Shopping resolutions going around

Laurie at Crazy Aunt Purl has resolved not to buy anything non-essential for the first three months of the year. In a recent post, she talked of ways she was changing her shopping habits to accomplish this and dozens of readers chimed in with Amens and tips on how they had learned to turn off the buying machine.

Laurie’s post and other recent articles on consumerism got me thinking about my own shopping and spending habits and how they’ve changed since we moved to Belgium. In the U.S., I considered myself the master of the good deal. I was the coupon-clipping, circular-reading, sales-tracking goddess. I was an expert on the local retail landscape—from what was available to pricing structures to promotions. I prided myself on always getting the best stuff at the best price.

But the truth is that in the process of nailing the best deals, I made a lot of impulse buys too. We all know what it’s like to step into a store to buy toilet paper, shampoo, and toothpaste and step out with a cart full of other stuff.

Moving to the Brussels area changed all that. I very rarely go shopping. I didn’t visit the local mall until I’d been here more than a year, and I don’t frequent the smaller shops much either. To start with, everything is much more expensive here and there’s a 20 percent sales tax. Major sales are only held twice a year, in January and July. Things are not marked down in between. I never realized how much of my motivation to buy things was linked to sales, promotions, and price until I moved here.

I’m not familiar with many of the store chains and brand names so I don’t know where to find my “look” or price range, and the different sizing system adds to my confusion. For most of the time I’ve been here, I haven’t had a car at my disposal. Not only does that make getting to the stores more of an ordeal, but it also means getting things home from the stores is awkward.

With all those circumstances working against me (or for me), I’ve moved to online shopping, focusing on a few major retailers that will ship to U.S. military addresses overseas charging regular shipping, not international shipping charges. Without a lot of players in my retail field, I spend far less time trying to score a deal and just find what I need and check out. Less time shopping means less stuff makes it into the house.

It’s true that without access to Target, Wal-Mart, and the sales-happy American retail landscape, I usually pay more for clothes and shoes now, but I buy a lot less than I used to. I’m not as easily seduced by peripherals. True, when I do shop in Belgium, I have a weakness for handbags, pottery, and local art, but I have my limits. While Laurie at Crazy Aunt Purl has to rein in her yarn purchases, I have to resist stockpiling rubber stamping and paper craft supplies, but truthfully, I enjoy my stamps so much that I don't entertain much guilt over my purchases. 

The big thing for Laurie and a lot of people is realizing the cumulative savings of reducing the purchase of the “little things” that easily get rung up without a second thought. Magazines, a daily cup of coffee, snack foods, meals on the run, DVDs, gadgets, cosmetics, lotions, and whimsical items that catch our eye at the checkout. Some people insist on getting rid of something every time something new comes into the house. Others use budgeting tools like spreadsheets and shopping lists to monitor spending. Laurie’s hope is that by changing her shopping strategy, eliminating non-essential purchases, avoiding stores, and sticking to shopping lists, she’ll be able to save enough money to eliminate the debt that’s been following her since her divorce.

Do any of you have tips and success stories to share? What’s your shopping weakness and your strength? Do you monitor your spending in an organized way? Where do you economize and where do you splurge?

January 10, 2007

Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

Confessions of a Middle-Aged White Grrrl

Over the weekend, Neil took offense when I referred to him as a hot middle-aged guy WITH hair. He informed me he is not middle-aged because he plans to live to 110. So by Neil’s standard, Rick the Middle-Aged White Guy, is indeed middle-aged, but Neil, exact age unknown, is not.

So where does that leave me? V-Grrrl in the Middle!

Back when I started this blog, I wrote an introduction that said I was old enough to be Mrs. Robinson and young enough to be a geezer’s trophy wife, but Neil has me thinking otherwise.

At the end of the month, I turn forty f***ing five, and you know, not only do I not feel (or look) like Mrs. Robinson, but I’m also past the point of being a trophy wife. I can’t produce a flat stomach OR a trophy baby without serious medical intervention.

Back in Virginia, I used to go walking during the winter at a mall near my children’s school. It opened up early in the morning just for walkers looking to escape bad weather, and the first day I showed up I noticed it was mostly populated by Medicare patients with personal cardiologists. This sounds grim but it had unexpected benefits for me.

Let's face it, a 40-year-old mother of two at a typical fitness facility is surrounded by Barbies in sports bras and short shorts who make her feel flabby and inadequate.  Walking at the mall with the blue-haired ladies and liver-spotted men, I got to play the role of super fit, sweet young thing.

At least that was the case until I too acquired a cardiologist and enough gray hair to break out the L’Oreal. Hmmm, maybe the gulf between me and the “old people” at the mall wasn’t as wide as I thought.

Once my cardiologist started me on beta blockers and compromised my stamina, some of those “old ladies” began leaving me in the dust as I ambled breathlessly past Macy’s in my Nikes. Damn! This is not RIGHT! Could I muster the strength to catch up with those wenches before we hit the Victoria’s Secret or would I have to cut corners in front of the JC Penney and gain an advantage on the inside curve around the big planter? The drama of it all. 

Mamatulip, throwing up over the prospect of turning 30, doesn’t yet know that you’re not OLD until you’re run over by a woman wearing pristine Easy Spirit sneakers and a fanny pack carrying photos of her grandchildren.

If I hadn’t been so humiliated, I would have chased that old chick down and asked her who HER cardiologist was—and did she know the name of a physical therapist who was good with knees?

Oy.

As I wrote to Rick recently, those of us with sharpening wits and softening middles need to stick together: Old age could hit us at any time.

January 8, 2007

Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. www.v-grrrl.com

The end of the affair

My kids have been out of school since December 20, and without their schedule keeping me on the straight and narrow, my biorhythm easily re-set itself for late nights and late mornings. Sleeping for nine or more hours wrapped in a cocoon of flannel and fleece has been the perfect way to cope with the endlessly grey winter days we’ve been facing.

The last few nights I’ve been falling into a deep sleep and then waking in the middle of the night, listening to the wind whine and the bells on the village clock tower mark the hours. The black hole of sleeplessness sucks every anxiety up to my consciousness and sets them swirling in a vortex of worry. Tumbling through this morass of uncertainty, I eventually hit bottom just before dawn and slip back into sleep like someone who has succumbed to a poison dart.

Hours later, crinkled and creased like my pajamas, I get up, wash my face, wet down my wild hair, and ease into the day wrapped in a big fluffy robe and clutching a stout mug of English Breakfast tea. The kids know not to talk to me until I’ve been awake for an hour, and often I don’t get dressed until lunch time when I tackle household chores or slip off into the blogosphere. After dinner, I get a second wind, chugging through art projects, reading, or watching movies until close to midnight. Life’s been good, even with the occasional bouts of sleeplessness percolating in the background.

But tomorrow my day will start before the sun is up. If insomnia pays me a visit, there will be no reprieve. I may be tossing and turning right up until the moment the alarm drives me out of bed at 6:30 a.m. I’ll be faking a state of full consciousness as I make breakfast, pack lunches, and step out into the dark to walk the kids to the bus stop, gravity pulling at my limbs, my feet leaden. No it won't get better as the week progresses, it will only get worse. 

Sure it will be good to once again have time and space to myself, but tomorrow morning I’ll be anything but happy as sleep calls me back to bed like a persistent lover. Sorry babe, it's over. Oh the end of the affair! It was good while it lasted.

Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

January 7, 2007

Ten things that made me smile on the tenth day of Christmas

1. The sight of my son stretched out on the sofa, lost in a book

2. My daughter happily working on and completing a class project

3. Petey the Kitten lying on the kitchen table in all his sleek black glory, quietly watching the fish swim in the aquarium. Yeah, he was ON THE TABLE, but he was the picture of contentment.

4. The beauty of an old brick wall and a curved wooden bench covered with peeling greenish blue paint

5. Seeing the last of Christmas slip neatly into boxes and feeling neither relieved nor melancholy

6. The beautiful photo I received of Susan and family

7. Hearing Jackson Browne sing “Doctor My Eyes,” “Late for the Sky,” and “The Pretender"

8. The wreaths that still hang on doors in the neighborhood

9. Glistening tarts, decadent cakes, golden loaves of bread. and stacks of waffles glimpsed through the bakery window

10. Taquitos, salsa, and tomato soup with cheddar cheese for dinner

January 4, 2007

Copyright 2007 Veronica McCabe Deschambault and V-Grrrl in the Middle. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

Hair

photo by Di Mackey

Growing up in the 70s, I longed to have a long dark shimmering sheet of hair like Cher, Katharine Ross, or Ali McGraw. My mother had my naturally curly auburn hair cut short with wonky little girl bangs. My mother’s friends and my older relatives all admired my hair, and my mom would reply with barely concealed pride, “The more you cut it, the more it curls.”

But I didn’t like having short, curly hair. I envied my straight-haired friends with their colored hair clips and pearly plastic ponytail beads and sleek head bands. My hair could not be accessorized! It wasn't in style, and I felt plagued by its unpredictable curves and angles. When I was about 12, I started growing my hair out, determined to part it in the middle and have it cover my back with awesome, silky sleekness. To expedite the process, I rarely, if ever had my hair cut.

The weight of my long thick hair relaxed the curls into waves. I was clueless about styling products and tools and had no idea how to manage my hair. One of my big mistakes was blow-drying and brushing it, which is a big no-no for curly girls. The brushing combined with Virginia’s humidity meant that more often than not I looked more like Gilda Radner’s  SNL character Rosanne Rosanna Rosannadanna than Cher, but at least my hair was long, which was the measuring stick of success in my teens.

When I was 20, I had my first professional hair cut and never had waist-length hair again. I experimented with a lot of styles, and looking back I have to say my long hair days were not my best. Eventually I learned how to work with my curls, not against them, and even started to occasionally use mousse or gel to calm the frizz and define its shape though my dislike of styling products lingers to this day.

My early love affair with long, straight hair and my reluctance to get my hair cut all came back to me this week because E-Grrrl has become obsessed with the length of her hair. She has baby fine, bone-straight silky blonde hair that we’ve always kept cut between chin and shoulder length. At that length, it has a beautiful shape and a sharp, neat edge that swings when she moves. Longer than that, and the ends start breaking, the volume disappears, and her hair becomes limp and lank, which is where we’ve been lately.

E-Grrrl seldom gets the brush all the way through her hair and it has a tendency to look unkempt and stringy. In the last few weeks, I’ve been telling her over and over that she’s overdue for a haircut but she’s been side-stepping the issue. Lately her hair has been so flat and listless that even her father has been nagging her to do something with it.

So today we ganged up on her and got her to the hairdresser’s. She only wanted a teeny, tiny trim, though I managed to convince her to go for at least an inch off. The stylist gave her hair a nice sharp edge, but even as I watched him work, I knew E-Grrrl remained unconvinced it was a huge improvement. Her mind is set on super long, straight hair and she resented every snippet that hit the floor. Just as my mother couldn’t get me to appreciate my curls when I was 9, I’m powerless to persuade my daughter that her baby fine tresses look best cut above her shoulders. What goes around, comes around.

The rainy season

The last few weeks have been so dark and grey that I feel like I’ve been caught in a perpetual twilight of rain and fog. Over the weekend, the wind was relentless. It doesn’t just blow here, it whistles, moans, and hums. I’m grateful that our house is built of block and brick, and that its big windows bring in whatever natural light the day offers. The house walls stand firm against the weather without so much as a creak, but the shutters, garage doors, and wind itself vibrate in an uneasy symphony.

When the rain is streaking the glass and the grey seeps into every corner of the room, I try to think cozy thoughts and tackle the sorts of tasks a dark day calls for. As I wrote earlier, I’ve been putting photos in albums, tackling small art projects, doing some reading, watching movies, and cooking, but with the holidays over and months of grey days stretching out ahead, I’m restless.

In a few short weeks, I’ll turn 45, E will turn 50, and we’ll celebrate our 25^th anniversary. Benchmarks. Happy occasions. Reasons to celebrate--but also a time to reflect.  Life is good but during the dark days of January and February, it’s hard to see just how good it really is.

January 2, 2007 

The last week of the year...

I made an awesome turkey dinner

Forgot to make the stuffing

Wore my pajamas more than my clothes

Slept for more than 9 hours at a stretch

Did some yoga

Ignored a jigsaw puzzle

Cruised the blogosphere

Burned lots of candles

Baked a pan of brownies while the kids went ice skating

Wore a ruffley scarf with my jacket

Visited the Christmas market in Brussels

Supervised the writing of thank you notes

Watched old episodes of the Gilmore Girls wrapped in an oversized silky fleece bathrobe

Drank countless cups of tea

Saw White Christmas for the first time

Read a little poetry

Used earplugs to drown out the howling of the wind

Laughed over The Full Monty

Put more than a year's worth of photos into albums

Marveled over all the places we've visited

Laid down with my daughter at bedtime

Stamped a selection of birthday cards

Made a wish list of art supplies--and ordered a few online

Went to the movies for the first time in almost two years

Listened to the kids argue over Monopoly

Pretended to be interested in what level my son had achieved on his Game Boy

Refused to read anything about Saddam

Made pork chops with curried pineapple

Ordered discounted merchandise for the kiddos from LL Bean, Lands End, and Hanna Andersson

Wondered how Patty, Lynn, Vicky, Sherry, and Jan were doing

Answered questions on scrapbooking for an article that will appear in an Australian magazine

Re-read all the Christmas cards

Did at least one load of laundry a day

Played with the ever-adorable Petey the Kitten

Took several walks in the woods with the fam

Attended church twice

Prayed for friends in tough circumstances

Prayed for strangers

Counted my blessings

Decided 2006 was a year to celebrate

And prepared to welcome 2007

Blessings to you and yours in the New Year

Thanks for reading my nerdy blog.

December 31, 2006

Friday night at the movies

We’ve lived in Belgium nearly two years and just made it to the movies for the first time. Yes, we live exciting lives here in the capital of Europe and mostly spend our Friday nights curled up with a Netflix rental.

But E-Grrrl loves penguins and has been interested in seeing the movie Happy Feet since it was released about a month ago. Looking for a way to liven up the after-Christmas break, we went online looking for a theater showing Happy Feet in English. Kinepolis at Bruparck in Brussels was the place.

Tickets cost the equivalent of $10 each, and we purchased them online, printing out a receipt that was then scanned to produce the tickets at the entrance to the theater. The theater complex was huge, with more than twenty screens showing movies in French, Dutch, and English. We walked up an enormous spiral ramp to get to the second floor where our film was being shown.

Because we weren’t sure what traffic would be like heading into Brussels on the Friday night of a holiday weekend, we’d allowed lots of time to get to the theater and ended up arriving early. We then queued for popcorn (another $20) and were surprised when they asked whether we wanted salt or sugar on it. Sugar? How unusual. We got sugar for the kids and took ours with extra sodium. Yum, yum.

We were seated in the theater about 20 minutes before the scheduled 5 p.m. showing of Happy Feet. Soon the lights dimmed and the ads and previews started. Despite the fact we were seeing a children’s movie, the previews were geared mostly toward adults, which meant that during the 20 minutes before our movie was scheduled to start, our kids saw non-stop film excerpts containing nudity and sex scenes, a teenage girl in red lingerie stripping for her boyfriend, guys in thongs, and some scary violent scenes from sci-fi movies that had them covering their eyes.

At 5 p.m., that set of previews ended and a new set started, including previews for Bridge to Terabithia and the next Harry Potter movie, which were both a bit dark and spooky for such a young audience. Our movie didn’t start until almost 5:15 p.m.

The movie itself was OK and had fun moments, though the plot sputtered a bit as the film spread itself thin over multiple messages: “it’s OK to be different,” “be true to yourself,” “have courage in the face of adversity,” “consider the circle of life,” “question religious authorities,” and “don’t give up on getting the girl.”

The big surprise for us was that there was a 10 minute intermission right smack dab in the middle of the film. What? An intermission in a movie that’s barely 2 hours long? Whatever. E and the kids headed to the restroom where they paid the equivalent of 40 cents each to use the facilities. While we’re accustomed to paying to use the restroom in many settings in Europe, we didn’t expect to have to pay for them in a place where we already had dropped $60 on admission and snacks.

Afterwards we stopped for dinner and had Belgian-style “Mexican” food—which means salsa that tastes a lot like ketchup and frites and salads served with the entrees. There wasn’t any trace of the hot, spicy sauces and seasonings or the refried beans we expect with Mexican food in the U.S., but it was a good dinner nonetheless. On the way out we paused to admire the Atomium in all its night time glory. It’s one of our favorite Belgian landmarks, and we’d never seen it at night before, each of its globes crisscrossed with neat lines of white-blue lights. E and I will have to make a trip to the movies on our own soon. Must. Find. A. Sitter.

December 29, 2006

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com

What's a Grrrl to do?

I’ve always been health-conscious though not a granola. I grew up with a Dad who was into organic gardening before organic gardening was cool. He was also a vitamin and supplement freak, always latching on to research recommending megadoses of vitamins. What he chose to ignore however, was the basic medical advice given everyone: watch your weight, eat right, and exercise.

He was thin most of his life but his weight ballooned in his 50s and 60s. He loved to garden but didn’t exercise. He took lots of supplements but never saw a doctor for a physical. He had a stroke when he was 65 and never fully recovered. In mind and body, he was a shadow of his former self. I didn’t want this to happen to me.

As a teen, I developed an interest in health and fitness and took up long distance running, competing in track and field as well as running road races. I did a lot of reading on nutrition, watched my weight and diet, and worked out regularly.

By the time I was 30, my scoliosis made running painful for both my back and my knees, so I began walking for exercise instead and taking step aerobics classes. I put some weight on after the births of my two children, but lost most of it. I continued to walk regularly when my kids were small and eventually returned to taking fitness classes, though my left knee was giving me more and more trouble. Eventually I dropped out of the aerobics classes and never found another class I liked as well.

In my early 40s, I kept walking and took up yoga, practicing regularly for a year or two before moving to Belgium. As I struggled to adjust to a new country and way of life, I let myself gain 15 pounds and quit practicing yoga.  Bad move. While I’ve done a lot of walking, my body has slowly gone to mush. In that classic midlife move, my waist has disappeared and I’ve lost a lot of muscle tone.

Meanwhile, in the last few years, for reasons no doctor has been able to explain, I’ve developed a heart arrhythmia that requires I take medication to slow my heart rate down. This makes it challenging to exercise with any intensity, especially during those time frames when my heart has a tendency to fall out of rhythm easily. Then a flight or two of stairs can knock it out of whack and flatten me for a few hours—another obstacle to exercise.

Happily, in the last six weeks or so, my heart’s been behaving itself, and I’ve been trying to get beyond walking and start an exercise program to build strength and burn more calories. A few weeks ago, I bought a stepper, thinking it would be a good low-impact way for me to get some aerobic exercise and enable me to exercise regardless of the weather. I also bought a balance board to stand on while I do some work with small dumb bells, a relatively painless way to engage those “core” muscles.

I started very s-l-o-w, using the stepper every other day for 20 minutes and the balance board about twice a week for 10 minutes. Within 10 days, I noticed a weird sensation in my right leg, a sense of it being flushed. During my regular chiropractor appointment, he noticed my lower back and glutes were tight and my hips off balance.

“What’s going on here? You’ve got some new problem areas. Have you been doing squats or something?”

“Actually I bought a stepper,” I said proudly. My chiropractor works with elite athletes, and I figured he’d be impressed by my newly upgraded fitness program.

“A stepper?” he asks incredulously. “That explains why these muscles and joints are so tight.”

I tell him about the “heat flashes” my leg has been having. They don’t exactly hurt, they’re just uncomfortable. Sometimes my leg kind of aches.

He looks at me and says, “That flush is the first stage of sciatica. Your nerves are getting increasingly irritated. No stepping for you.”

My 10 days of exercise have now resulted in three weeks of therapy with my chiropractor. My leg and hip still aren’t back to normal, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get back on the stepper.

I feel more than a little frustrated, caught in a Catch 22 where I need to exercise to keep my back and midsection from slumping and causing more problems, but my heart and my scoliosis make it really difficult to exercise without injury. It takes far more exercise now to get the results a moderate amount of exercise used to deliver, and yet I’m not physically capable of doing what I need to do.

One step forward, two steps back. That’s the aging process in a nutshell—enough to make a grown Grrrl cry.

Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. www.v-grrrl.com.

December 27, 2006

On the day after Christmas, I

Slept until 8:40 a.m. and noticed when I got up that it was so dark and dim outside that the streetlights were still on, so it's no surprise I

Stayed in my bathrobe until 3 p.m., when I changed into grey sweats to match the day, and

Realized I'd forgotten to brush my teeth in the morning, but oh well, I'm only

Doing one load of laundry, and

Answering all the e-mails backed up in my inbox, and

Doing an online interview with a scrapbooking magazine in Australia for an article on scrapbooking in Belgium, which seems like a weird topic to me but being part of the article makes me feel I'm a more advanced scrapbooker than I really am and it got me in the mood for

Starting to put 18 months worth of photos in albums, which had me

Marveling over how much my kids have grown up in the two years we've been here in Europe, and

Wondering how we'll fit back into our old life in America, and

Debating whether we'd be better off staying in Belgium, which is too big and complex a decision to consider on a holiday, so I

Decided to mindlessly browse scrapbooking and stamping sites, and

Visit new blogs, and

Download Christmas photos from the camera, and

Pick up some of the Christmas clutter lingering in the living room, and

Have yet another cup of tea,

Go through my magazine rack, and

Post an entry on my blog about all the nothing I did today.

December 26, 2006