s interesting.  If not, just remember that most experiments are touch and go anyway, so there is always room for improvement.

Once the temperature climbs above 60 degrees, it seems the summer clothing starts coming out.  Considering the winter we’ve just been through, it’s not surprising that folks want to dress down and disown anything remotely resembling clothing designed for warmth.

Unfortunately, this also means that ugly sandals come out in droves, and by the pair, no less.

I won’t even go into detail about those dreadful gladiator look sandals that lace above the ankle.  And huarches have to be the most bizarre excuse for footwear I’ve ever seen.

At work, the policy allows for sandals but still is business casual.  Defining it is a three-month challenge which ends unresolved just in time for the summer dress code to end in September.  Generally business persons are not supposed to wear anything that would be used on the beach, but then the shoe manufacturers have brought out black patent sandals with thong toes, and the line in that beach sand is drawn yet again.  I’ve yet to see a worker sent home because of a fashion mistake, but such faux pas happen daily somewhere in cubicle land, which is why smart people testing the policy waters bring a backup pair of footwear.

I never understood why people like to flog the bottoms of their feet with flip flops.  Every step brings a slap of rubber, and in a crowd the hundreds of slaps start sounding like a mass tap-a-thon from a Broadway musical

Besides the red soles resulting from shoe self-flagellation, sandals tend to irritate the feet in at least one spot (and it seems the exclusive bane of women sandal wearers).  A woman’s feet suffer more degradation in summer than in a stiletto pair of Manolos.  Along with the requisite nail polish and weekly (or more) mani/pedi rituals, bandages and cotton balls are stuck on blisters between toes, callous files get worn down to nothing, and Dr. Scholl stock goes through the roof.

The parade of bare feet in summer is amusing for the casual observer.  Even the ugliest toes are put in display (attached to feet with distinct tan lines).  The fact that feet are exposed to more germs on the ground than ever doesn’t seem to matter (though logically more foot exposure should mean more bathing).

The only bare feet I have no issue with are kids’ adorable toes.  Youngsters have nice feet, and nobody has to paint their toenails or squeeze them into orthopedic nightmares with thong toes.  It seems adulthood demands more pain in the name of fashion, which is why I always watch the stock market to see how Dr. Scholl is doing to determine if the fashi0n trends are just right for decent sandal buying.

It seems that everybody in the past week has been talking about toilets.  My favorite columnist Lisa Scottoline did a piece about automated restrooms that made me laugh so hard I bust a seam.  At the office, the maintenance staff have been having difficulties with the thin but must-have seat covers.  Sometimes the paper is so thin, not only does it stick to you in an inconvenient place, but you never seem to get all of it peeled off once it has a hold on you.

People were talking about the floors (never clean enough, even after they’ve just been mopped), the flushing mechanisms (an almost invisible rubber coated button) and the fact that the seats jiggle around because they’re not secured very well.  We can send a man to the moon, but try to secure a toilet seat in a public restroom.

The office was so busy this past week, I think everybody was grateful just for the chance to take a bio break, complaints notwithstanding.