Cleaning House

I should have been a Depression-era kid. You'd think I was if you'd have been here today as I was cleaning out the basement, garage, and walk-in storage area upstairs on my yearly Goodwill run. I clean the basement and and the walk-in once a year, and by clean, I mean sort through all the stuff I pile up in both spots over the course of the year, and decide where it goes: to some more permanent spot in the house, to a friend or family member, to Goodwill, or to the trash. The garage is just pitiful. I haven't given it a good cleaning and sorting for a couple of years. Maybe more. I'm hanging my head in shame here. Every time I do these tasks, I run across those items that I just can't get rid of, but which have no real immediate use. We all have things like that, right? Today, I'm pretty surprised by the things that seem to fall into that category for me, and it's led me to my earlier conclusion. I should have lived through the Great Depression.

I found five mixed balls of yarn. These are balls of yarn in which I've tied together longish pieces of a variety of colors and fibers and rolled them up into a ball. Why? I found at least 20 of those green plastic bud vases that you get when you receive a flower arrangement--ones that hold a single stem and have a pointy bottom so that a florist can shove the flower into dirt or a chunk of oasis. Perhaps I had some intention of creating my own backyard flower arrangement? I found about a dozen plastic film canisters (remember those?), several old make-up brushes cleaned and saved from discarded blush compacts, a stack of used file folders with the labeled tabs whited out, a stack of greeting card envelopes in every size imaginable (without a single card), at least five pairs of old sunglasses with ear stems so stretched out I'd have to have a massive amount of water on the brain to keep them on my head, and a gigantic bag of old cotton socks with holes in them (I think I can call this my rag bag).

The really curious bounty was in the garage, though. Over the many months or years that things have piled up there, I managed to save some interesting things. I found the bowl part of an old bird bath, cracked in half. I saved it that way: I have no memory of what I planned to do with it, but I've been saving it for years. Today, it hit the trash can. I found the aluminum grill/screen protector from a screen door that I replaced twelve years ago. I remember thinking that I could sift compost through it (uh-huh). I saved two broken fireplace screens for the same purpose. Let it be said that while I do make compost, I never sift it, and if I did, I have a nice sifting box that my dad made out of old bits and pieces of things he'd saved about 50 years ago, so I really don't need to haul out the aluminum storm door parts for that job. All this is headed for the trash, and, ultimately, for the metal-grabbing trash pickers who cruise my street every garbage night. I found a nice, neat pile of cardboard boxes, all broken down, and all intended for use in garden (see the blog entry on my teenaged garden for that explanation). They're in the recycling bin now. I found five, two or three foot long pieces of garden hose. Again, why? My favorite find was a plastic grocery bag overflowing with long twist ties--the kind that come in packaging and hold items in place on, say the cardboard box. I am a compulsive twist tie saver. My mom used to save them off the bread loaf packaging: I'm not that bad. But I do save those nice long heavy-duty ones. They're so useful. Potentially. I'm not sure I've ever used more than five of them in the time I've been in the house, but that bag stays. My bits of plastic encased wire will save me in post-apocalypse Ohio. It's possible.

Lest you think I'm a hoarder, let me say that I am not. Really, I'm not. Not the kind that makes for scary reality TV show watching, anyway. I'm the child of two Depression era parents who saved everything that might have a second use, so that's just the way I'm wired. Today, I hauled five bags of stuff to Goodwill, though, and gave an unused porch swing and a well-used area rug to a former student; i also filled three cans for the trash, and one gigantic recycling bin. It felt good. Whenever I do this, though, there's that nagging feeling that I just might need one of this things I've dumped. It's unlikely to be the cracked birdbath or the aluminum storm door grill, though. It's possible that even the trash pickers will pass on those.

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Good Things Come Tied Up in Twine

One of the things I loved about my sabbatical is that I took the time to read. Don't get me wrong, I read plenty: novels and stories for my classes, articles for something or another I'm writing, newspapers, and magazines. But in the usual busy school year, I don't get more than a handful of books read for pleasure. I have the time to do it; I think that sometimes it just feels like work. In your average year, I make sure I read one book a month for pleasure, but that's not saying much, is it? Not for an English professor.

On sabbatical, I've had time to read more. It feels like at any given time, I'm reading three books simultaneously, and I've enjoyed that. Right now, I'm reading Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway, and Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I think I like them in the order I just placed them in. My favorite sabbatical books? I absolutely loved Mark Doty's book, Heaven's Coast and Elizabeth McCracken's An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. I loved Jonathan Franzen's novel Freedom, too. I read Joyce Carol Oates' memoir about the death of her husband (if you're counting, that's three memoirs about death in the sabbatical line-up!), and I don't ever remember hating a book I read from cover to horrifying cover quite so much. Do yourself a favor. Don't read that one.

I have a reading rule for myself: once I've reached page 100 of a book, I have to finish it, no matter how bad it is or how long the book is. That was what happened with Oates. I made it to 100 somehow, and I felt like I'd made a commitment. I can usually make a judgement about a book fast: if it doesn't have a great first sentence, I don't want to read it. I'll give some books a 50 page trial, but you have to hook me fast, or I'm out. I think I was seduced by Oates' name recognition and because it was a memoir about death. I know, that wouldn't be a big selling point for lots of readers, but it is for me. But, oh, so bad.

I'm currently madly in love with reading books on my iPad. I honestly thought I'd have a really hard time making the transition from paper books to an e-reader. Not so. The iPad is a dream to read on. Easy to hold, no reading light necessary, the ability to enlarge the font for my aging eyes, and free sample books in iBooks. I've read the first 50 or so pages of dozens of books for free, and that's been a great way to buy books. I'm a person who detests the back cover description on a book: it makes me feel like I already know the story, so why read on? Reading the first 50 pages is a much better way for me to decide if I want to buy the book.

My only problem now is that I'm an incredibly slow reader. I always have been. I don't know what I can do to change that, but I'm certainly plugging along. Best of all, I'm enjoying it. As I write this, I think about my childhood reading self. In grade school, I loved to read. Is there a stronger word then loved? The nuns would pass out the Scholastic Book catalog every school year, and I would pour over that thing for hours. I guess I didn't hate plot descriptions so much in those days, because I would read and reread them until I had chosen every single book I wanted to buy--and I don't remember that my parents set any limit on books. I ordered titles like Freckled and Fourteen, Three Desperate Days, Almost April, and Thirty-Six Steps. My absolute favorite day of the academic year was the day when Scholastic Books were delivered. We'd come into our classroom, and on our desks would be the pile of books we'd purchased, all tied up in twine. The nuns wouldn't let us untwine them during the school day, and this was sheer torture for me. Wrapped Christmas gift kind of torture, that is. I wish I still felt that intensely about unread books. I love the anticipation of cracking open a book I've wanted to read, but it's just not as intense as the excitement of Scholastic Books. I asked my niece recently if they still ordered scholastic books in grade school. She said yes, but that they did it online and the books were mailed to the house. That seems disappointing to me somehow.


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I Go Out Walking

In 2009, some health concerns kickstarted me into action. I started an almost daily exercise program that involved walking, for the most part. I mapped out a nice 45 minute route in my neighborhood, and I walked it, rain or shine. Or snow, for that matter. I turned the route into a 60 minute loop, I added a couple of new routes, and then foot problems made it so that I needed a little variety in my exercise schedule. Sometimes, now, I ride my bike for an hour or so in my neighborhood, I go to the pool occasionally, or I work out at the gym. This exercise regimen has kept a couple of health issues at bay, and it's made me a lot happier. A good walk is a great mood booster and anxiety buster. More than anything else, that's what keeps me moving.

I woke up Monday morning with a big kink in my back, so I've been virtually couch bound all week. My back will unkink eventually. In fact, it's substantially better this morning. I had an acupuncture treatment yesterday to help it along, and I think it did. He must have stuck thirty needles in me, and that can't have been easy. I'm needle phobic, even when the needles don't hurt (and acupuncture rarely hurts). What gets in my way is my overactive imagination. I imagine the needle penetrating my heart or breaking off in my back, and I freak out. I blame this on my ex-husband. When we were married, I was in the room when he had a spinal tap, and the process seemed to hurt me more then it hurt him. There he was, calmly enduring a giant needle in his back, sucking out his spinal fluid, while I turned green and passed out. Well, I made it through yesterday's ancient needle treatment without losing consciousness, so that's a good thing, and today I head to the chiropractor for a tune-up. I'm sure I'll be walking again eventually, but for now, I'm pretty unhappy about this slowdown. With each passing sedentary day, I feel more sluggish and cranky.

Let's face it, I'm not an especially patient person. I want to get back to my routine as soon as possible. My cheery disposition depends upon it.


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School Days, School Days

I'm starting to get pretty excited about the coming school year. I loved my sabbatical, but I think it did exactly what it was designed to do: it gave me the time and space to devote my energy to a variety of interesting projects and, in doing so, it cured me of burnout. What a relief. Burnout sucks. Really. It sucks the energy and creativity right out of you and makes you feel resentful a lot of the time. Corporate America should really implement some kind of a sabbatical system. I know some corporations do that, but I certainly don't think it's widespread. It should be. If I'm the norm here, a good, productive sabbatical makes an employee find renewed enthusiasm for her work. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

So what am I looking forward to this academic year? Here's my partial list:

1. Teaching. Man, I miss it. Have I said recently how privileged I feel to have a job where I get to talk about books and big ideas with interesting young people? I loved teaching in China, but I'm really looking forward to getting back into a classroom here. Plus, I'm teaching Holocaust lit in the fall, and I like teaching that class a lot. A whole lot.

2. The book. I'm working on a book with my friend, Robin, and I have really enjoyed the project. A big part of the enjoyment is that I get to work with smart and interesting Robin, but a lot of it is the novelty...you got it: a new thing.

3. Study abroad: I spent a couple of hours with my friend and study abroad partner, Eric, this week planning collaborative study abroad assignments for students in our 2012 program. I think we came up with some great ideas, and it made me pretty excited about the program. We talked about how what we're planning can feed into a research project on study abroad that I'm currently involved in with several colleagues at school, too. Yay!

4. AAUP. I'm looking forward to the death of SB5 in November. I LOVE my union--my collective bargaining unit, in particular--and the idea that Ohio's governor wants to shut it down makes me angry. I'm feeling a little more prepared for that fight now.

5. Change. Lots of things changed at school while I was on sabbatical: even my school's name changed! My department hired four new professors last year and three more this year, so I have many new people to get to know. I'll take on some new committee work, mentor a new colleague, and teach new classes in the winter, spring, and summer.

Okay, I won't lie. I'll miss sabbatical. If things stay the way they are now, I won't get another one for seven years. Right now, though, I'm enjoying my enthusiasm for the coming school year.

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Food Fest

I'm not a great cook, but I do love cooking. One of my best new things in spring 2010 was to join a CSA. Since then, I've been loaded down with fresh, locally grown, organic veggies from May to October. Consequently, I've had to turn into a recipe creator and regular cook. Here's this week's cache of veggies, minus the ton of tomatoes and stalks of basil leaves they doled out.



I ate well this week. Too well, I'm afraid! After last Saturday's trip to Findlay Market with my friend, Paul, we got together to grill the fresh lamb and cherry sausages we'd picked up and had it with good corn on the cob and a nice CSA grown salad. I grilled some zucchini I had to get rid of, too. On Monday, I had a totally impromptu diner with my friend, John. We grilled steaks, and I made a yummy salad from CSA tomatoes, basil leaves, chunks of fresh mozzarella, and balsamic vinegar and olive oil. On Tuesday, I made a blueberry-peach crisp. I'd bought a ton of peaches over the weekend--a half peck of them from a great grower in Northern Kentucky. I was going to freeze them, but I'd had some rolled oats hanging out in my pantry for a long time, so a crisp it was. Tasty. Here it is. Wondering who ate this thing? I did...I decided that this low sugar crisp was nothing more than oatmeal, nuts, and fruit, so it became the week's breakfast food. Yep. I'm a pig.



I made a terrific chicken salad last week out of left over chicken, low fat mayo, dried tart cherries, and a little onion and green pepper from the CSA. Last night, I used the rest of the CSA peppers and scallions, along with the rest of the leftover chicken to make Chinese noodles. I'd bought some rice noodles at an Asian market at Findlay last Saturday, and I knew they could sit in the pantry until I threw them out next summer if I didn't use them right away. I made the recipe up, mostly, and my Chinese friends would certainly laugh if they saw the end result, but I thought they were great. Good thing, too. I ended up making about four meal's worth. Last night, I ate them with chop sticks, of course, and I was horrified to see how my skills have diminished. Use it or lose it, right?

I need to find something to do with the eggplant and greens today or tomorrow, and I have a giant load of gorgeous tomatoes that need a great recipe. Actually, my friend Karen gave me one for them: a tomato and cheese tart. If I eat a whole tomato pie myself, though, I'll explode. We'll see. Anyway, I ate well this last week. I also overexercised myself into a big plantar fasciitis relapse to make up for the food intake. As I've said before in this blog, balance isn't my thing.

One last thing: a shout out to my friend, Karen, who needs to post her first food blog entry. She's a cook you want to hear from, so come on, girl. Get writing!

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My National Parks Addiction

I've really been dawdling with my new thing for August. I just wasn't able to think of anything that sounded interesting without being expensive or difficult to do. Today, I saw a sign advertising a Flying Trapeze School, and I considered it for a moment before laughing at myself for even thinking about it. I have been to a couple of new restaurants this month and tried a couple of new recipes, but I needed something with a little more effort involved--but no hanging off of a flying bar many feet above the ground, I finally came up with something, and Thursday is the day I'm going to do it. First, the backstory.

My friends Dwight and Cindy (if you read my China entries, they were my traveling companions) introduced me to the wonders of the National Parks Passport several years ago, and I've been a cancellation stamp junkie ever since. Go into any visitor center at a national park or historic site, and in their gift shop, you'll find a parks passport. It's about the size of a US passport, but spiral bound and thicker. Inside, there are a few scattered pages of text and parks photos, but the majority of the passport is made up of blank pages divided by regions of the country. All the big parks and most historic sites and monuments have in their visitors centers a cancellation stamp and ink pad. I'm pretty certain that all it takes is one cancellation stamp to turn on the thing in a person's head that makes them crave more. It's kind of like having a collection without the need for a curio cabinet. Here's the passport.






I got my first stamp in 2002 at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan. Since that first stamp, I've collected dozens of them--several from Yellowstone, some from Grand Tetons, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Badlands. I've gotten a couple from Isle Royale, the Smokies, Mammoth Cave, Mount Rushmore, Cuyahoga Valley NP, and more in DC than I can remember. My friend, Cindy, taught me some important passport etiquette, too. You have to tour the site to get the stamp--no stopping at the visitor center for a cancellation without spending tome in the park or historical site. My rule for myself: I must get at least one new cancellation each year. The William Howard Taft NHS is in Cincinnati, but I'm "saving" that one for a year when travel is impossible. Here are some stamped pages.












This is my nerdiest stamp, by far. Check out the words on the top of the cancellation circle.





So where's the new thing in all of this? I have not a single 2011 stamp, so my new thing for August will be (drumroll, please) to drive to Dayton, Ohio to get as many stamps as I can at the national park sites there related to aviation. I know, it sounds kind of dull. I am not all that interested in airplanes or their history, but I am crazy about filling up my passport. My friend, Margaret, is a passport junkie, too, so she's coming with me. As she said to me in an email, one of the great things about this little addiction is that it gets you into places you might not have otherwise gone. If you follow Cindy's rule and really spend some time in the place before getting the stamp, you're bound to learn something new. And as I've said many times, I'm crazy about new things.

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Market Day

Findlay Market is one of my favorite Cincinnati places. This historic public market on a nice summer Saturday morning is a hopping place to be. Neighborhood folks from Over-the-Rhine and shoppers from all over the city converge to buy fresh food, listen to street musicians, sip coffee and read the newspaper, or just do some people watching.



The outdoor farmers market and the indoor market filled with butchers and bakery stalls were packed with people today. I met my friend Paul at about 10, and after coffee and some kind of blueberry scone sort of thing, we shopped. I bought yellow and white flesh peaches, two kinds of noodles at the Asian market, rice and bean curd noodles, to be exact. I bought fresh lamb and cherry sausage, and a big bunch of colorful zinnias, too.



Here they are once I got them in a vase. Talk about cheerful flowers!



Findlay Market is on my list of best things about Cincinnati. Its funny. As I write this, I find myself thinking about China, and the market we visited in the village of Fuli in Guangxi province.



There is something vibrant and so interesting about an outdoor market.
Whether it's in the American Midwest or southern China, it's a great way to spend a morning.

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On Middle Age

The indignities of middle age. The surprising aches and pains of it. I know: I have nothing to complain about. I love my life. I have fabulous friends, an adorable house, a satisfying job, and more recent travel than I know what to do with, but I also have some new things that I'm not especially happy about. Most of them can be summed up like this: post-menopause. The first person who called it "the change" had it absolutely right. While I'm through the horrifying worst of it--a full year and a half when my cognitive skills bottomed out so badly that I truly thought I was in the starting stages of early-onset dementia--it's not over. In the last two years, my face has been sliding south, spilling into a fleshy blob that dangles and sways beneath my chin, my crows feet have speed, and my hair has thinned. Honestly, I can live with that. I don't know that I'm growing old gracefully, but as one of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, says, looks matter less in middle age, as long as you're clean and smell fresh, that is.

What I'm really finding intolerable are the physical changes that go way beyond appearances: the hot flashes that wake me every single night, the the water retention that comes with aging veins and that leaves me so bloated that my hands tingle from carpal tunnel and my feet swell in my shoes. And this week, something brand new. I seem to have developed lactose intolerance. Why, oh why does dairy hate me so much? According to the Internet? Aging.

I know: quit complaining. I repeat, I love my life. But I am continually surprised by this rapid corporeal change. I guess I'll reach a point where I get used to some of these changes. In the meantime, I'll wail and moan about the annoyances. At least until I get a good night's sleep. Besides, I trust that new things will keep me young. In spirit, at least.


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Family Picnic 2011

I spent my last day in Erie...well...just ouside of Erie, in Venango, PA. My brother and sister-in-law have a family picnic every summer at their house. They have something like ten acres of land in a really pretty, rural area, about 45 minutes from Erie. I don't have a big family, but I guess there were 19 of us there yesterday. I got to see two nephews and their wives who I don't see too often, so that was great. Here's the view from my brother's front porch: beautiful rural Pennsylvania.





This is a pond my brother dug on his property. It's full of fish, frogs, and even three huge snapping turtles. We spent some time yesterday feeding the fish breadcrumbs and trying to get one of the snapping turtles to bite onto the end of a rope. He sat under water looking up at us and the end of the rope for a ling while, and then he snapped hard on the rope and pulled. That's entertainment.





Every year, my brothers, Chris and David, spend at least part of the picnic playing their guitars and singing. Pretty entertaining. This year, my nephew, Dan, joined them. Here's one of my goofy new things for August: I joined them as a really horrifyingly bad vocalist on "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Thankfully, there are no photos of that spectacle.











It was a good picnic. Lots of fabulous food and plenty of fun. I think this will be my last trip to Erie until Thanksgiving. I'm glad I did some of my favorite things and saw some of my favorite people while I was there.

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Wintergreen Gorge and Presque Isle State Park

Yesterday morning, I took my usual Erie walk from my sister's house to Wintergreen Gorge Cemetery. I used to ride my bike to a trail that led straight down to the gorge when I was a kid. A whole bunch of us would get on our three speed English Racers or Stingrays with big banana seats and ride a few miles to the gorge. We'd chain our bikes to trees in the woods and hike down in. The creek at the base of the gorge is mostly tame, but there were a few rough spots and several really deep water holes where we'd swim. Downed trees surrounded one, providing a natural diving board. And we did dive and jump. We'd spend a lot of time under the little waterfalls we'd find, too. I've gone back as an adult, but I've never found one of those deep holes. I know they're there; I just can't find them. These days, I walk to the cemetery at the rim of the gorge, and in cold weather when the leaves are off the trees, I get a nice view of the rock walls and water below. Plus, I have a thing for cemeteries. When I was a kid, my dad would frequently pile us into the car for a Sunday drive through the historic Erie Cemetery. Anyway, I had a good walk yesterday.

The afternoon lineup included a picnic at Presque Isle State Park. I'm not sure I can accurately state my love for the park, or the peninsula, as we call it here in Erieland. There are seven miles of sand beaches on the Lake Erie side of the peninsula, and a nice, paved bike path on the bay side. My parents would take us to the beach on hot summer days, and when I got to about 14, my friends and I would take the Little Toot Ferry from the Public Dock at the foot of State Street, across the bay and around the tip of the peninsula to the North Pier right near Beach 11. I remember feeling so grown up on those afternoon adventures. Now, there's a new Bayfront Highway that gets me from my sister's house to the peninsula pretty quickly. No bay crossing involved. We spent a couple of hours at the beach yesterday. I was surprised to find it pretty deserted. Of course, we were at Beach 1, my favorite beach, but certainly not the choice of cooler, younger sunbathers. That's one of the things I like about it. Mostly, I like the fact that it's the only beach without ugly stone break walls about 100 yards from the shore. They keep the peninsula from eroding in winter storms, but I hate them. They weren't there when I lived in Erie, so I've never gotten used to their presence.

After some swimming and sunbathing, we drove over to the bay side and found a picnic table near a grill. We'd brought a cooler full of food, so we had a feast of grilled veggies and hot dogs, followed by s'mores and roasted marshmallows. It was a nice beach cookout. All in all, a great day on Presque Isle.


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Hometown Hiatus

I drove six hours to Erie, PA yesterday. I'm here for a big family picnic at my brother's house tomorrow. It's a drive I've made dozens of times in the last 26 years. Yesterday, I realized that I've now lived in southwestern Ohio exactly as long as I lived in northwestern Pennsylvania. That seems momentous somehow. Anyway, the drive up yesterday was fine. I had a few entertaining encounters, but it was mostly just a blur of pavement and yellow lines.

Driving up I-71, I passed an SUV towing a big, fancy boat on a trailer, heading for Lake Erie, I'm guessing. I laughed out loud when I read the boat's name, painted in red on its stern: "Another Meeting.". Think about it. The phone rings while you're playing hooky from work, drinking a cold beer as you float out on some quiet lake: "sorry. I can't talk right now. I'm in another meeting.". Brilliant. I laughed a few more miles down the road when I came up behind semi with these big words painted on its cab: "I've upped my standards. Up yours.". Clearly, I'm easily entertained.

I stopped at Wendy's for lunch, just outside of Columbus, and the joint was packed. Their soda machine was broken, and instead of making that public, they told each customer who approached the counter, and each customer took time to exclaim some version of "oh my," and then the counter staff retold the riveting story of the strange noises the machine made when it died. Anyway, the line was really slow. The guy in front of me started chatting to me about his diabetic co-worker, and the guy behind me pointed out a group of teenage girls who seemed to be trying to cut into line. I told home we could take them if they tried. He laughed, then paused and said with a smile, "you buy lunch and we'll call it a date. I'll buy next time.". Ha! That gave me a good laugh.

I made it to Erie by about 6pm, had dinner with the family--taco pizza and pepperoni balls. Erie food. I spent the evening in the backyard pool with my nephew, Mike. After several kick board races, I think I worked off some of the pizza. It was a nice end to a mostly sedentary day.

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The Yo-Yo Life

I seem to be in some kind of cycle that I can't break, though I'm determined to try to do so. I guess this is one of my new things for August, though calling it a new thing is a real misnomer. It seems to me that I've gained and lost the same ten pounds for two years now. It seems to me that I've spent the same $250, too.

The pounds make some kind of sense. I know several people who have the same problem. Their number might be different--five pounds, twenty pounds--but they know the yo-yo life. I blame travel for my recent upward shift. When I'm traveling, I'm moving almost constantly, walking through museums, climbing subway stairs or Great Walls, running through airports. The fact that I eat snacks between every meal or desserts after several of them doesn't always seem like an extravagance: it feels like fuel. The trouble comes during the week or two after I return. The constant moving slows to my usual hour-long walk a day, but the regular food habit is much slower to change. I'm two weeks out from my Europe trip, but my eating is only just adjusting. It's time to exert a little willpower and force myself to quit snacking.

Now to that $250. I'm not sure that this is really a problem. I am a return addict. It seems to me that if a store has a return policy, there's about a 75% chance that I'll use it. If I think about the stretch of time from the China trip until now, I have spent, returned, and respent the same wad of cash several times. I have bought and returned four pairs of shoes (all in different shopping trips), several pieces of clothing, trip accessories, bed pillows, and my latest greatest return, used luggage. I bought three pieces of luggage, two before China, and one before Europe, and all three proved to be defective in one way or another: a broken zipper, a jammed aluminum handle, a hole in the fabric, and so on. The warranty said I had to pay for shipping both ways, and that they'd repair or replace the luggage, but the three bags together are heavy, and I don't want the same crappy luggage again. So I thought I'd try taking them back to Macy's. I found a sales clerk and asked in my best I'm-sure-this-is-just-a-crazy-idea voice, and she said, "if they're defective, bring them back.". So I went to my car, hauled them out of the trunk, and I have my $250 back. She didn't even want me to tell her what was wrong with the bags, by the way. If I were a less ethical person, I'd just "borrow" bags for each trip I take. Alas, I'm not that person.

I do think I have a shop and return problem, though. Or maybe I just have high standards: I demand satisfaction. More likely, I have poor impulse control. I think that explains the weight gain, too. I don't know...somehow I feel like a shopping bulimic, and that can't be good. I'll be working on these things in August.

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