Our Memorial Day this year reminded me very much of Memorial Days (and other national holidays) from when I was a kid. We had a quiet long weekend. My friend/co-worker/neighbor, Stephanie, kindly invited us to a shindig at her home, which was a lot of fun; she had a great day for it, too. Kevin worked on the dining room quite a bit. I started a new knitting project. We both did some stuff around the house. I spent a bit of time on the front porch, enjoying the fine weather.
Memorial Days of my youth went something like this: 1) guests show up; 2) bring chairs and selves down to Main Street to watch the Memorial Day parade (sometimes march in said parade); 3) go back home to eat burgers, dogs and yer basic picnic stuff; 4) run around outside like a nut for a few hours; 5) eat ice cream and watermelon; 6) run around some more; 7) feel sickly; 8) go to bed with towels and a bucket nearby.
It was pretty quiet once the parade was over. Neighbors were either home having picnics or away at picnics. Most businesses were closed. A few grocers might be open until noonish. One or two gas stations in town might be open for part of the day. Restaurants were closed. It may have been disappointing to find that Oh noes!!1! we forgot marshmallows! and not be able to go to the store to get them, but by all accounts, most people who went without marshmallows survived.
Now pretty much everything is open, it's business as usual on national holidays. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but we went grocery shopping on Monday, Memorial Day. Sure, it's convenient to have another day on which to go grocery shopping and it was quieter there and so we got through faster, but I now wish we had gone over the weekend.
A few years ago I decided to avoid doing everyday stuff like grocery shopping on big holidays. I missed the forced stoppage when things just shut down at the holidays. At the time, that's just how things were. Now, I look back and think it was unintentionally brilliant. Having fewer options was actually beneficial in that it pretty much forced people to slow down, take the day off and maybe even spend it having fun with friends and family.
Yes, I can achieve the same effect by just going ahead and spending the day having fun with friends and family. But it's sure a lot more likely to happen when a lot of other options are off my table and when these options are off everyone's tables.
Sometimes too much is too much. I'm embarrassed, in a way, when I go grocery shopping and see all the permutations of orange juice available. With vitamin D; with calcium; no pulp; some pulp; all pulp; heart healthy; for kids (whatever that is); less acid; no acid; with antioxidants; brain healthy; with glucosamine; and on and on and on.... And that's just the OJ! I'm embarrassed bc such overabundance of products is overkill upon overkill. It makes me think that the American public must be such pansies if they need or simply want such narrowly focussed products. Who are the people buying rubbery shark-shaped fruit-like kids' snacks? My outer curmudgeon suggests skipping that crap and eating the actual fruit instead. I've heard people say that their kids won't eat fruit any other way. Tough crap, kid. Life isn't a box of rubbery animal-shaped cherry-fascimilies; get used to it. I've said it before and, rest assured, I will say it again: you don't do your kids any favors by granting their every whim. Now, who doesn't want to make the kids they love happy? You want to raise a happy kid, but you also want to raise a decent human being and that doesn't come about by spoiling the stuffing out of them and, beyond a certain age, buying foods for them different from everyone else's food. It's the shopping equivalent of not making a separate dinner for each person. Yes, yes, make your kid's/SO's/cats'/whatever's favorite foods, just don't become a caterer in your own home.
Now I'm not saying grocery stores should resemble Soviet-era stores. The onslaught of choices at the grocery store is just one area in which there's much too much. The current recession has had the silver lining of slowing down some of our national consumer stupidity. Sometimes I feel like I'm in another world with the din of consumerism and waste all around: commercials spouting off about 'must have' cashmere scarves (there is no such thing), people buying the biggest vehicle they could find, convenience items and foods out the ying yang; etc. Yes, this is the first world, but at times it feels otherworldly.
Before I end this rant, I'd like to point you to Crazy Aunt Purl's, who's written two posts recently about over-consumerism: Mid Year Resolution and And just what is essential anyway? I've been thinking a lot about this stuff lately and her posts say much of what I think and feel, but in a much better way.
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