Friday Love/Hate

I love Christmas in my house. I've got three cool ass kids, and even though we've had what will hopefully end up being the shittiest financial year of my adult life, there's a lot of love. The other week, drying clothes at the laundromat since our dryer broke and I can't afford the replacement part until next year, I walked down to the SPCA thrift store, with like $9 to my name. They had all their Christmas shit on 50% off of their already fair prices, only really found at undiscovered thrift stores. Once people know a thrift store is good and start shopping there, shit goes up. Motherfucking ebay and work from home delusionists ruined thrift stores. But nonetheless, the 4Paws in Scottsville is rinky dink looking so it'll never get popular. They had a ton of Christmas shit though, including weird ass ornaments, which was good, because we've had the tradition of buying each kid a new ornament for each year. Our Christmas tree style is not organized but a clusterfuck of accumulated decorations as hodgepodge as it comes. Last year, when we had money, I bought them all shiny, glittery, Mexican wrestling television set looking ornaments at an outrageous price from the stupid World Market. This year though, it was thrift store goodness, half off, coming out to about 35 cents each. (Side love: I love how computer keyboards don't even have a cents sign anymore, unless I have to double shift, alt/ctrl wingding my way to it by typing in the flight number of the airplane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11.) But they also had a couple of those corny ass lit up little buildings that became all the rage with old people the past decade or so, where you can build a fake little town on the mantel or under the tree or wherever. I bought a Santa's workshop, with the fourth wall gone, so you could Santa cold kicking it at his desk, getting some paperwork done, and a little Tavern, because the only other choices were a firehouse and a post office with no working light cord. I wanted it to light up, and I'm more down with drunkards than firefighters, so the Tavern it was. Put them up under the tree while everybody was upstairs putting away clean laundry, spending like $7 on the ornaments and the goofy mini-buildings, and it made the tree even more magic for the kids. The baby (almost 2, so not technically a "baby") kept stretching out on the sheepskin laid out at the tree and looking at Santa and reaching in to poke him on the hat. It made me feel like Pa Ingalls, but in the today days, still as broke, and not able to really fix shit as well, and not as resourceful in a self-sufficient sense, but we get by. We get by.

I hate getting chastised for digging through the dumpster the other day by the assistant manager lady catching me. She's always looked uptight to me, and her attitude about me being in the dumpster proved that. "I wouldn't do that if I were you... that food's not fit for eating." Whatever. I feed it to my animals, not my kids, usually. She added, "There's a reason the doors are shut... it's private property," so I shut the door on my side of the dumpster for fear of her finding the completely full case of of pears, apples, bags of lettuces, and baby carrots and dumping them out or some bullshit. Didn't say another word and drove off, feeling stupid, like I got scolded by a teacher in middle school or some bullshit, and went and did my other errands in town. Then I came right the fuck back to her precious dumpster, doors already open again by someone else, and there was my case of food, nice as can be. I stuck it in the back of the Subaru, but was nervous about looking for more good shit, and split. There was a ton of stuff today though, and I felt less worried. In fact, all the snow piled up in front of the dumpster from when they cleaned the parking lot actually leaves me more protected from prying, judgemental eyes. Since then, talked to a friend who also checks that dumpster for food for his pigs, and his nonchalance made me feel stronger about being so nonchalant about it. Fuck it man, it's good shit, going to waste. Not my fault they make it hard to get. At the same time though, if grocery stores did make it easy and put all their old produce in bins for people to come get, I most likely would never get any because a bunch of assholes would've already collected it all and felt all proud about themselves for recycling and not wasting. I think it's better to have to struggle to do that type of thing a little, because the struggle weeds out the easy-to-doers. If stores did leave their produce for whoever, people like me would never get none, and I'd have to buy pig feed, and pigs eat a lot of food and pig feed ain't cheap. Thank god trash is.