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Back to Normal…

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…Temporarily, anyway. Actually got some work done this weekend, for the first time since the Healthcare Fiasco from Hell started. And that has been months: it began last June.

In the paying work department:

• Met with the respected bank CEO client on Friday. Received instructions, heard update on his activities. Good.
• Read lawyer/novelist’s copy; sent off a slab of his latest iteration.
• Received more from the same; read about a half of that. Should be working on that right now, instead of blogging over coffee.
• Worked frantically on a book of my own, which I want to enter in a low-stakes local contest within the next few days.

In the puttering around the Funny Farm department:

• Drove to Home Depot; purchased plants and four bags of potting soil.
• Drove to a Mexican import/kitsch store and purchased a fake agave metal sculpture (therein lies a tale!).*
• Dragged bags of potting soil out of car.
• Dollied a heavy potted plant out of the front courtyard and placed it decoratively in the perennially moribund, failed flowerbed in front, getting it out my way and also, by serendipity, making the mess I made out there look a little better.
• Deconstructed huge, leaky, ugly, eroded old strawberry pot; rescued its few survivng plants, dollied strawberry pot out of sight and mind.
• Filled the new Talavera pots with potting soil; planted survivors and new stuff in them.
• Cleaned up the mess.
• Moved old coffee table out of the way to make room for gorgeous new Thos Moser table, delivered Saturday afternoon.

Fake agave and friends
Fake agave and friends (click on the images for larger, higher resolution views)

* Tale!  So, I wanted to put a plant that would grow sort of tall but not too tall in the $29.99 pot I got the other day, by sheer luck. The courtyard is way too hot for sanseveria, at least in the spot where I crave to see this bargain pot. A real agave would get too big. Aloe vera might work, but it’s invasive and kinda ugly. Idea: use one of those kitschy metal garden sculptures of an agave scuplted in rust.

Whitfill’s Nursery, home of the accidental bargain pot, did not have any left — they’ve carried them in the past, but apparently others in North Central have suffered the same lapse in taste I’m undergoing. But I happen to know of a down-at-the-heels shop in a scruffy area of North Phoenix, tucked into the river of blight that is Cave Creek Road. They carry a motley collection of anything they imagine might sell, including the self-same Talavera pots that Whitfill’s trucks in from Mexico. And they have a lot of rusted kitsch.

Yea verily, they did have the kitsch agave. And they had big signs up all over the place: 60% OFF! EVERYTHING MUST GO!!

So I took a look at their Talavera, because for sure if I could get another steal on one, I’d grab it in an instant.

They happen to have the very same style of pot that Whitfill’s normally sells for $59.99. Dang! Sixty percent off $60 would be $36, making the sale price an incredible $24.

Uh, no.

The junk store’s price tag? $139.99!!

$140 x 60% = $84
$140 – $84 = $56

Heee! Their “sale” price is about the same as Whitfill’s full price.

How do people get away with that kind of thing?

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All real, some from defunct strawberry pot replaced by Talavera extravaganza
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New succulent pot
Don't tread on me...
Don’t tread on me…
Puppy...Like...Pots...Eat...Plants!
Puppy…Like…Pots…Eat…Plants!

The Incredible Lightness of Costco…

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Or should the title be “Love in the Time of Costco”?

Ever notice how the Costco phenomenon has a lot in common with magical realism? I mean…it LOOKS real. But if you can shake yourself out of the dream and back to reality it’s kinda…weird.

Lately I’ve been working hard to stay away from Costco. Ideally, I’d like to keep the journeys into the Magical Land of Costco down to one a month, thereby cutting the Magical Overspending by a factor of God only knows how much.

Right now, I need (or crave) the following:

• tomatoes with flavor, affordable (i.e., Campari or “cocktail” tomatoes)
• shredded Parmesan cheese, lifetime supply of
• spectacularly delicious baby back ribs
• bottle of cheap but potable white wine
• bag of fingerling potatoes, preferably of the purple  (i.e., higher in nutrients) variety

All of these are available at Costco. In addition, I need, not readily or sanely available at Costco:

• 1 can of anchovies
• a modest number of kalamati-style olives

The olives are also available at Costco, only in a lifetime supply. If I were to go to Safeway, I could buy some in bulk but only in the amount I need for the proposed recipe.

Let us consider what will happen if I go to Costco…

• I will see a gigantic chunk of the Swiss cheese I favor and decide to buy it, on the theory that this will be one fewer thing to tempt me to return to CC in the future
• CC will have size 8 Gloria Vanderbilt jeans in one of the colors I’ve been coveting but that they seem to have forgotten. I will buy at least one pair of jeans, possibly two.
• I will buy a lifetime supply of dog chicken and dog pork.
• Realizing that the cost of hamburger is relatively modest and, especially, realizing that I’d like to avoid as much work as possible by way of making dog food and that if I take Pup off the canned ickum and start feeding her real food I’ll have to triple the current store of dog meat, I will buy a lifetime supply of expensive hamburger to supplement the lifetime supply of  pork and the lifetime supply of chicken thighs.
• I will see a lifetime supply of anchovies and think “hm…this will obviate an annoying trip to the grocery store” and so, even though I do not need a dozen cans of anchovies and will not use them all before the end of the 21st century, I will buy them.
• And so it will go…

If I bought fancy heirloom tomatoes at Whole Foods and scrumptious exotic cheeses and the fingerling potatoes next door at Trader Joe’s and the giant-size cut-rate package of hamburger and the spareribs and the wine at Safeway along with the bulk olives and the Parmesan cheese, I still would not spend as much as I would likely spend in one visit to Costco.

See what I mean about staying out of Costco?

Hoarding, Divesting, and the Frugal Impulse

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P1020979Spent part of the afternoon yesterday finally emptying out the closets, which have accrued old clothes as stale bread accrues blue mold. Threw out a bunch of tired stuff, moved the winter outfits to a closet in the other room, and gathered the summer stuff in the bedroom closet. In doing so, I freed up a vast number of clothes hangers, which before the cleaning frenzy were in short supply.

Huzzah! Now there’s room for more second-hand clothes from My Sister’s Closet! Actually, the other day my friend Joan and I dropped by the  Nordstrom’s Rack outlet. Though neither of us bought anything, I saw several goodies that I’d like to try on. But I suspect my frugal impulses may get in the way.

Here’s the thing: I tend to buy expensive clothes that are well made (or were, back in the day). These last (or used to last) forever and a day. Some of the stuff that closet harbors has been in there since before I was divorced…and that was a good 20 years ago. Matter of fact, as we scribble I’m wearing a shirt that dates back to said era.

The frugality of this strategy is obvious, no?

Well. Except of course if you buy clothes more than once every 20 years…

As time has passed and American clothiery has been shipped offshore, quality has slipped (we could say “plummeted”) to the point where even high-rent shirts, pants, and skirts not only do not last 20 years, they barely last 20 months.

So in amongst the…uhm…classics are any number of latter-day items from Talbot’s, Dillard’s, Chico’s, J.Jill, and of course that old standby Costco. Rags, all of it rags: faded, stretched, shrunken, frayed, and raveled.

But oooh, how can you throw out perfectly fine rags that could be used for…for gardening? And hiking! And housecleaning! And of course for the ever-present house painting!

Throwing this junk out is difficult. Very difficult. Even painful. How can a person get rid of a raggedy old shirt that she could still wear? A lot of raggedy old shirts, for hevinsake!

And therein lie the two problems: the closet is full of perfectly fine superbly made clothing, only slightly out of date, and perfectly fine gardening clothes, albeit a shade on the threadbare side.

Maybe, in an era when only the most unaffordably expensive clothes are made to last anymore, maybe it would actually be more frugal — or at least less crazy — to buy outfits that you have no intention of keeping more than a few months. At the end of every season, throw the damn stuff out.

That seems so wasteful, it frosts my cookies. But you might spend less money — or at least no more — and from season to season you might have cuter clothes. And you’d have to buy fewer coat hangers.

What think you, Dear Reader? Buy expensive clothes and make them last forever? Or buy cheap stuff and churn it every season? Which is smarter? Or, conversely, which is dumber?

The High Cost of Changing Your Life

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Okay, so now that I’ve succeeded in losing 30 pounds, thereby dropping the blood pressure back into the more or less “normal” range, the celebrating is done and reality sets in.

This weight-loss glorioski is costing a lot of money. Videlicet: none of  my clothes fit anymore. And I mean none of them. Underwear included.

Costco sells chintzy little made-in-Asia women’s underpants cheaply enough. But their excuse for a bra? Definitely not worth the (low) price. And, I’d come to realize, now that I was skinny I didn’t even know what size I am now!

If I knew the size, I could order my favorite brand online. But I had no clue.

This meant…oh yes!

The sheer unadulterated horror of a shopping trip for bras!

The male contingent may not be aware of this, but the way most women figure out what size fits, in brassieres, is to go to a fairly upscale store that has a decent lingerie department and have a trained saleslady measure the bod’ and then to try on, with her supervision, a whole bunch of bras in different sizes. It is a “trying” experience in more ways than one. I hate it.

So, it was off to Saks, which carries the preferred brand and often puts it on sale.

Or so it once did. No more!

Saks has gutted its lingerie department. Not only do they no longer carry the pricey brand that is the only brand known to fit me, they no longer carry much of anything. They didn’t have the store’s only two, count’em TWO wire-free bras in the size the saleslady and I figured I would probably fit into.

Wire-free bras are now apparently pretty much a thing of the past.

I hate underwires even more than I hate shopping for bras. They are SO. Fucking. Uncomfortable!!!!!

Those things with the plastic Dixie-cup arrangements are now more ubiquitous than underwires. Hideous AND sofuckinguncomfortable!

HOW do women get bamboozled into wearing this stuff? Why??? What sadist in New York gets away with designing miserable crap like this? Nay, gets PAID to design it?

You should’ve seen the gawdawful high heels I saw on an expensive-looking woman in church this weekend, as long as we’re on the subject of sadistic design. One false step, and she’d break her ankle. And a false step was highly likely, since the poor creature could barely hobble around in the damn things.

Back on topic: The only other store in Biltmore Fashion Square – i.e., the only other upscale department store this side of Scottsdale – that carries the desired brand is Macy’s.

I hate shopping at Macy’s. And of all the departments I hate shopping in at Macy’s, I hate their lingerie department most.

Yes. They did have the coveted brand. After searching high and low, I could not find one single wireless bra in that brand. Or in any other brand. The saleslady was too busy yakking away with her friends about personal matters to be bothered to sell anything – she didn’t even notice a customer was there. Pretty typical Macy’s customer disservice, in my experience.

Biltmore Fashion Square hosts a bra shop. The last time I went there, the stupid saleswoman informed me that brassieres are supposed to be uncomfortable.

No joke. It really happened.

Well, I figured I could at least get measured, though I wasn’t planning to buy anything.

There I found a competent brassiere saleslady – she actually seemed to know what she was doing. This poor soul, about my age, was laid off her administrative job at a nonprofit and thrown out on the street to spend the rest of her life selling underwear (probably at minimum wage) to unhappy women forced to shop for bras. Lucky her.

Ah well. Gives the shopper some perspective: when the landscape starts to look like you’re arriving in Hell, there’s always someone else who’s deeper in Hell than you are.

This store, called Soma, is associated with Chico’s. True to Chico’s form, the saleslady immediately started asking a lot of nosy questions, demanding my name, address, phone number, date of birth(!), and e-mail address and promising a few pennies back on the sale if I would just reveal all my personal information. She was not pleased when I informed her that a) I do not give out my phone number or e-mail address to retailers and b) I do not shop at Chico’s because I don’t like being high-pressured by their aggressive sales staff. I’m sure she’d be even less pleased if she knew the address they had in their system was fake.

At any rate, she toned down the sales pitch a bit when she heard the business about how much I dislike being strong-armed at Chico’s and how much I hate their mirrors that distort your image to persuade you that you look better in their bizarrely sized rags than you really do.

Hilariously, she knew about the mirrors.

Moving on, she also finds all of two underwire-free bras in the entire store. And since of course all their stock comes from the same place Chico’s gets its stuff – points far east – no two models in the same size fit the same way. She ends up getting me into a 32A in one model and a 34C in another.

At the risk of repeating myself: No joke. It really happened.

Oh well. We did arrive at a reasonable consensus on the actual size, meaning that the next time I have some money (which at this rate will not be in our lifetime), I can order a Wacoal from Amazon.

Meanwhile, I bought the 32A and the 34C because they were less uncomfortable than most and because they both created the illusion that my boobs do not reside around my waistline. Good enough for government work. I suppose. One was reasonably priced; the other cost as much as a Wacoal, a bra whose manufacturers expect you to ransom your first-born to scare up the purchase price.

Eighty-five bucks plus damn near 10% tax for two bras, neither one of which is in the theoretical size.

More annoying than life, isn’t it?

This lifestyle change that’s supposed to be so good for me is shaping up to cost me a lot of money…

Image: Soutien des seine par une brassiere. 1900. Public domain.

 

Farmer’s Marketing and Good Eating

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So it was still raining Saturday morning.

Among the vendors in the great estate-sale group here in the Valley is an antiques dealer who lives right around the corner. Once a year at the height of the gift-buying season, he throws a big yard sale at his house — it’s a much-coveted event. Well, naturally, my neighbor The Accountant from Heaven and I planned to descend on this the minute it opened, at 7:30 a.m. Spousal Accountant jumped into his truck (he had to work all day and planned to drive from the Event to his office) and Heavenly Accountant and I climbed into the Dog Chariot, which we figured would have plenty of room for whatever crazy things we purchased.

Alas, no: when we cruised around the corner, we were dismayed to find NO long lines of cars illegally parked up and down the street, NO party atmosphere, and no sign of the promised merchandising frenzy. It was just too wet for a yard sale, and so the proprietor had put it off for a week. Spousal Accountant stumbled off to work, and Heavenly Accountant and I looked at each other and wondered what to do next.

“Let’s go to the farmer’s market down at the church!” suggested she. It being almost 8:00 a.m., we figured the thing would be open soon, if it wasn’t already.

Wrong!

They were still setting up. Open at 9:00 a.m.

Welp, there’s another farmer’s market. It’s all the way downtown, and so neither of us frequents it often, because it’s a pain to drive down there around the stupid lightrail and an even bigger pain to park. However…Heavenly Accountant had been there the previous week and found this incredibly NEAT basket imported by a Ghanaian lady, and she recommended the whole shindig highly. Furthermore, because rain was still threatening, maybe there would be fewer people there. So downtown we went.

Was it great! The choice of produce was far superior to what’s offered at our local corner. They had all sorts of wonderful things, amazing varieties of radishes and incredible chard and marvelous lettuces and veggies of all descriptions. In Arizona, prices at farmer’s markets are very high, and so I’ve never bought much at the one in our neighborhood, which offers nothing you can’t get at Sprouts and sells everything at Whole Foods prices. But this stuff was worth an extra buck or two.

I got some lovely, delicate little eggplants, which I intend to cook today, and some amazing long, long, LONG string beans in two colors (very tender and delicious, as it developed), and some beautiful beets with lovely fresh greens, and some stuff called “baked falafel,” which is a sort of legume paste (ingredients say “split peas,” not chickpeas or garbanzos) spread out thin and baked into delicious, IRRESISTIBLE crackers.

Over at the Ghanaian lady’s booth, we found the spectacular baskets. This woman, her son, and her Washington, DC-born daughter-in-law have a nonprofit that creates work and profits for African women by contracting for and importing their really very pretty basketware. I tried to recruit D-i-L as a member for the Scottsdale Business Association (they would LOVE her!), but with a full-time job as a Pottery Barn designer, two kids, full-time college coursework, a husband, and a mother-in-law who’s drafted her to help run this business, getting herself to the east side of town at 7:15 in the morning was asking a bit much.

That notwithstanding, we decided we needed a new basket for the weekly SBA drawing, and so, since most of our membership is male and we wish to frighten them, we naturally picked one that’s mostly pink.

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Yesterday after some running around, I was starved by mid-day and so broke out a piece of steak and raided the fridge, therein to find those nice beets and exotic beans. Had planned to bake the beets, but really didn’t want to wait an hour or so to eat, and so decided to cook the things on the grill, exactly as I roast potatoes over the grill, only maybe with a little more flavoring. Here’s the trick…

You need:

• A pan for cooking veggies and small foods over the grill (holes or mesh on the bottom)
• A few nice, fresh beets, cleaned, with the coarsest part of the skin peeled off (you don’t have to peel the whole beet)
• Some spices or herbs (I used fennel seeds and cumin seeds in a ratio of 3:1)
• Salt and pepper (easy on the salt!)
• A little olive oil
• Dash or two of lemon juice, lime juice, or wine vinegar

Cut the beets into quarters; if they’re very large, you may want to cut them into smaller chunks. They should be an inch or two across.

Go outside and turn on the grill. Place your grilling pan over the heat, close the lid, and allow the whole lash-up to preheat.

Meanwhile, pour some olive oil into the bottom of a plate. Dry the beets nicely on some paper towels (beet juice stains, so don’t use your kitchen towels unless they’re already red). If your spices aren’t already ground, place the seeds (fennel and cumin were very nice) in a mini-food processor or coffee grinder dedicated to pulverizing spices and whap them into near-powder. Stir this into the olive oil, along with some cracked black pepper and a small amount of salt.

Place the beet pieces into the spiced oil. Turn them over so all sides are coated with oil and spices. Carry this out to the grill, along with a tool that will allow you to touch hot surfaces. Using said tool, push the hot ban over so it’s not directly over a burner. Set the beet pieces, one at a time, onto the pan.

Allow these to cook about six minutes to a side. Go out and turn them over at about that interval 0r sooner, so you can see that they’re not burning and to cook and brown each surface.

While they’re cooking, place a little lemon or lime juice, or if you prefer, a good quality salad vinegar, into the olive oil. Mix these together with a fork just before you take the beets off the heat.

While the beets are cooking, you can use the grill to cook a steak (or other meat) and heat other veggies wrapped in tinfoil.

As soon as you take the beets off the grill, set them back into the olive oil, which you’ve now spiked with juice or vinegar. Roll them around in the oil to coat again, and serve them up. DE-licious!

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woot! Incredible Estate Sale Coup

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So last week La Maya and I descended on an estate sale in an upscale central Phoenix neighborhood. The organizer had photographed and marketed effectively — and they had something good to market — so we got on the road by six in the morning. Numbers were handed out at 7:00 a.m., and we were numbers 32 and 33. Having secured our place in line, we went off to grab breakfast and returned at 8:00 for the opening.

Absolutely amazing! The client apparently was an affluent woman, living alone, who had a great deal of money and a great deal of idle time. Evidently she assuaged her boredom (depression?) with recreational shopping. The house was filled with goods of all kinds, from expensive kitchenware to expensive pocketbooks, that still had their price tags. Wads and wads of costume jewelry, piles of scarves, clothing, tchotschkes, artwork, on and on and on.

I snabbed one item that I won’t describe because it will make a nice Christmas present for M’hijito. Picked up some beads and fake pearls that will be good in the fake jewelry-making enterprise. And then on the way out, as we were standing in line to pay for our loot at the mobbed check-out, what should we find but a box of leather gloves.

Well, I’ve been needing a pair of gloves for my walking project — early mornings at this time of year can be kind of nippy. The other day I looked at Macy’s and almost fainted at the prices, which ran from $60 to $80. Finally ended up buying a pair of nylon things for four bucks at Costco, which do the job but aren’t very attractive.

La Maya grabbed a pair first, in a really beautiful gray leather. Then she noticed they were made in Italy and lined with 100% silk. I found a black pair and an ivory pair that fit, and, not inspecting them any closer, plonked down the $10 per pair to claim them.

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They were clipped together with spring-loaded office paper clips. When I got them home and freed them from the metal clips, I discovered that the black pair was still tacked together with its original little piece of thread — they had never been worn! The ivory pair had been used, but not much. And both pairs were labeled “Made in Italy. 100% Silk Lining”!

Also picked up a hand-made, fine leather wallet that similarly has no sign of ever having been used. My wallet is shot — had to replace the zipper pull with a safety pin — and I’ve been looking for something to take its place. Five bucks!

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Wow! How cool is that?