Do you know, I was two classes short of having a minor in economics but I still didn’t understand until THIS WEEK that one of the arguments against chain stores is that they send the community’s money elsewhere. I got that a few days ago in a flash of insight (or possibly from a commercial on the radio I didn’t know I was listening to) as I was driving along mulling. I am in my MID-THIRTIES.

I think part of the problem is that when there are so! many! emotional! arguments! against something, it distracts from the PRACTICAL stuff—and if I hear too much emotional stuff, I generally start assuming there ISN’T much of a practical angle. Like, I am actually NOT sympathetic when I hear that the chain stores are going to put “the mom-and-pop stores” out of business. I think “mom and pop” is an excessively provocative term, considering that chain and non-chain businesses alike are owned by all kinds of people, some nice and some not, some parents and some not, and their motivations tend to be the same: make money.

I DON’T feel like making voluntary donations to keep a smaller company artificially profitable when a larger company can do the same thing more efficiently. And in my experience, small-business customer service varies just as much as chain-business customer service: some are great, some are crap, and not much seems to have to do with whether they’re owned by “mom and pop” or by an international conglomerate. Sometimes you get a jerk, and sometimes you don’t; sometimes a company has good policies, and sometimes they don’t.

But finally I heard it in more economics-minor terms: that all the money the citizens spend at the chain is therefore going out of state. If it were spent at a small, local store, the money would presumably be spent by the local owners at other local establishments; then those other local owners would spend THAT money at other local establishments, and thus the money goes around and around, profiting the locals and also profiting the local government as they take their cut with each changing of hands. OH! I see!

It’s not so clear-cut even then, of course. For one thing, the branch of the chain is still located HERE, so they have to pay taxes here. I think. Don’t they? Or is there something about paying income taxes only where you’re incorporated or whatevs? Still, property taxes, surely. And of course they employ local people, which means the company takes some of their out-of-state money and spends it back HERE. But still, I GET IT: I am in my mid-thirties and I see why smaller local stores can be better for a community.

What I DON’T get yet is how “seeing why smaller local stores can be better for a community” makes any difference once the chains are already here and the local stores are already gone. At THAT point—and that’s the point most of us are at—it’s hard to know what use this knowledge is.

I AM willing to pay a small/reasonable “tax” to shop “a better way” (which is why I’m willing to consistently pay $1.99 at Target for something that is $1.87 at Walmart, or buy the $4.75 partially recycled paper instead of the $3.50 non-recycled), but I’m looking around and I don’t see many options for the “spend local” idea. Non-chain groceries? Only from the farmer’s market, and that’s only certain things and only a few months a year. Non-chain Tylenol? Nothing but a overpriced-beyond-small/reasonable convenience mart, and also of course most of the money still goes TO TYLENOL, which is NOT local. Books? YES! But…again, much of the money still goes to the out-of-state publishers/authors, and also, the difference between local and Amazon goes beyond what I am willing to pay in the “small contribution to the larger good” category. Gifts? YES! But that’s a small part of the budget, and also what about Etsy? I love Etsy. Most of Etsy isn’t local.

You can see how all this might make a Target girl feel…compromised.

I have some MALE FRIENDS AND FAMILY who read this blog, so I like to be very careful to let everyone know what they’re getting into if I’m about to write about something Personal. So be warned: This post contains discussions of Kegels, which are exercises for the girly-bits. And that is ALL this post contains, so you are safe to bail.

Last chance to leave the room before I start using various v-words.

At my last GYN appointment there was a pop quiz on Kegels. I failed. My grade didn’t surprise me any more than failing grade on a physics pop quiz would have surprised me, because Kegels are not in my repertoire of party tricks.

I’ll bet our female ancestors were NEVER ONCE asked to exercise their pelvic floors. They may have had to deal with famine, log cabins and mud huts, crop failure, polio, assorted pestilences, but they were never asked to find a muscle by “stopping the flow of urine.” I have tried this, and it was unhelpful.

But now I am the owner of an actual pamphlet telling me I must do Kegels or else rue it later. The pamphlet takes a threatening tone with me, and I resent it. It shows me a drawing of a woman awkwardly carrying a large bag of groceries as she frantically pushes open the door of a public bathroom. THIS COULD BE YOU, the pamphlet implies. Wait, she has already checked out? This scenario would make more sense to me if she had a cart.

Then the pamphlet feels it has bullied me enough, and it takes a mollifying, patronizing tone. “Kegel exercises don’t require special clothing or equipment,” it reassures me, but I hadn’t been worrying about that. What kind of “special clothing” could there possibly be—let alone equipment? The pamphlet goes on to tell me that “no one can tell you’re doing them, so they can be done almost anywhere.” Oh, I am so sure.

But here is the final straw: after assuring me that Kegels don’t require special equipment, the pamphlet says: “Eventually, special weights that you place in your vagina may be recommended to help make your Kegels even more effective.” I would rather–FAR rather–pee my pants while carrying a bag of groceries.

KFed has left the building.

This visit, I’ve had an insight into my mother-in-law’s behavior. By profession, she works in a home for adults with severe developmental disabilities. I think this has given her an inflated sense of her own intelligence and competence. I think it has also given her certain habits of interpersonal behavior (i.e., telling adults what to do) that have carried over inappropriately into other, non-work relationships. And then let’s say that first one a second time: I think it has given her an inflated sense of her own intelligence and competence.

I would also like to take a minute to speak badly of her former husband, my father-in-law. He doesn’t get much press time because he’s absent, and there aren’t many good anecdotes about absence. One reason I put up with my mother-in-law is that as much as I dislike her, I approve of what she’s doing: she’s regularly traveling a long distance at considerable expense in order to visit her grandchildren. We never visit her, so she comes to us. I may feel like drugging her tea, but I like the concept of her visits, and I hope that if I drive my future daughters-in-law batcrap crazy (and I think statistically it’s likely to happen with at least one) they will nevertheless support the concept of me visiting my grandchildren. And I hope I’ll drive them nuts more in the “buys WAYYYYY too much crap we don’t want or need” category rather than in the “rolls her eyes and does jazz hands until homicide seems like a viable option” category.

My father-in-law, on the other hand, hasn’t ever visited. We let him know about each child’s birth, and he doesn’t respond. I send a packet of photos every month, and he doesn’t respond. I send periodic email updates on how we’re doing and how the kids are doing, and he doesn’t respond. I send an annual Christmas package (this is something I go back and forth on, also annually) and he never responds. The only time we hear from him is every couple of years when he emails me to tell me about his journey to find himself, and to place blame on everyone and everything except himself for his inexplicable behavior (it was a childhood brain illness! it was his upbringing! it’s because everyone spreads lies about him!). Then he disappears for another couple of years.

You know how at first it was so appalling that Britney Spears married that pinehole Kevin Federline, and then pretty soon it was like, “I never thought I’d say this but Britney Spears is making Kevin Federline look good.” My father-in-law is the Britney Spears to my mother-in-law’s Kevin Federline.

My mother-in-law has the greatest respect for a former co-worker, EVEN THOUGH the former co-worker is a Mormon. Despite being a Mormon, that former co-worker is a real good person in many ways!

My mother-in-law didn’t vote for Obama, herself, not because she’s racist. She thinks it would be GOOD to someday have A Black in office! Just not THIS PARTICULAR Black. The fact that she didn’t vote for him reflects positively on her: she is SO AWARE that Blacks = People Too, she can even distinguish one from another!

I was looking for a puzzle piece. She said archly that if I cleaned under my couch she thought I’d find a WHOLE LOT of missing things.

I brought up a bag of chocolate chips from the supply in the downstairs pantry, which is located in the part of the basement reserved for storage and workshop. She commented she’d noticed I wouldn’t need to buy chocolate chips for a good long time, heavens no! When was she inspecting the pantry, I wonder?

I came home from the store. She asked what AMAZING BARGAINS I’d found today. Jazz hands and rolling eyes.

She said she needed to know where our hand mixer was. I guess I don’t expect her to keep a mental inventory of everything in our kitchen, but I think we’ve had the “We don’t have a hand mixer” conversation more than half a dozen times now, so I’d expect it to sink in eventually. Instead, when I said “We don’t have a hand mixer,” she made this face:

Except her eyes were way buggier, and rolling around in her head, and she swung her face from side to side in addition to clapping her hands to the sides of it, and she made a loud strangling sound. I said, “Yes, I don’t know how, but somehow we’ve managed to survive all these years without one. It’s a wonder any of us are alive.” I said it like I was being funny. I was not feeling funny.

During dinner, she said out of the blue that she’d once been to this restaurant where they had “Lumpy mashed potatoes” on the menu. She couldn’t figure out WHY anyone would WANT lumpy potatoes. That is just NUTS. Why would you BRAG that your mashed potatoes had lumps? She supposed it proved they weren’t from a box, but LUMPS? Bleah! …Do I need to specifically say that at this dinner we were eating mashed potatoes and that they contained the occasional lump, or do you know my MIL by now?

Marie asked if knowing I could blog each thing my MIL said made it easier to deal with. YES. In fact, it makes it like a GAME. She says something and I think, “Yay!” and I jot it down. If she goes too long without saying anything good, I start getting anxious: “I’ll have nothing to tell them about! I’ll have to say she’s being fine and there’s nothing to report!” It reminds me of the fun of blogging dieting/exercising/cleaning stuff: shared sorrow is doubled joy.

And so dawns Day 5. Ah, Day 5. Day 5 is when, if she were staying a week, I’d be thinking, “I THINK I can make it. Just two more days.” The time she came for 2.5 weeks, I was thinking…well, I was thinking some dark, dark thoughts, and they involved shovels and moonlit fields and mysterious disappearances. For this visit, when there are 10 days but only if I count the arrival day, when she didn’t arrive until after lunch, and the departure day, when she’s leaving early in the morning—and I DO INDEED count those days, not with other houseguests but with her—I’m pretty sure I can make it but gee, 7 days would be better.

Day 5 is, I think, the day she settles in. She’s not feeling nervous or awkward anymore.

1. I bought Elizabeth two 2-packs of belts (on 75% off!) at Target, not because the child NEEDS four more belts but because I couldn’t decide between the two 2-packs (and because they were 75% off!). My mother-in-law had several things to say on the topic of belts, in addition to saying every 10 minutes or so, “Swistle! [Child] needs those pants pulled up again!”:

1a. I was saying the problem was that if I made Elizabeth’s belt tight enough to keep the pants up, it would bisect her. MIL: “Yes, well, the day will come when we’ll all be looking back and saying remember when Elizabeth had no hips?” Er, no. I don’t think we WILL be doing that. And I think that anyone who DOES choose to say such a thing can say hello to that shovel I mentioned earlier.

1b. We were at a store and Elizabeth saw a belt she liked and asked if we could buy it. My MIL said to her, “I know a certain little girl who has puh-LENty of belts, considering she can only wear one at a time!”

2. My MIL wanted to go to Walmart to buy the kids their Christmas presents, to avoid shipping costs. (She takes stuff to one of those mailing stores. I don’t think she realizes they charge A MILLION DOLLARS MORE than the already-expensive post office.) She suggested she get clothes, because “HEAVEN KNOWS they don’t need any more TOYS.”

3. Yesterday evening the topic of milk came up, and she said she just never could stand the taste of it, didn’t like it as a child and didn’t like it any better now. I said my mom didn’t like it either, but that I did like it, and that I was hoping that would help me avoid the osteoporosis my mom’s side of the family has had trouble with. My MIL: “Oh, I think that’s more a problem with petite women, and I really don’t think you qualify.” Me: “…Uh…I… [*mind searching desperately for ANY response*] …Well, both my grandma and my mom…” Mother-in-law, interrupting me to repeat herself: “I’m just saying, that’s really only slightly-built women who have trouble with that, and I really don’t think you qualify.” Me: *picks up a notepad and pen and wrote it down*

3b. Have I mentioned before the way she will repeat her first point nearly verbatim, as if making a second point? Well, she does do that. She’ll make her point, and if you argue with her, or if you make your own point, she’ll repeat her own point JUST AS IF she is refuting your point or shoring up her own argument, but she is saying THE SAME THING. It is nearly impossible to continue the argument without following her lead and repeating your own point a second time.

I sat down to write a MIL Update, but then suddenly I was, “…Wait. Do I write about MIL stuff here?” I can’t remember. I think what I do is write it, and then delete it later? Hm. I need to leave myself some notes or something.

I will start with the boring part, which is that the visit is going Fine so far. It nearly always DOES go fine for the first few days, before she gets comfortable. I still don’t like her, I’m not enjoying the visit, but I’m not SUFFERING. And it REALLY HELPS that this time we’re doing things the way we usually do them (and looking like experts at it even though she disapproves) rather than doing things the way she would approve of them (and looking like total incompetents). All right, now for the venty examples:

1. Rob and William came home from school. SHE ASKED THEM if they’d done their homework, then reported to me: “I just got the old ‘I did my homework on the bus'” and rolled her eyes. Which, um. I checked, and they HAD done their homework on the bus, and also? Why is she getting involved in this AT ALL?

2. Rob and William wanted to learn how to knit, so she taught them. My mom taught William last year; he hasn’t knit since then but picked it up quickly. Rob has never knit before. After no kidding LESS THAN AN HOUR she pulled me aside and said, “William may make a knitter. Rob? No”—with a pfff and a totally dismissive tone. NICE. He’s TEN YEARS OLD and this is his FIRST TIME KNITTING. And he was DOING IT: he has two inches of knitted stuff already.

3. We went to the store and she kept speaking firmly to the children. I wrote “sharply” there first, but it wasn’t quiiiiiite sharp. BRISK, though, and authoritative. “Edward! Stop that! Come here and hold my hand! Come on now, you didn’t get hurt!” And I gave Henry things to play with, and he was doing NO HARM and she kept taking things away from him. After I several times gave them back to him, she started instead lunging as if to take them, then correcting herself, then saying to me, “We’d better take those away from him, don’t you think?” I’ll repeat: NO HARM was being done to the items. And they were things _I_ was buying.

4. First she made several “funny” remarks about my bargain shopping. “Oh, Swistle and her 75% off!” with a little head waggle and widened eyes and jazz hands. Then, later, she told a lonnnnng anecdote about her stupid sister who always buys stuff she doesn’t need and doesn’t like “but it was ON SALE!”—using “stupid sister” tone of voice. The “but it was ON SALE!” chorus was repeated half a dozen times as her stupid sister was stupider and stupider about her purchases, which—and I’m sure this was pure coincidence—my mother-in-law remembered had been 75% off. This for purchases made back when she and her sister lived at home with their parents, and in her sister’s early homeowning days nearly 50 years ago.

5. At the table, in “I am repeating the tone of someone I saw on TV” voice: “Americans eat FAR too much salt!” (For the FIRST TIME EVER I pulled off the kind of response I always MEAN to give when she makes such pronouncements: I said “Mmmmmmmmmmm….salllllllllt.”) This WHOLE salt thing is because she personally has high blood pressure and has been personally instructed to cut down on salt. ALL AMERICANS need to obey her medical instructions, because what SHE does is THE ONLY WAY TO DO THINGS. If she were diagnosed with diabetes, we would ALL need to have insulin shots and Americans would eat FAR too much sugar. If she were diagnosed with cancer, we would ALL need to have chemotherapy treatments and Americans get FAR too little radiation.

6. Now she’s self-diagnosed herself allergic to eggs, too. No salt, no fat, no caffeine, no tomatoes, no eggs.

7. Regarding her cousin’s panic attacks, she told me: “I said to her, ‘Now there is just NO REASON for you to have a PANIC attack! WHY would you panic? You are JUST going to the GROCERY store!’ I mean, for Pete’s sake!”

This has to be QUICK: I have 10 minutes before my mother-in-law is UP IN MY GRILL.

ONE! Because it was the LEAST important thing on my To Blog list, I have written another disclosure post [note from the future: this was for the reviews blog, which was deleted, so I’ve removed the link]. Oh hai. I can haz prioritiez?

TWO! William’s best friend is a girl. He saw some inexpensive charms at Hallmark where you can click the two halves of a heart together, and he found his own name AND his friend’s name on heart halves (it’s lucky his best friend is a girl, because only girl-boy halves fit together), and he wanted SO BADLY to get them each a necklace with both names on it, so I allowed it.

Now I’m feeling a little awk. Should he be giving jewelry to a friend in third grade? Will her parents think that’s weird? So what I’m asking you is: should I have asked the mom first, or should I have sent a note to her about it the day William gave his friend the present? Does it change things if he brought the necklace in today and I neither asked first nor sent a note?

You know what book I thought of out of the blue the other day? Fifteen, by Beverly Cleary, the part where Janie is trying to knit a pair of argyle socks for boyfriend Stan and has to take out the stitches over and over again.

What I would like to know at this point, a good 25 years later, is how did I identify so strongly in the 1980s with a book in which the protagonist calls her father “Pop” and irons a dress before a date? And yet I did, and in fact I would go so far as to say it is the book that, more than any other, created my dating expectations. When I was fifteen years old myself, I arrived on the doorstep of dating fresh-faced and in an ironed dress (ironed turned-up-collared shirt, whatever), waiting for an ID bracelet. None of the boys I dated had ID bracelets, and why not? Bring sexy back, boys.

I also read Forever… by Judy Blume, and I read it at age 14 when it was getting passed around by the girls in my grade with the interesting sections pre-dog-eared, and yet that one didn’t influence my views of dating. I read it with the same interest I read the sack of paperback romance novels my babysitting employer recommended to me, but didn’t think to apply any of them to anything in my own life. It seemed to me that the book ended kind of abruptly: relationship, relationship, more relationshipping, off to camp and the sad necklace and the end. I was like, “Huh? How come they broke up? They seemed to be getting along so nicely.” I do still remember what Michael’s, er, little friend was named, do you?

I was interested in the idea of The Transition Into Womanhood but did NOT want to discuss it with my eager-to-discuss-it mother, so I think I read Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret a dozen times. The discussions of various feminine hygiene product possibilities. “We must, we must, we must increase our bust” exercises. The friend writing “I GOT IT!” on a postcard and then crying in the bathroom when she really did get it. The grandmother saying that if Mohammad wouldn’t come to the mountain, the mountain would have to come to Mohammad—and did they go on a shopping trip into the city? The big religious decisions she felt she should make. The…party with BOYS, and the girl with epilepsy? Or, no, I think that was another book.

Rob and I went to the Fifth Grade Open House this week, and I seriously had to dry-swallow a TRANQUILIZER after seeing a little group of fifth grade boys going through a set of student-written poems displayed on the hallway wall and mocking each of them line by line. The poems were fill-in-the-blank style, and ranged from “I wish we were having pizza for lunch today” to “I wish my mom still lived with us” and “I wish there didn’t have to be so much fighting” and “I wish my cat were still alive.” The little group of assholes boys read the personal stuff aloud in stupid voices, and spent extra time on the poem written by a student with Down Syndrome. Fifth grade is, apparently, the year when self-revealing poetry should no longer be posted publicly.

So I was in a sensitive and not-yet-fully-tranquilized state of mind when, on the way home, Rob said, “I think I’m the chosen one.” And I was glad it was dark, because SNORT. Chosen One. Hee! But I asked what he meant, and he said that every year, he’s the one on his bus and in his classroom that the other kids choose to pick on. Oh. So he’s noticed.

I was really glad I’d taken the tranquilizer, if this was going to be the evening’s topic. It’s hardly original to whine about “not sitting at the Popular Kid lunch table” (OMG, REALLY??? You and I were BOTH in the 99% of non-most-popular kids??? We can go to intensive psychotherapy together!!!), but my own unpopularity in school reached “counselor twice a week” levels, followed by “moving to a different school” levels, so this is not a shruggy “kids are kids” issue for me.

Rob asked if I had any strategies for dealing with it, and I was like, “Dude, you are asking the WRONG PERSON.” The counselor gave me MANY strategies, and what I learned from employing all those strategies was twofold: (1) It is impossible to persuade people to like you if they don’t, but especially if those people are in mob form, and (2) Adults, even adults who are experienced, educated experts in this area, know JACK SHIT about children and their social relationships. I’m going to repeat that, because I write a swearish post about once a year and when I do I like to make it count: JACK. SHIT.

Here’s a school picture of me from that bad time. I don’t like to look at it, and not only because of the overbite and the always-painful appearance of fashion from previous decades:

Is that the fakest of all fake smiles? Not only does the smile not reach the eyes, it doesn’t even reach the LIPS. And I have bags under my eyes. Can you see from that picture that the meanness was constant? It did. not. stop.

This incessant meanness contained a valuable lesson for me, but I think I could have learned it a little later and a little gentler: that the world is liberally sprinkled with assholes who KNOW they are assholes and nevertheless persist in being assholes. They are GLAD to be assholes. They consider it their DUTY to be assholes, and to ladle out meanness wherever they see a lack. Children sometimes outgrow it. Grown-ups rarely do.

Does it make you want to start speaking very brightly and without blinking, as it does me? “Goodness, it must be WONDERFUL to have such a SINGULAR PURPOSE in life! There are so many people who harm others unintentionally, but YOU! You do it DELIBERATELY! That is how you SPEND YOUR LIFE, being mean to others and finding opportunities to do it! How does that make you FEEL, knowing that that is WHO YOU ARE?”

Well. I do have a survival tip, which I am happy to share: find the one kid less popular than you, and be friends with that kid. This doesn’t generally result in a highly satisfying friendship, since it’s a friendship based on nothing more than where a person is located on the Popularity Scale. But then, that’s no different than the kind of friendship people are looking for when they pine for friendship with the popular kids.

And sometimes the most important thing is having someone—ANYONE—to pair up with when the teacher says to pair up (pairing up is an excellent opportunity for children to remind other children where they live on the popularity scale), and someone to sit with at lunch, and someone to go out to recess with, and someone to pretend you don’t care about the meanness with. It’s more of an alliance than a friendship.

My intended point is that I don’t know if I have anything to offer Rob here or not. On one hand, OMG I am the perfect parent for this because I totally get it. Furthermore, I am more than willing to make changes to help: I will drive him to school if the bus is too bad; I will switch him to a new school if this one gets too bad; I will homeschool him if I have to (I am temperamentally a poor fit for homeschooling, but I would be ABLE); I will never ever tell him that he should just stop caring what other people think—what a stupid, ignorant, ridiculous thing to say.

And on the other hand, I am of no use to him. I never figured it out myself. My parents turned it around for me by putting me in a tiny private school where there were four children in my grade. I saw those fifth grade boys making fun of their classmates’ poems, and the only strategy I could think of was kicking them hard in the shins and then running away and crying—maybe telling the teacher.