Living in a 3rd world country but hoping for a Happy New Year anyway...

This holiday season was somewhat complicated, for us personally, by a serious wind storm in Seattle that knocked out our power for a week. We got pretty desperate. Seattle is cold and dark in the winter, and we rely on a furnace for heat. And we REALLY rely on electronic connection to the world. Without it, we are pretty miserable. And so, late on Monday night before Christmas, we gave up on Seattle, packed up the cats in the car and head south. Refugees, as it were.

I wasn’t, probably, in the best of spirits for the trip. I admit that. But I took a different look at the countryside along the way, and with the mess we left behind in mind as well, I got to thinking my old refrain: that we, as a country, are making some bad decisions about priorities and character and direction.

It wasn’t just the little things – the fact that, for example, “Buckle up for Safety” signs have been replaced by “Click it, or Ticket” signs; and even “No Littering” admonitions have escalated to “Litter, and it will Hurt” threats. Or the fact that SeaTac airport had a big ‘to-do’ about whether or not they should be allowed to have Christmas trees as holiday decoration. No, it’s bigger than that.

America is, literally, falling apart. Our entire infrastructure is old and weak. Our highways are in disrepair, our bridges are past their expected life span, our power supplies are limited and at risk to the elements in fragile overhead systems that were installed half a century ago. Sewer and water systems are inadequate; drainage and reservoir systems outdated. And even more worrisome still, our education policies have severely limited the number of people willing and able to train for technician jobs, so we don’t even have the plumbers, pipe fitters, electricians, refrigeration technicians, diesel mechanics, pile drivers – the list goes on and on – to rebuild our infrastructure.

But, of course, that's not all. We have public policies, affecting nearly every sector, that confuse the best of us and provide opportunities for corruption to the worst of us. We've screwed up our air traffic control systems, our schools, our universities and our libraries with budget cuts that have left them hopelessly behind in the technology that private business and industry counts on every day. (And yes, they have all managed to retain their upper and mid-level managers who carry coffee cups around all day and make decisions about cutting direct and important services while saving their own jobs.) Our laws and policies have brought us perilously close to a police state. But our bureaucrats continue to distract us from seeing that by declaring imaginary ‘wars’ on drugs and crime and terrorism and Christmas. Our politicians are corrupt, our military is confused, our media is untrustworthy, our prisons are overcrowded, our schools are failing.

Maybe Neil Stephenson is right and pretty soon all America will be able to do well is deliver hot pizza in 30 minutes or less.

Our immigration policy alone is putting our own citizens’ very financial security at risk through rampant and uncontrollable identity theft. But we don’t do anything about it, because big business and the government are making out like bandits on this scheme. And even if you didn’t care about that, think about this: People died in Seattle Emergency Rooms simply because they don’t speak English and didn't get the word that they shouldn’t run generators in their living rooms during power failures in cold Seattle winters.

We have had critical shortages of nurses and other health care providers for years. We can’t get good people to teach – but we sure do have a lot of lawyers, because that’s where the money is. Our 'entertainers' (and I use the term lightly) are the most valued people in our social structure – instead of our engineers and inventors and composers and mothers. Half of our ‘workers’ are flying all over the country giving PowerPoint presentations to other people about toilet paper improvements and the latest in cotton underwear, while the other half are flipping burgers and cleaning hotel bathrooms. We don’t seem to produce much, or build much, or create much that backs up our economy with real value. We're sliding into a service economy of low-wage, low-skill jobs contrasted by a few high-wage, high-skill professions and all we have is a big debate about minimum wage laws as the solution???

It's all about priorities. In a perfect world, we could do it all. But this isn't a perfect world. (And believe me, being without power for a week in December truly brought that point home to roost.) We don't get to have it ALL.

I think we have our national priorities out of whack. We have limited resources, and we are spending them in the wrong places. I think we are moving ever closer to being a 3rd world country right here at home. And I am afraid that might be The Plan.

I’m worried about us.

I want to have a Happy New Year. I want YOU to have a Happy New Year too. I want to believe that we will manage, once again, to swing back to common sense and practicality and decency and kindness and balance and all those things that mean civilization and prosperity and the freedom to pursue happiness.

I want the lights to come back on.

Good grief. I don't know how to fix any of it, but I sure do know how to complain about it.

I am, of course, part of the problem. I 'want' and I 'hope' but I don't know what to 'do.' Or where to start. Or even how to stop complaining about everyone else's solutions. I'm struggling with my role and my responsibility and my impotence. But if there are a lot of other people who are doing the same, maybe we'll manage to make it a Happy New Year after all.

Having a Happy Holiday

Family, friends, laughter and loving; the preparation, and the anticipation, and the joy of it all – the Christmas season really CAN be all it’s cracked up to be.

Wishing you a Happy Holiday too.

The Christmas essentials

I was ‘shopping’ today on the internet. Recreationally. And I was amazed at the possibilities that some ‘gift’ sites have to offer.

I found a toaster that also poaches your egg and warms up your sausage patty. A bug vacuum; a pirate costume; a Deluxe Toy ATM Machine that I can’t imagine anyone actually getting for their child. A mini-cheesecake pan with removable bottoms – sort of like a muffin pan / springform pan combined. A remote control Mexican Redknee Tarantula. (There's something everyone should have.) A rubber piano – take it anywhere to play your favorite music. A marshmallow shooter? 25 mini-marshmallows in a clip! (Marketing comment for this amazing product: “If only Dick Cheney had one of these.”)

The electronic money jar keeps a count of how much you have in your jar and is, amazingly, out of stock! Sorry!

A football-shaped TV remote control is advertised as just the thing to ‘get ready for football season.’ It is NFL-licensed, foam-padded and has real laces. Oh my. And right along with the football theme, there is also a football slow-cooker. Don’t know if it has ‘real laces’ though.

You can get “Night Vision Goggles with Dart Launcher” – which suggests that you “surprise your friends!” I bet your friends would be surprised.

Then there is the Scrolling Buckle Leather Belt (Was $50.00; Now $19.99!) It features “Custom messages displayed with style. Rhinestone buckle is self-programmable with easy input, 9 adjustable scrolling speeds and brightness and 3 function buttons (start/stop, up, down). Store up to 6 messages, up to 896 characters. 96 characters to choose from. Red LED light display.” The pictured product, of course, said ‘Hot” on it. Why would you want to send flashing red messages from your belt as you walked down the street?

Surprisingly, Microdermabrasion showed up in the ‘most requested’ list of Christmas gift searches on one gift site.

I never ran across such interesting stuff at the mall.

A Merry Christmas trip over Steven's Pass

Yes, there was snow! We went to Leavenworth yesterday - Washington's 'Bavarian Village' to see the Christmas displays. It was snowing just a bit over the pass and we were a little nervous about getting back. OK, I was a little nervous - Mark, not so much.

So we didn't stay long enough to see the lights come on on all the buildings and trees - and we really should have. We heard about the Snow Train trips to Leavenworth too late this year to get a reservation - but hopefully next year we'll be able to do that!

It's a Guy Thing

Remember our neighbor who put up the big inflatable haunted house for Halloween? Well, he's back!

Every day for the last 2 weeks he's been out putting up Christmas lights. They are perfectly positioned on the house itself - every light in place, expertly spaced and anchored, dimensions fitting the lines of the house exactly. And every day he adds more. Just yesterday the colored lights along the street were set into place.

I think he might be done now - but you never know.

Movies are made depicting this phenomenon. Jokes abound. People come from miles around when one of these houses gets 'discovered.' I just don't understand. It's a guy thing, right?

I have to admit though, I'm really enjoying having it right outside my own (unlighted) window!

Housework

I was trying to take pictures of my Santas, which are now displayed all over the house – thinking that I’d fill the void in my blog postings with pictures. But when I looked at them on the computer, enlarged and in all the detail that only an 8 mega pixel camera can provide, I realized that I should have been doing something else. Dusting.

Now we all have our individual standards when it comes to housecleaning. Obviously mine are a bit more lax than, for example, the mother of a friend, who was mortified when visiting relatives to find that they had neglected to dust the tops of the light bulbs in their lamps. Or another woman I know who couldn’t help her neighbor get a child to the emergency room because it was her day to vacuum the drapes and she simply didn’t have time. Even my dental hygienist, with whom I had a one-sided conversation just yesterday, was despairing about how, in her new larger home, she had trouble keeping the baseboards dusted and the window tracks clean. (I realize that some readers will be puzzled at my examples here, and unable to perceive these as impossibly high standards for some of us. And to you I apologize – and won’t invite you over.)

(I’ve recently painted my baseboards and suspect that they are probably not too dusty, but now I’m thinking it’s time to start checking them!)

I didn’t realize.

I think there is a great deal I’m not ‘realizing’ is dirty in my house. It looks, with a casual glance, neat and clean, but obviously that isn’t the right standard. Years of being a working mother taught me to just jump in and do what I noticed needed doing – a little bit at a time – every day. I just didn’t have time for the Big Cleaning days because I wanted to spend time with my son and always had other things to do. And now that I have much more time for it, I lack the energy or enthusiasm. There are SO many more things I'd like to do with my time.

And of course there is the whole ‘I just can’t see it any more’ business besides. You can blame a lot on failing eyesight as you get older!

But now I’ve embarrassed myself and need to get at it.

Or maybe I could just crop the pictures and photoshop out the dust!

A no-work day

I have a part time, 'occasional' job. They call once or twice a week to say there isn’t anything for me to do so I might as well just take the day off. So I do. The trick is to do something wonderful with such a ‘found’ day.

I often dive into a book and just read all day. Or get out the paint can and start on another room in the house. Or go out and rake leaves if there is sunshine, or bake something if there is rain, or print up pictures for my albums, write… or go shopping.

On Tuesday, after they called, I decided to go Christmas shopping. I got ready to go, picked up my list, got a Diet Coke out of the refrigerator for sustenance along the way, found my keys, put on my coat, locked the door behind me and set off on the 12 miles into town. I got to the store, found a parking place, pulled on the emergency brake, turned off the car, opened the door and reached for my purse… which I had left on the chair at home.

Today they called again.

Maybe I’ll just rake leaves. Although there is the potential of locking myself out of the house again.

Times change?

When we lived in Portland some years ago a highlight of my Christmas season was the Christmas Bazaar at the Expo Center. There were close to 1000 booths of beautiful handmade Christmas crafts – it is from these that my extensive Santa collection came. The workmanship was incredible, the variety amazing, and unbelievable creativity was displayed everywhere you looked. We’d go home with bags of stuff – it was all too much to resist. There were wreaths, ornaments, wooden toys, fudge, Christmas sweaters and table runners, angels, santas, and snowmen. People worked in wood, fabric, metal sculpture, yarn – you name it. If it was creative – it was there. What a joy.

Then we moved away. We sought a substitute fair in California and Kentucky but there just wasn’t a match. Portland was the BIG one. Alas. But now we are back within a few hours drive and could go again. I was so excited about it.

Mark got a bunch of cash from the ATM yesterday in preparation. We even debated whether we should take the truck so as to have more room for The Goods we were likely to bring home and then decided we’d better exercise some restraint considering our smaller house and already critical storage situation. Even so, he chided me for not bringing the checkbook “just in case.” We got up early and off we went – for the three and half hour drive to Portland.

The parking fees had gone from $4 years ago to $7 now; admission from $3 to $6.50. “But still,” we thought.

Times change. Into each life a little rain must fall. Disappointments build character. Um…

The fair has completely changed. Gone were the handmade crafts – entirely! In their place were isles and isles of ‘merchandise’ such as you might see from the Dollar Store or WalMart or even Cost Plus World Market. We could have bought imitation designer sunglasses (buy one pair of Gucci sunglasses for $20 and you get 2 more pairs free!) or a rubber broom or a telescoping flagpole – and those were the ‘upper end’ products. Hardly anything even had a Christmas theme, although you might have considered a bunch of the stuff to be ‘gag gifts’ for the office holiday party. There were potato peeler demonstrations, t-shirts with dirty ditties, and tons (in total weight – the only way to assign a value in this case) of Plastic Stuff.

What were they thinking? What happened? We started walking at a brisk pace up one isle and down the next just to get some exercise so it wouldn’t be a complete loss. Finally, just as we were about to turn toward the exit, we spotted a single booth with some quality crafts. Rushing over, in desperate hope of an answer, we started talking to the woman sitting quietly amid the chaos, drawing a ribbon of fabric into a ruffle as she worked on her crafts. And she confirmed that the crafters had mostly given up amid the increasing pressure from the more ‘commercial’ booths. Who wants their quality things lined up between sports bobble heads and Tupperware demonstrations? And no, she didn’t know where the rest of them had gone. Maybe they all just gave up.

It was a sad start to the holiday; a long drive there and back for, literally, nothing. So tonight I am unpacking boxes of Christmas decorations and marveling over all those wonderful treasures I acquired during the good days of craft fairs to make up for it.

The end of an era, I guess.