One Crazy Lady

M. Nickelson is standing outside in the cold in a long line of people waiting to get into WalMart. Some of them are prepared to spend hundreds of dollars. It’s 2 a.m. It’s Black Friday.

The day after Thanksgiving has been considered the kickoff to the Christmas season since the start of the Macy’s parade in 1924. The term Black Friday is a more recent addition, but refers to the massive amount of pedestrian and vehicle traffic for some. For store owners, it means the beginning of the season when they are in the black, as in black ink, meaning profit.

Store owners all over the country offer desperate deals, some of them extreme loss leaders, to bring consumers in the door and hopefully send them back out with full carts. Consumers are hoping to fill their carts without emptying their wallets.

“I waited 35 minutes at midnight and then 4 hours at 1 a.m.,” said Nickelson, who ventured out in the cold for a shot at a steeply discounted Nintendo DS. Nickelson said she wouldn’t have come out at all if the stores hadn’t offered big discounts to make it worth her time. Other shoppers echoed her sentiment.

“It’s the excitement of getting a great deal,” said Don Johnson, another shopper.

“I saved over $300 for 5 hours of time. That is $60 an hour in savings. I can’t make that much working!” Nickelson said.

For several years, stores have been opening their doors and starting sales earlier and earlier, constantly trying to beat the competition, and attract customers. Toys R Us gave out free Crayola crayons and coloring books to the earliest shoppers this year. WalMart gave away energy drinks and donuts to their customers who were waiting in line.

The mass of people pushing and shoving to be the first in the front door is an issue store owners have attempted to resolve as well. After a mob of shoppers trampled an employee and busted through the front door of a New York store in 2008, attempts have been made to keep things more organized. Security is tighter and single file lines are more enforced. This year, one WalMart was open 24 hours, but draped black tarps over the items to be unveiled at the start of the sale. They have started to form organized lines within the store, and put up signs directing shoppers to line up for specific items.

“When they advertise ten available, and I can see twenty people in line for it, I know I don’t need to bother waiting,” said one shopper. The limited availability is the driving force to get people out of their beds and into the doors early. Nickelson didn’t get up early, she was still up from the night before, shopping at midnight for one deal, and back in line at 1 a.m. to wait for a 5 a.m. sale. This is her first year shopping Black Friday sales.

Johnson, who’s been searching for deals for years, went to bed as usual, and got up at 12:30 a.m. He visited 4 stores, didn’t wait in line at any, and only bought the bargains he had set out to get. He was home and back in bed by 4 a.m. He suggests studying the ads in advance and being prepared. He says in his experience, the items that people fight over just aren’t worth it.

Local restaurants offer breakfast specials in hopes of luring tired, hungry shoppers in for a relaxing meal. But, Black Friday shopping is exhausting. Nickelson “went home and crashed into bed.”

IN A SIDEBAR:

Ten practical things I’ll do to SAVE money this year…

• I’ll wrap presents in paper that I have saved over the years, by very carefully unwrapping gifts that I receive, folding and storing the paper.

• I’ll ask a friend to take a photo of my family with my camera as we arrive to church. I’ll upload this photo to a discount printer like Vistaprint or WalMart photo center and order the sizes I want.

• I’ll buy nice frames at rummage sales and thrift shops to put the photos in as gifts for grandparents.

• I’ll keep the thermostat at 60 (unless we have company)

• I’ll knit slippers for everyone in the house.

• I’ll sell stuff we no longer use on Ebay, and I’ll search there for great deals on auction – such as a power cord for my daughters cell phone ($20 at Best Buy $4.36 on Ebay including expedited shipping.)

• I’ll buy textbooks and educational materials that we all need at Amazon, Half.com, Half Priced Books or Goodwill.

• I will walk or carpool whenever possible. I may even take advantage of the Citilinks FREE Saturday rides this year.

• I will sew hems in pant legs so they can be passed from one child to another.

• I will ask for practical gifts, as in things I would have bought for myself, like a year’s supply of toilet paper, or coffee and coffee filters – writers go through a LOT of coffee.

I’ve been a lazy blogger, and I blame it on Facebook.

Whenever I think of something interesting to say, it seems so much simpler to just update my Facebook status than to actually write enough stuff to justify a blog post.

Little things like my daughter is getting glasses, my son was top seller in his Cub Scout pack fundraiser, our vicarage interview is tomorrow.

Then, I show up here and find that I haven’t posted a blog since the middle of August – and now it’s November. Why? Because I’m lazy, I take the easy way out, and post single sentence announcements instead of thoughtful and thought provoking paragraphs via the ‘blog’

I called this blog One Crazy Lady because it started out as a place to post my ideas too crazy for the liberal college environment. But, now I’m thinking maybe I should have called it the Lazy Blogger.

This post is for all of my friends who have been pregnant three or more times, and have heard comments like, “Don’t you know what causes that?” “Don’t you have enough children?” or other not so polite remarks while carrying a child.

I would like you to comment with your worst rude remark and/or your best response to such questions. I know it’s been done before, but it will feel good to share. Make sure you come back later to read the comments of others.

Thanks for participating.

Having six children means finding UNO cards in your bed, while your making love, at 11 o’clock at night, and your 3y0 is watching Care Bears in the basement because otherwise he would be in your bed with you, and your 7yo is asleep on the floor in the hallway outside your bedroom because he had a nightmare that he was locked out of the house, and thinks that sleeping on the hallway floor will somehow prevent that from happening, and you don’t dare try to move him to his bed because if he wakes up he will cause a commotion that will wake up the 1yo in the next room, who will cry and wake up the 9yo who shares his room and is VERY grumpy if he doesn’t get enough sleep, and you don’t want that because you already have two hormonal teenagers that give new meaning to the word grumpy.

My husband is way cooler than I am, and way more brilliant.

Okay, honestly, I don’t always feel this way, but sometimes he has great ideas.

Like, when the kids started arguing about who should have to do this or that, who’s turn it is to take out the trash, or change a little sibs diaper, or put away the milk…

He said, “Enough. Rock, paper, scissors NOW!”

They played, and the loser did the job. Today, I tried it, and it worked again.

LOVE IT!

So, here’s my crazy idea. Is it too much?
I am hosting a Baby Shower, and decided to make a Dirty Diaper Cake.

First I made two 9×13 chocolate cakes. You could make any kind of cake. I stacked them on top of each other.

Then, I made brown sugar frosting. This is from an old Joy of Cooking cookbook. It is 1 to 1 sour cream and brown sugar. Mix together, let sit so all the lumps can dissolve, then stir until smooth. For this cake, I use 3 cups sour cream and 3 cups brown sugar, but I plan to have leftover for something else.

While my frosting is sitting, I cut half moons out of each of the long sides of the cake, so it is shaped like an open diaper. You could trace an actual diaper and make a pattern if you wanted.

Then, I removed the pointed ends off of the moon shaped pieces, and stacked them next to each other to make a box like shape (I’m going to try and make this look like a wipes box)

Here is a picture of where I am so far.

Shaping the cake

Next, I frosted the cake ( I used less than half of the frosting that I made- we will use the leftover to top pancakes, waffles and french toast)

I then took five mini snickers, and melted them in the microwave (about 20 seconds). Then, I mixed in a few cake crumbs: these came from the moon ends that I cut off. I just rubbed a piece between my fingers to get crumbs.

Then, I spread the “poop” on to the diaper.

Frosting the Cake

Almost done, just a few finishing touches to go.

I put it in the frig for a couple hours, which allowed the cream to be absorbed by the cake. This made for a very moist and rich cake, but if I was going to do it again, I would finish it and serve it right away because it looks better when first done. OR I would plan to touch up the frosting.

Anyway, I added little hearts to the corners and wrote WIPES on the little box. Overall, I think it was a pretty great idea.

The Dirty Diaper Cake

So, if you’ve read through the other posts on this blog, then you can see that I started this blog as an assignment for my Women’s Studies class at IPFW. Now, I decided about half way through that I would continue the habit of posting something once a week (or more? -HA)
Well, obviously, since my last post was two months ago, I’ve not kept my word. So, here I am again, begging for forgiveness from my readers; both of you, and asking for some help in identifying this disease that I seem to have.
First, I am generally ambitious, punctual, intelligent, and honest.
I do what I say I will do, I show up on time, I work hard and I can be counted on to get things done. I also excel in my course work.
But, here is a list of items that I intended to do, some that I’ve started; all remain incomplete:
1) Make beautiful, original, scrapbooks for my 6 children (one for each of them). The supplies are packed away in storage tubs under the basement stairs.
2) Digitize all of my written work (take buckets full of paper and turn it into a MS publisher document) Use this raw material to write another book
3) Organize thousands of digital photos into a very cool presentation that will make people want to hire me as a photographer
4) Build a drama ministry with my family based on my writing and their talents
5) Sew matching dresses for myself and my daughters
6) Learn Spanish
7) Learn Sign Language
8) Build my Ebay business into a self-sustaining enterprise (I buy stuff, I list half of it, I make a little money, I go buy more stuff)
9) Learn to play a musical instrument
10) Write an interesting blog post every week, then every day, then several times a day so that people will just keep coming back for more and more.

Now, there seems to be a label for every personality type, so I’m sure there must be a diagnosis for this psychological disorder that causes me to be so ambitious and yet unable to bring these wonderful ideas to completeness. Comments welcome!

I’m posting this as an illustration of an argument I made in an earlier post.
The discussion began with a reading where the author suggested that it is demeaning to ask a housekeeper/cleaning service personnel to scrub your floors on their hands and knees instead of mopping them.
We just moved into a house that had not been cleaned in awhile (a long while). When we arrived, my husband swept and “mopped” the floor.
Later, I began to “scrub” the floor on my hands and knees.
There is a distinct difference between the two.
This is an extreme example because the home had not been cleaned in quite some time and most people don’t allow their floors to get this bad before they clean them. However, I do think it makes my point about scrubbing floors – it is not a demeaning job, it is just what needs to be done to get them really clean.

As I finish up the last set of readings for my Women’s Studies class, I am posting a complaint that I have had all along.
This course is filled with whining! It’s a thousand different ways of saying, “Men have it easier than women, it’s not fair, wah-wah-wah”

I kept waiting for the Celebration of Womanhood. We talked too much about sex, diseases, rape, abortion, pornography; but we never talked about BIRTH. NOT even once.

The beautiful, natural gift of life giving ability granted by God to women and women alone – but, we don’t talk about that because we’re too busy complaining about all the things that men get to do and we don’t.

The honor of being a wife and mother, ruler of my household, influencing the next generation; not part of Women’s Studies either.
We read about how unfair it is that women do more than half of the housework in most homes, but never about the honor of fulfilling such a role. Instead, we are looked down on for allowing ourselves to be in such a degrading position (like scrubbing floors on your hands and knees). Feminists would make their husbands do it, I suppose. Or maybe they would send their kids to daycare, get a job and pay for a machine to do it for them. But, I guess, they wouldn’t have any living children, since they aborted them all.

Face it, men and women are different. That’s just the way it is. Any attempt to make women be more like men, really is like trying to turn them into lesbians; and attempts to make men act more like women really is making them sissies. It isn’t healthy to homogenize people.

We are different! Celebrate it!

Throughout history, there have been men and women who did great things regardless of the obstacles they faced. Instead of complaining about all the important women who have been left out of high school history books, why not teach us what we missed. We could have studied Clara Barton (who started the Red Cross of America), Gladys Alward (Chinese missionary), Anna Etheridge, Abby House, Phoebe Pember, Ella Palmer (all saved lives during the Civil War), Molly Brown (suffragist who survived the Titanic).

The readings in this class complained about the injustice in the world, provided extreme examples, were politically far, far-left, were openly anti-Biblical, anti-family values, pro-homosexual, and pro-abortion. Not one of these ideas celebrates women!

Why not women pastors? ="“>Answer

As we read the feminist version of revised historical context of the Bible, not as God’s Word, but as a man made text to keep women down – I could try to argue Scripture. But, to those who are of the secular world, without Christ, His words have no bearing.
For those who are in Christ, see the Bible as the Word of God and the authority for the organization of the Christian church, I present the above link.
Theologians, scholars and Bible experts can explain the answer to ‘why not women pastors?’ much better than I ever could.