Adventures in Grocery Shopping

I hate to shop for groceries, but I love to eat, and the Chromos get cranky when the cupboards are bare. Go figure. And because TV Stevie and I had each been on our own for a long time before we met, we developed habits. Eating styles. Must-have foods.

TV grew up with a mom who didn't cook much. There was a lot of deli-to-go in his life. Potato chips. Soft drinks. Macaroni salad is his comfort food.

I grew up in a home where my mom was a full-time home maker. There were chocolate chip cookies hot from the oven on the table as soon as we got off the school bus every afternoon. There wasn't a lot of money for things like chips or soft drinks, so those were considered treats. Macaroni and cheese is my comfort food.

When TV is stressed, he eats potato chips. For me, the best stress-reliever is ice cream.

When we were first married, TV didn't like the way I grocery shopped . . . I wouldn't buy chips, soft drinks, or even my ice cream. We were on a budget. According to him, I never look at the price of anything, but how dare I buy Store Brand cream cheese and ketchup? And what did I mean, buy your own tomatoes? Hey. I don't eat tomatoes, what do I know about picking out the best tomato. Ditto oranges. It's scary watching him fondle every orange in the produce department.

So we started shopping together. Except when the Chromos were newborns. Then I'd give him a detailed list, complete with labels from jars of pasta sauce. That worked out okay. Not the best solution, but okay.

Once the Chromos started religious education on Sunday mornings, grocery shopping life became simpler. I write two grocery lists: one for TV and one for me. We drop off the children, then hit the supermarket, where we divide and conquer, meeting up again at the check outs. It works. Most of the time.

He still complains when I buy ice cream, but I'm not supposed to say anything about the mountains of potato chips in his cart every two weeks. I've finally weaned him off soft drink, but now the fridge is stuffed with various juices and non-carbonated unhealthy stuff (10 percent real juice, 90 percent cancer-causing initials) . . . and there's still no room for my made-from-scratch ice tea.

This past week, we ran into another obsticle: water. Bottled water, to be precise. I had purchased (gasp!) Store Brand water because (gasp!) I looked at the price, and it was a $1 a 6-pack less than National Brand water. WATER, folks. Not cream cheese, not ketchup, WATER. (I know there are those of you who wonder that we buy bottled water at all, but I tried refilling water bottles and it doesn't work. Not at our house. Mostly because people will drink then not refill the bottles or Y-Chromo will drink directly from the water pitcher which is gross and disgusting and so very male that I can't get him to stop without a gender-change operation.) TV insisted that I purchase National Brand water instead of Store Brand. I explained the difference in price. I mean, the Chromos have to eat Store Brand Peanutbutter, Store Brand Salsa, etc. to save money. TV & I should drink Store Brand water. Uh-uh. He feels he can't walk into his place of business with a Store Brand bottle when the store in question doesn't do business with his company.

Okay. I'll buy into that, but only for the water he takes to work. I think he should drink Store Brand when he goes to the gym, etc. Either that or we stop buying Store Brand altogether -- or even change where we spend our food dollars.

What are some of your grocery shopping pet peeves? Or do you actually enjoy shopping?

The Semi-Annual Great Wardrobe Swap

Back in the olden days, when I was single, my apartments had adequate closet space for a working woman. Most apartments had two closets, so I kept my off-season clothes in the closet not in my bedroom.

Then I got married. We bought a house. We had Chromos.

Our house was built in 1920, when people didn't own a lot of clothes. Women didn't work outside the home in a paid-capacity (don't get me started on the volunteer labor those women performed), so they didn't need a business wardrobe in addition to a casual set of clothes. Thus our house is severely closet challenged.

TV Stevie has the largest closet -- a walk-in -- in Y-Chromo's bedroom. He needs it for his manly suits. Y-Chromo has a cubby on the side of his bureau for his hanging shirts and such. There is a shallow closet in X-Chromo's room, but it's long. I'm afraid to go in there, so I don't know what she has hanging up. TV Stevie also has the tiny closet in our bedroom, which utilizes the space beneath the stairs going to the attic. He hangs his shirts and ties in there.

I have a small but deep closet in my "office" -- the room where I have my computer. But it only holds one season's worth of clothes, so I have a huge bin in which I store my off-season clothes.

And that's my project for the week (besides write and polish chapter 7 of the second werewolf book): I must pull all of my cold-weather wardrobe out of the closet and hang the warm-weather items. This is not as easy as it sounds.

I've gained a lot of weight. I'm not going to unpack clothes that currently don't fit me.

I hate this process, because it also involves laundering items that were packed away for 6 months, sorting through things I know I'll never wear again, deciding what should be tossed vs. what should be donated, then arguing with TV about receipts for donated clothes (both I and our accountant say, DON'T BOTHER, but TV is a "collector", so even junk has value in his eyes).

The fun part is finding clothes I'd forgotten I had and having a nicely organized closet for a week or two.

So how do you handle swapping wardrobes? Do you have any tricks to share?

Bang, Bang . . . You're Dead

Last night, TV Stevie & I took the Chromos to see the play BANG BANG YOU'RE DEAD. My niece is one of the actors, as is the daughter of an acquaintance. I had no idea what this play was about until we arrived at the little theatre -- which I never knew existed -- in downtown City.

I came home and e-mailed every member of the school behavior committee at X-Chromo's middle school, urging them to go to the final performance (Saturday, May 12) of this season.

Many people may think this production is exploitive of school shootings -- it's "based" on the shootings in Paducah, Springfield, and Jonesboro -- but it isn't. Nor does the production merely focus on the massacres, but also on events leading up to the murders. It also examines bullying. It is compelling, heartwrenching, and gut twisting.

The play may be performed royalty-free, and the script is legally download-able at the: Bang Bang You're Dead website.

After the performance, there was a dialogue between the cast and the audience, which was also enlightening.

The ensemble cast is made up of area middle and high school students. They told the audience how the advertising posters they'd put up in their respective schools were taken down, how requests to bring the performance into the schools were denied by administrators because the title is too disturbing and the fear of copy cat crimes.

No one is claiming these "reasons" are invalid, but the person facilitating the dialogue made an excellent point: schools are too busy locking down to keep the students safe to deal with the behaviors that trigger the events.

It was pointed out before the performance that most of the school shootings happened in rural or suburban -- not urban -- America. What they didn't say was until Virginia Tech, the shooters were all white males. Even the Va Tech shooter was a Y-chromo.

Back in the days when I screened Public Service Announcements for a local TV station, we would receive spots about school shootings . . . but they usually portrayed black males in urban settings. The assistant news director and I always vetoed these spots for air -- he because he's a black male, and I'm the parent of chromos attending urban schools. Reality check, folks. The stereotypes don't portray the reality.

I'll get off my soapbox now, but I hope I've prepared a feast for thought.

What's In a Name?

Names. They've fascinated me since I was old enough to read. When I found them listed in the back of my parents' dictionary, I was in heaven. Those pages are now worn out. I took name books out of the library when I was in elementary school, then in junior high, bought my own. After all, a writer needs books of names so she knows how to write her characters.

When I was pregnant for Y-Chromo, TV Stevie and I went through all sorts of craziness trying to choose a boy's name. We agreed almost immediately on a girl's name, but a boy? Oh boy.

For religious reasons, we needed names that began with certain sounds or letters. Neither of us like the same names. There was a lot of "over my dead body" going back and forth. At one point, fueled by hormones, I sobbed, "Why are we going through this? They'll only call him [insert variation of our surname] anyway." TV assured me that one or two people tried to call him that as a teen, but the nickname never stuck.

Then we decided we should try to guarantee this child a college education, and offer to name him after a school in exchange for a scholarship. Brilliant or what? Some of the names floating around: Canisius, Colgate, Cornell, Syracuse, Sienna (altho' we thought the latter two sounded more feminine than masculine).

We did agree on a couple of things: we wanted to name our children names that were definitely masculine for boys, feminine for girls. No Chrises, Pats or Terrys for us. We wanted names that were traditional and Biblical, and that couldn't be skewed with unique/different/whacky spellings. We each have to spell our names for people because there are two common, accepted spellings for our first names. We wanted "real" names, because I'm tired of explaining that yes, while my name is often a nickname, it is my name and not short for anything.

During this time, friends called to let us know their daughter had arrived in the world. The father told me her name, and I said (in all seriousness), "You're kidding, right?" I thought it was a joke, because they had chosen the exact same first and middle names that TV and I had settled on for our potential daughter. We had not discussed this with them, altho' TV might have mentioned it in passing. Our friend was perfectly serious. I handed the phone off to TV. His reaction was the same as mine. Then I heard him ask, "You're spelling Anne with an E, right?" -- because we were using Ann withOUT the E for a middle name. Well, so were they.

It's a good thing Y-Chromo was a Y -- it gave us time to come up with another middle name for our X. When I was pregnant for her, we couldn't come up with a male name we could agree on. A sign, perhaps, that she was an X.

When she was a baby, learning to talk, we stumbled across something quite interesting. She had her very own name for her big brother: Hmmph. She would be in her carrier on the kitchen table at dinner time, and we would talk to her. "Who am I?" Pointing at me. "Ma-ma." "Who's that?" Pointing at TV Stevie. "Da-da." "Who's that?" Pointing at Y-Chromo. "Hmmph." Which we found hysterically funny. (And no, his name ISN'T Humphrey, altho' TV may have suggested it at one point.)

One of my friends had name-choice issues with her husband -- and found a great solution.

What are your naming stories? Your own children, your own name, your characters?