I apologize for not writing yesterday. I have a very good reason for it. The reason is that on my way home from the grocery store, I had the misfortune to get behind a driver who graduated from the Extremely Slow-Moving Driver Education School (Motto: "We Break for Ant Crossings"), and I did not get home until today. More on that story later.
Today, I want to talk about wrapping a Christmas tree. "Don't we have enough to do wrapping our gifts??" you are saying. "We have to wrap the tree, too?"
Rest assured that I am not talking about putting wrapping paper around the tree ("Whew!" all you wrapping-challenged readers are saying. I am right there with you. The greatest invention ever was gift bags). When I say "wrap the tree," I am referring to winding ribbon around the tree. This, of course, lends a very festive look to a tree, but the main reason for using ribbon is to cover up any flaws in the tree. And also to avoid having to put so many ornaments on. At least, these are my reasons for using ribbon. Martha Stewart no doubt has very different reasons, which I am not at all interested in hearing.
It is much easier to put ribbon on the tree with two people. I must stress, however, that these two people should be of the same gender. The genders tend to approach ribbon-wrapping, as most other things in life, very differently.
A woman will carefully lay the ribbon among the branches, tucking it in here and there, making it curve in certain places so that it looks rather like a flowing stream. When she is done, you hardly realize the ribbon is not an actual part of the tree, it all blends together so harmoniously. It makes you want to cry (mine makes you want to cry, too, but for slightly different reasons).
A man's approach is quite different. In the first place, no man would voluntarily choose to put ribbon on the tree; it would not even enter into his consciousness to do such a thing. "If God had wanted trees to wear ribbon, He would have made them like that in nature," is the man's motto about beribboned trees. In fact, the man probably would not even bring a large tree into the home, just a little Bonsai one with nothing adorning it, just as naked as the day God made it.
This, at any rate, is what my husband, who is a man, would do. Even now, our second year with a full-size Christmas tree, he occasionally makes noises about how nice it would be to have a little table-top tree. These noises become more prevalent while he is dragging the tree, section by section, up our very steep stairs; when he is moving furniture around, at my direction, to make room for the tree; and while he is being made, against his will and even against his better judgment, to wrap the tree in ribbon.
But I digress. When a man does get roped into putting ribbon on the tree, he approaches it in a very businesslike manner. He holds the spool in one hand and in one continuous motion wraps it around the tree. There is no stopping to tuck it into a branch here or there. There is no careful attention to the angle at which it is placed all the way around. If the ribbon ends three feet from the bottom branch, no matter. He will just add more ornaments down there to cover things up. A tree beribboned by a man looks like a toddler all swaddled in his snowsuit before he heads outside to play: stiff and awkward and barely able to breathe.
So you can imagine what a tree looks like when a man and a woman have attempted to decorate it together with ribbon. If you cannot imagine this, just come to our house. You will see exactly what I mean.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Person vs. Christmas tree
This weekend I attempted to assert some authority over our Christmas tree. If you've ever tried to assemble an artificial tree, you know that it does not take kindly to being poked and prodded into shape. (I imagine that real trees also have their quirks, but as I have no experience with real trees, I will not attempt to speak to their quirks. As you know, everything written in this blog comes ENTIRELY from personal experience and nothing is EVER made up.)
We have sort of a "next-generation" artificial tree, which dismantles into three parts and has the lights attached. In theory, all you are supposed to have to do to assemble this tree is put the three parts into the main pole and the branches will just sort of fold down. The branches, however, do not appear to have gotten this message, maybe because they don't speak whatever language the directions are printed in, which, as near as I can figure out, is some dialect of Tagalog (an actual language not to be confused with the Girl Scout cookies called Tagalongs). This tree is in contrast to the old-fashioned type of artificial tree that I grew up with, where you put in each branch individually by matching the color on the tip of the branch to the color on the tree pole. Even a squirrel could assemble that kind of tree, provided he was not color blind.
But with the new tree, there is no simple way to tell in what order the three parts are intended to be inserted into the pole. You might think, as I did, that the big green button you step on to turn on the lights is probably attached to the bottom third of the tree. WRONG! The big green button belongs to the middle part of the tree. You might find this out only after struggling to put this part of the tree, which is about as easy to move as a wet polar bear, into the stand first, meticulously fluffing out each branch, and then realizing when you go to put the next part of the tree in that the pole does not match up with the part you have already put in. So you must start all over again.
When you finally have the three parts of the tree correctly installed, you will need to take a break. I recommend about a week, because as hard as that was, the next job is even harder. Now you must attempt to impose some sort of order on these branches that have been all cramped up for a year in a box, and look like it. You push and pull and twist to get one side looking perfect. After this effort -- which can take up to two days -- you step back and say, "Yes! This is the most perfect tree ever assembled." And then you move to another angle and scream in horror. On that side, the branches look as if they are practicing contortionism. So you will push and pull and twist the branches on that side to get it perfect, only to find that the first side is now all out of whack. Also, the tree never stands perfectly straight. Tilt it so that it is straight in one direction, and it will appear to be leaning from another direction. You can try having your spouse stand and hold it in one place, but this might get a little tiresome. For the spouse, I mean.
There is always one branch at the bottom that appears to be clinically depressed. It sags, droops, and otherwise refuses to hold itself up and join proudly with the rest of the branches ("I just don't feel like Christmas this year," it moans). Until they make some sort of medication for trees, I do not have any suggestions about fixing this, unless you can get your spouse to take a break from standing and holding the tree and instead lie under the tree and hold up the depressed branch.
In the meantime, needles are piling up all over the floor around your tree -- this is the only respect in which an artificial tree resembles a real one -- and are starting to migrate to other parts of the house, where eventually they will combine to create a full-grown evergreen in, say, your attic. This is actually good, because by the time Christmas is over there will not be enough needles left on the original tree to justify setting it up the following year. I think this is the real reason it is called a "next-generation" tree.
Next: "Wrapping" the tree
We have sort of a "next-generation" artificial tree, which dismantles into three parts and has the lights attached. In theory, all you are supposed to have to do to assemble this tree is put the three parts into the main pole and the branches will just sort of fold down. The branches, however, do not appear to have gotten this message, maybe because they don't speak whatever language the directions are printed in, which, as near as I can figure out, is some dialect of Tagalog (an actual language not to be confused with the Girl Scout cookies called Tagalongs). This tree is in contrast to the old-fashioned type of artificial tree that I grew up with, where you put in each branch individually by matching the color on the tip of the branch to the color on the tree pole. Even a squirrel could assemble that kind of tree, provided he was not color blind.
But with the new tree, there is no simple way to tell in what order the three parts are intended to be inserted into the pole. You might think, as I did, that the big green button you step on to turn on the lights is probably attached to the bottom third of the tree. WRONG! The big green button belongs to the middle part of the tree. You might find this out only after struggling to put this part of the tree, which is about as easy to move as a wet polar bear, into the stand first, meticulously fluffing out each branch, and then realizing when you go to put the next part of the tree in that the pole does not match up with the part you have already put in. So you must start all over again.
When you finally have the three parts of the tree correctly installed, you will need to take a break. I recommend about a week, because as hard as that was, the next job is even harder. Now you must attempt to impose some sort of order on these branches that have been all cramped up for a year in a box, and look like it. You push and pull and twist to get one side looking perfect. After this effort -- which can take up to two days -- you step back and say, "Yes! This is the most perfect tree ever assembled." And then you move to another angle and scream in horror. On that side, the branches look as if they are practicing contortionism. So you will push and pull and twist the branches on that side to get it perfect, only to find that the first side is now all out of whack. Also, the tree never stands perfectly straight. Tilt it so that it is straight in one direction, and it will appear to be leaning from another direction. You can try having your spouse stand and hold it in one place, but this might get a little tiresome. For the spouse, I mean.
There is always one branch at the bottom that appears to be clinically depressed. It sags, droops, and otherwise refuses to hold itself up and join proudly with the rest of the branches ("I just don't feel like Christmas this year," it moans). Until they make some sort of medication for trees, I do not have any suggestions about fixing this, unless you can get your spouse to take a break from standing and holding the tree and instead lie under the tree and hold up the depressed branch.
In the meantime, needles are piling up all over the floor around your tree -- this is the only respect in which an artificial tree resembles a real one -- and are starting to migrate to other parts of the house, where eventually they will combine to create a full-grown evergreen in, say, your attic. This is actually good, because by the time Christmas is over there will not be enough needles left on the original tree to justify setting it up the following year. I think this is the real reason it is called a "next-generation" tree.
Next: "Wrapping" the tree
Friday, December 7, 2007
Cookie exchanges, Part II
If you missed Part I of this exciting blog episode, please report for detention to Room...oops, just kidding. But please be sure to read yesterday's Introduction to Cookie Exchanges before reading the conclusion today, or today's discussion may not make much sense (of course, it may not make much sense anyway). We left off where I went to get a snack because all the talk about cookies was making me hungry. I'm hungry again now, of course -- it being a new day -- but I will try to stay on task here.
Yesterday you learned, among other important rules for cookie exchanges, that you should not bring Girl Scout cookies to an exchange. People often want to know (I personally have never had anyone ask me this, but I'm sure people want to know, just the same) what kind of cookies they should make for a cookie exchange. The answer is: The ones your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother used to make over in Europe, before there even was Christmas, and for which the recipe has long been lost and probably wasn't written in a language you could read anyway. If it even was written down, because as you know good cooks are always fearful of anyone stealing their best recipes, and so they never record them and sometimes cannot even remember them themselves ("Was that a teaspoon of sugar or a pound?").
If you cannot locate an ancient family recipe, the next best thing is to use one that's a little more recent in the family history, say only a few generations back. If your family is scarce on treasured recipes, you will have to resort to either making something up or flipping through a cookbook or magazine and choosing one that looks promising (I recommend the "eeny meeny miny moe" method for choosing). Ideally you should make this recipe at least once before the actual cookie exchange so that if it is a total flop, you have time to beg some Girl Scout cookies off your neighbor or sister-in-law.
In an effort to hasten our discussion of cookie exchanges to a prompt end before we all faint of hunger, I will condense the parts of the actual cookie exchange into these simple steps:
1. Take your cookies with you. They are your ticket into the exchange.
2. Take a container for the other cookies you will receive, preferably something about the size of a wheelbarrow.
3. Once all the cookies are laid out, rush madly around trying to collect as many as you can.
4. Laugh at those who were not fast enough to get their fair share.
5. Take your cookies home and hide them from your family, or better yet, eat them all before you even get home.
6. For New Year's, resolve to never eat another cookie, at least not until next year's exchange.
As a postscript, I mentioned earlier that I was once bamboozled into organizing a cookie exchange. I carefully followed all the instructions I have laid out here before you, with the unsurprising result that 2 people showed up, one of which was me. But the other lady and I had a grand time, giving each other rides in our wheelbarrows before filling them with our meager haul of 12 cookies. And because her name rhymed with mine, we composed a song about the experience (this is true) that roughly corresponded to the tune of "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" and was titled "Have a Holly Polly Cookie Exchange." Unfortunately -- or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint -- this song, like so many of our aforementioned great-great-great-ancestors' recipes, has been lost to posterity, and neither of us ever went on to compose another hit. Sad, but true.
Yesterday you learned, among other important rules for cookie exchanges, that you should not bring Girl Scout cookies to an exchange. People often want to know (I personally have never had anyone ask me this, but I'm sure people want to know, just the same) what kind of cookies they should make for a cookie exchange. The answer is: The ones your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother used to make over in Europe, before there even was Christmas, and for which the recipe has long been lost and probably wasn't written in a language you could read anyway. If it even was written down, because as you know good cooks are always fearful of anyone stealing their best recipes, and so they never record them and sometimes cannot even remember them themselves ("Was that a teaspoon of sugar or a pound?").
If you cannot locate an ancient family recipe, the next best thing is to use one that's a little more recent in the family history, say only a few generations back. If your family is scarce on treasured recipes, you will have to resort to either making something up or flipping through a cookbook or magazine and choosing one that looks promising (I recommend the "eeny meeny miny moe" method for choosing). Ideally you should make this recipe at least once before the actual cookie exchange so that if it is a total flop, you have time to beg some Girl Scout cookies off your neighbor or sister-in-law.
In an effort to hasten our discussion of cookie exchanges to a prompt end before we all faint of hunger, I will condense the parts of the actual cookie exchange into these simple steps:
1. Take your cookies with you. They are your ticket into the exchange.
2. Take a container for the other cookies you will receive, preferably something about the size of a wheelbarrow.
3. Once all the cookies are laid out, rush madly around trying to collect as many as you can.
4. Laugh at those who were not fast enough to get their fair share.
5. Take your cookies home and hide them from your family, or better yet, eat them all before you even get home.
6. For New Year's, resolve to never eat another cookie, at least not until next year's exchange.
As a postscript, I mentioned earlier that I was once bamboozled into organizing a cookie exchange. I carefully followed all the instructions I have laid out here before you, with the unsurprising result that 2 people showed up, one of which was me. But the other lady and I had a grand time, giving each other rides in our wheelbarrows before filling them with our meager haul of 12 cookies. And because her name rhymed with mine, we composed a song about the experience (this is true) that roughly corresponded to the tune of "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" and was titled "Have a Holly Polly Cookie Exchange." Unfortunately -- or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint -- this song, like so many of our aforementioned great-great-great-ancestors' recipes, has been lost to posterity, and neither of us ever went on to compose another hit. Sad, but true.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Cookie exchanges, Part I
This time of year is full of traditions that people eagerly look forward to, such as shopping for themselves when they are supposed to be buying gifts for the friends and loved ones on their list. (Not that this is a tradition I, personally, would ever think of taking part in.) Another such tradition for many people is the cookie exchange, in which you get a lot of wonderful cookies in exchange for donating your Aunt Bessie's fruitcake.
No, no. The purpose of a cookie exchange is to get rid of all those calorie-laden goodies accumulating in your house and bring home even more. But lest you think this is a good way to dispose of all those old Girl Scout cookies that have been slowly hardening into hockey pucks around your house, there's a trick: You must actually bake something to bring to a cookie exchange. That is, if you do not want to be the laughingstock of the event. And please, do not bring those slice-and-bake cookies, either. If you spent 16 hours rolling out homemade gingerbread cookie dough and cutting out minute elves, reindeer, and stockings and frosting and decorating them with every teeny tiny edible decoration ever created, would you be happy if someone else brought something that a golden retriever could make? Not unless you are my husband, who does not discriminate against any cookie based on its origin.
There are formulas for determining how many cookies each person is to bring to a cookie exchange, based on the number of people involved in the exchange. (Some people think it should be based on how many people live in your house, because let's face it, if you have a big family, you're not going to see many of the cookies you bring home.) But the general rule is that each person brings a dozen cookies for each other person in the exchange, so if there are 4 of you, each person would bring 3 dozen cookies (unless you want to bring home a dozen of your own, in which case you would bring...4 dozen), and if there are 6 of you, each would bring 5 dozen (or 6).
If there are 12 of you -- well, perhaps you could all agree to just 2 cookies per person. But chances are that you will not have to worry about such high numbers, because quite frankly, not all that many people are interested in doing a cookie exchange. You'll be lucky if you get 6. In the typical group of coworkers, friends, neighbors, preschool moms, etc., you will have roughly 8 who decline to participate because they are not interested in doing all that work, 5 who bow out because they are on diets, 3 whose family members are allergic to wheat or dairy, and 2 who cannot find their oven and would not know how to operate it if they could find it. This will leave, on average, 4.8 people who are actually interested in doing the exchange.
Although these 4.8 people will happily participate in the event, none will want to organize it. I know, because I have been the person nominated to organize one. At the time I was a new employee in a nonprofit organization, and as generally is the rule when something needs to be done that no one wants to do, I got assigned because I was the new person. Also, it may have had something to do with the fact that I innocently declared, for all to hear, that I had participated in cookie exchanges before and loved them. Note: If you do not want to be volunteered to be the organizer, do not say that you love cookie exchanges. Do not even say that you love cookies. Just keep a low profile, eating Wheat Thins and celery sticks, and when an organizer is appointed and plans are put into motion, THEN say that you would like to participate. Under NO circumstances should you mention that you have won a baking contest in the past (particularly if this is true).
All this talk about cookies has made me hungry. We will now take a break and resume our discussion of cookie exchanges tomorrow.
No, no. The purpose of a cookie exchange is to get rid of all those calorie-laden goodies accumulating in your house and bring home even more. But lest you think this is a good way to dispose of all those old Girl Scout cookies that have been slowly hardening into hockey pucks around your house, there's a trick: You must actually bake something to bring to a cookie exchange. That is, if you do not want to be the laughingstock of the event. And please, do not bring those slice-and-bake cookies, either. If you spent 16 hours rolling out homemade gingerbread cookie dough and cutting out minute elves, reindeer, and stockings and frosting and decorating them with every teeny tiny edible decoration ever created, would you be happy if someone else brought something that a golden retriever could make? Not unless you are my husband, who does not discriminate against any cookie based on its origin.
There are formulas for determining how many cookies each person is to bring to a cookie exchange, based on the number of people involved in the exchange. (Some people think it should be based on how many people live in your house, because let's face it, if you have a big family, you're not going to see many of the cookies you bring home.) But the general rule is that each person brings a dozen cookies for each other person in the exchange, so if there are 4 of you, each person would bring 3 dozen cookies (unless you want to bring home a dozen of your own, in which case you would bring...4 dozen), and if there are 6 of you, each would bring 5 dozen (or 6).
If there are 12 of you -- well, perhaps you could all agree to just 2 cookies per person. But chances are that you will not have to worry about such high numbers, because quite frankly, not all that many people are interested in doing a cookie exchange. You'll be lucky if you get 6. In the typical group of coworkers, friends, neighbors, preschool moms, etc., you will have roughly 8 who decline to participate because they are not interested in doing all that work, 5 who bow out because they are on diets, 3 whose family members are allergic to wheat or dairy, and 2 who cannot find their oven and would not know how to operate it if they could find it. This will leave, on average, 4.8 people who are actually interested in doing the exchange.
Although these 4.8 people will happily participate in the event, none will want to organize it. I know, because I have been the person nominated to organize one. At the time I was a new employee in a nonprofit organization, and as generally is the rule when something needs to be done that no one wants to do, I got assigned because I was the new person. Also, it may have had something to do with the fact that I innocently declared, for all to hear, that I had participated in cookie exchanges before and loved them. Note: If you do not want to be volunteered to be the organizer, do not say that you love cookie exchanges. Do not even say that you love cookies. Just keep a low profile, eating Wheat Thins and celery sticks, and when an organizer is appointed and plans are put into motion, THEN say that you would like to participate. Under NO circumstances should you mention that you have won a baking contest in the past (particularly if this is true).
All this talk about cookies has made me hungry. We will now take a break and resume our discussion of cookie exchanges tomorrow.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
A little fuzzy
I have never had much use for math. Anything that uses "imaginary numbers" and "fuzzy logic" should be regarded with suspicion. I have a feeling that advanced math textbooks are written by deranged people who, for society's safety, have been removed to remote locations and given the task of copying down their innermost thoughts.
Joe took a course in fuzzy logic this semester. When he tells people this, they often react by giving me a look of sympathy. I myself was skeptical of it, even when he told me that fuzzy logic is used in the programming of washing machines, which would seem to give it some legitimacy.
Now, if he'd said it was used in dryers, that would make perfect sense. Think about it. Your socks, which are fuzzy, go into the dryer two at a time. They come out only one to a pair, with no trace of the second one, and the surviving sock is so emotionally scarred by the experience that it has to be thrown away, or at the very best used for dusting.
Could it be that the dryer, if working on a fuzzy logic system, periodically needs to have additional fuzzy input, hence the disappearing socks? Somewhere in that system, hapless socks are being sacrificed to keep the dryer running.
Of course, this is all in the realm of Imaginary Fuzzy Logic, but I think it would make an excellent thesis. Maybe I could even get invited to contribute the idea for a textbook.
Joe took a course in fuzzy logic this semester. When he tells people this, they often react by giving me a look of sympathy. I myself was skeptical of it, even when he told me that fuzzy logic is used in the programming of washing machines, which would seem to give it some legitimacy.
Now, if he'd said it was used in dryers, that would make perfect sense. Think about it. Your socks, which are fuzzy, go into the dryer two at a time. They come out only one to a pair, with no trace of the second one, and the surviving sock is so emotionally scarred by the experience that it has to be thrown away, or at the very best used for dusting.
Could it be that the dryer, if working on a fuzzy logic system, periodically needs to have additional fuzzy input, hence the disappearing socks? Somewhere in that system, hapless socks are being sacrificed to keep the dryer running.
Of course, this is all in the realm of Imaginary Fuzzy Logic, but I think it would make an excellent thesis. Maybe I could even get invited to contribute the idea for a textbook.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
How we really live
I have mentioned before our reluctance to invite people to our home because of the necessity of making sure their shots are up to date. Our stuff, being far out of proportion to the size of the house, is in a constant state of disarray, which means that the house is potentially hazardous to anyone who is unfamiliar with negotiating it.
Even a five minutes' visit from someone necessitates a frenzy of stuffing things into closets, behind curtains, in the dryer, etc. (I read once that the dryer is a good place to store things in a pinch, but I actually had one guest, who must have read the same thing and wanted to see if I had, open the dryer when he came over for the first time. Fortunately I had not followed the advice.)
Should anyone venture to look into these areas where we temporarily stash things, we would be required, by the Rules for Handling Sneaky Guests, to shoot them. Therefore we take great care in making sure they do not venture into them. It would just add to the mess.
Although we have made great strides in whittling down our "stuff" -- mainly by shifting it to our booth in an antique mall so other people can buy it and clutter up their houses -- there is a core group of boxes containing items that have no permanent home as of yet. They shuffle, like refugees, from one part of the basement to another. A few weeks ago they shuffled to the laundry room in anticipation of a friend's visit. Over the weekend they stayed there, as, on principle, I do not do laundry on weekends. Or I may have just been too lazy to put them back, I forget which.
Monday morning, I was to regret this. At 6:30 a man from the gas company unexpectedly appeared at our door, requesting to look at our gas meter. This is located, as you may have guessed, in our laundry room.
"Sure!" I said, standing in my pink polka-dot pajamas, barely awake. "When was your last tetanus shot?"
No, I did not really say that. And the Rules for Handling Sneaky Guests do not apply to service personnel, so I couldn't shoot him. I had no choice but to lead him down to the basement. He climbed over the mountain of boxes, bags, and miscellaneous junk as I hovered over him, wishing I could make both the mess and my polka-dot pajamas instantly disappear. I'm sure he had plenty to talk about at the dinner table that night, such as his wish that he had gone to law school so he could work in a nice, plush office instead of people's deplorable basements.
All of this is pretty humiliating. But I regained some of my dignity while reading a "Cathy" comic strip recently. Cathy was frantically trying to clean her house before her family's arrival for Thanksgiving, and she told her husband that all the mess wasn't really how she lived. The husband, evidently not married long enough to know not to touch that subject, insisted that it was how she lived -- the house looked like that all the time. Cathy drew herself up to her full height (which, in the newspaper, is about 1.8 centimeters) and declared, "This is only how I'm living until I have time to live the way I really live!"
To which I can only say, Amen.
Even a five minutes' visit from someone necessitates a frenzy of stuffing things into closets, behind curtains, in the dryer, etc. (I read once that the dryer is a good place to store things in a pinch, but I actually had one guest, who must have read the same thing and wanted to see if I had, open the dryer when he came over for the first time. Fortunately I had not followed the advice.)
Should anyone venture to look into these areas where we temporarily stash things, we would be required, by the Rules for Handling Sneaky Guests, to shoot them. Therefore we take great care in making sure they do not venture into them. It would just add to the mess.
Although we have made great strides in whittling down our "stuff" -- mainly by shifting it to our booth in an antique mall so other people can buy it and clutter up their houses -- there is a core group of boxes containing items that have no permanent home as of yet. They shuffle, like refugees, from one part of the basement to another. A few weeks ago they shuffled to the laundry room in anticipation of a friend's visit. Over the weekend they stayed there, as, on principle, I do not do laundry on weekends. Or I may have just been too lazy to put them back, I forget which.
Monday morning, I was to regret this. At 6:30 a man from the gas company unexpectedly appeared at our door, requesting to look at our gas meter. This is located, as you may have guessed, in our laundry room.
"Sure!" I said, standing in my pink polka-dot pajamas, barely awake. "When was your last tetanus shot?"
No, I did not really say that. And the Rules for Handling Sneaky Guests do not apply to service personnel, so I couldn't shoot him. I had no choice but to lead him down to the basement. He climbed over the mountain of boxes, bags, and miscellaneous junk as I hovered over him, wishing I could make both the mess and my polka-dot pajamas instantly disappear. I'm sure he had plenty to talk about at the dinner table that night, such as his wish that he had gone to law school so he could work in a nice, plush office instead of people's deplorable basements.
All of this is pretty humiliating. But I regained some of my dignity while reading a "Cathy" comic strip recently. Cathy was frantically trying to clean her house before her family's arrival for Thanksgiving, and she told her husband that all the mess wasn't really how she lived. The husband, evidently not married long enough to know not to touch that subject, insisted that it was how she lived -- the house looked like that all the time. Cathy drew herself up to her full height (which, in the newspaper, is about 1.8 centimeters) and declared, "This is only how I'm living until I have time to live the way I really live!"
To which I can only say, Amen.
Monday, December 3, 2007
A letter
A Letter of Complaint to Whoever Invented Business Casual Dress:
No doubt you are revered throughout the working world for transforming the workplace from stuffy to friendly. I, for one, do not thank you. This practice has moved every level of clothing down a notch. Suits and dresses are reserved for fancy parties and funerals -- maybe. What used to be worn for casual social occasions is now worn to work. Sweatpants, which used to be reserved for relaxing at home, running errands, or attending early morning college classes, are now worn when entertaining friends. As if business casual weren't casual enough, some places allow jeans on Fridays. Soon people will be attending annual stockholder's meetings in beachwear! And goodness knows what people are wearing in the privacy of their own homes.
This change has precipitated many a disagreement in our household. Monday through Friday mornings, my husband happily dons his Dockers and polo shirts. These clothes, however, are now tainted, in his mind, as "work clothes," with the result that he refuses to wear them anywhere else. What is left for social occasions and other public outings? To better illustrate what is left in his mind, I have taken the liberty of including the following chart that shows my husband's clothing preferences since the widespread implementation of your policies:
Occasion Appropriate item of clothing
Shop at Home Depot Pajamas
Visit family or friends Pajamas
Tour the White House and
discuss foreign policy
with the president Pajamas, maybe slippers
I have a suggestion about how to reverse this trend. Business Casual probably started with Casual Friday, which then got out of hand. Why not institute Dressy Friday, in which workers wear, one day a week, what they used to wear to work? Eventually, people will be enticed to break the rules and try sneaking into the office in a dress or suit on, say, a Wednesday, and before you know it there will be a wholesale rebellion and everyone will be burning their Dockers and open-collared shirts. Maybe even their jeans and t-shirts.
I'll be first in line with my husband's pajamas.
Sincerely,
The Pajama Wearer's Wife
No doubt you are revered throughout the working world for transforming the workplace from stuffy to friendly. I, for one, do not thank you. This practice has moved every level of clothing down a notch. Suits and dresses are reserved for fancy parties and funerals -- maybe. What used to be worn for casual social occasions is now worn to work. Sweatpants, which used to be reserved for relaxing at home, running errands, or attending early morning college classes, are now worn when entertaining friends. As if business casual weren't casual enough, some places allow jeans on Fridays. Soon people will be attending annual stockholder's meetings in beachwear! And goodness knows what people are wearing in the privacy of their own homes.
This change has precipitated many a disagreement in our household. Monday through Friday mornings, my husband happily dons his Dockers and polo shirts. These clothes, however, are now tainted, in his mind, as "work clothes," with the result that he refuses to wear them anywhere else. What is left for social occasions and other public outings? To better illustrate what is left in his mind, I have taken the liberty of including the following chart that shows my husband's clothing preferences since the widespread implementation of your policies:
Occasion Appropriate item of clothing
Shop at Home Depot Pajamas
Visit family or friends Pajamas
Tour the White House and
discuss foreign policy
with the president Pajamas, maybe slippers
I have a suggestion about how to reverse this trend. Business Casual probably started with Casual Friday, which then got out of hand. Why not institute Dressy Friday, in which workers wear, one day a week, what they used to wear to work? Eventually, people will be enticed to break the rules and try sneaking into the office in a dress or suit on, say, a Wednesday, and before you know it there will be a wholesale rebellion and everyone will be burning their Dockers and open-collared shirts. Maybe even their jeans and t-shirts.
I'll be first in line with my husband's pajamas.
Sincerely,
The Pajama Wearer's Wife
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