Check out my New, Green, USA Shoes!

Last year, I first discovered Okabashi Shoes. Made in the USA, and capable of being recycled into new shoes, they are pretty nifty.

my new shoes

This year, I finally got two Okabashi pairs for myself, and I'm loving them. Each was under $20; a price point that no one can complain about. They are decently comfy -- certainly more so than the Jelly fad of the 1980s -- and come in great colors.  I got a green pair of clogs that I use in the garden. (These are PERFECT for that.) And, I've got a pair of red 'strappy' shoes that I've worn to work a few times with great success.

Anyone else tried these and can comment on them? Has anyone actually returned them to be recycled?

I like to park far away

Opposite of those people of questionable character who borrow grandma's handicap permit so that they can park in the reserved spot closest to the grocery store, I like to park very far away.

More space around my car, and fewer vehicles zooming around me, makes it easier to get in and out of the parking lot, get my son in and out of the car seat, and get packages in and out of the back. It also reduces the chances of my car being damaged by someone else, and gives me a little more exercise. All in all, it's great. Why doesn't everyone try to park as far away as possible?

But I often get frustrated by returning the cart. Many stores only have cart returns right up near the store. COSTCO and Whole Foods fall into this category. I end up needing to backtrack a pretty significant distance to return the cart. Clearly, a lot of folks don't even bother as a lot of abandoned carts are handing out near back near the far end of the lot. When it's just me, I don't mind. But if I've got my toddler with me, he has a low attention span for this activity, which makes it much harder to accomplish.

See that Cart return WAY far away?

Here's where I need to give Giant some credit; they put cart returns very far back. I can park very far away, and still have a cart return in easy distance.

Thanks, Giant!

Picking the Perfect Potty

My 3-year-old son has just about moved past the 'potty' and upgraded to using the grown-up toilet all the time. Hurrah!

There are a variety of articles on the web about potty chairs and seats. You can read about the basic parts of the potty chairs as well as general info about what to look for in a potty. You can also read about folks who skipped the potty chair and went right for the seat, then immediately made sure it was a slow-close lid.

But based on my own recent experience, it is good to start with a little chair that is more their size, so here are the Nitpicky Consumer's rules to pick the perfect potty.

Rule 1: Never pay full price for a Potty
Seriously. A potty is a stylized plastic pot in which your child will (try to) deposit his pee and poo. This is not a family heirloom you are buying. The going range for new potty chairs seems to be $12-$100, (although I can't really fathom anyone paying $100 for such a thing), but you shouldn't pay anything more than $0-$10. Borrow a potty from a friend or co-worker, go to a yardsale, go to a consignment sale, check Craig's List. Do anything besides pay full price.

Rule 2: Have LOTS of Pottys
You can take all that money you saved by not buying new potty chairs and get MORE of them. Especially if your house has more than one floor, you're going to want more than one potty. (We had one on each level of our townhouse, and also in the family room area in front of the TV.) This way, when the little one needs to go, distance to the potty is never an obstacle

Rule 3: The more complex the Potty, the HARDER to CLEAN
Beware of grooves, designs, and cracks. Look at a Potty and say to yourself, "If toxic ooze got poured all over this entire Potty, how many crevices would be hard to clean?" If it seems overwhelming, move on and look for another Potty.

Rule 4: Go for the multi-tasking Potty
Some potty chairs are nothing more than a potty chair. But some are a little bit more. Here's what I was looking for:

•  A potty with a seat lid makes it double as a stool
•  A potty chair with a built-in removable potty seat allows you to have both pieces in one, and you can instantly rearrange the setup to suit the current whim of your child
•  A potty chair with handles can be easily carried around, so it doubles as both your in-house and your portable version

NOTE: Even if everyone follows the same four rules, we're still going to each end up with different potty chairs that we are happy with. 

Here is the one that we considered our 'Perfect Potty': the Graco Soft Seat Potty Trainer (Model 812K). It is clearly older: it seems to be out of stock or discontinued on most websites, and it is Made in the USA. When you can find it, it runs $19-$27 new. (So hopefully you can find it second-hand!)

• It was a clean-line design. Not many crevices
• I bought it for $7 at a consignment shop
• It had a lid, so he could use it as a stool or to prop his feet when he was sitting on the 'big toilet'
• It had a cushy removable potty seat that he used for a while to sit on the big toilet
• It didn't have carrying handles, but the world isn't perfect.

Graco was our perfect potty; I'd love to hear about what other folks found to be their 'perfect' potty.

It doesn't fit. Sigh.

Today, I received the Land's End dress that proved so problematic to order. It was both too short and way, WAY too BIG. In order to achieve the tailored look of the model in the photos of this dress, I estimate that I'd need an XX-Small. This is saying something considering that I usually wear size Medium in most clothing.

Sigh. Back into the box it goes.

You WANT me to buy something, right?

I generally like Land's End. Conservative clothes with clean lines. I wish more of it - any of it, actually - was still Made in the USA, but I can't complain about the styling. The only thing they like to do more than send lots of paper catalogs is to send LOTS of marketing e-mails.  But I think that they are going a little overboard with it.

My desired Dress and the very small expiration date

At 4am (yes, AM) on May 4, an email from Land's End titled "Soft and Summery: 24 new Dresses and Skirts + Free Shipping" came into my Inbox. I of course did not read it at 4am; it was more like 4pm when I finally saw it. 


Ah, I shall have to take a peek at these new dresses, I thought to myself. One in particular caught my eye. It already had several glowing reviews (which in hindsight seems suspicious, if it is supposedly a new dress). So I decided to buy it. But wait. The X-Smalls, Smalls, and Mediums were already SOLD OUT? How it this possible? All the reviews were firm that the dress ran very large, so it was clear that my size was gone. 


I quickly fired off an email to Lands End Customer Support, asking why on earth they were hoking a "new" dress that was nearly sold out and would they be getting any more? The next day, I got back a lovely form letter explaining the complexities of inventory management and confirming that no, they would not get any more. Grrrrrr. 


So, I decided to visit my local Sears on the way home from work, to see if they had it. They did, but only size Large and X-Large. And the reviewers were right. THE DRESS WAS HUGE.

I went back home and checked online again. Regular was still sold out, but Petite had one color - Black - left in size Small. I decided to try it. It was a pretty dress. And besides, the email advertised free shipping. Free shipping makes everything better.


So, I logged in, plunked my small treasure into the cart and linked to checkout. I plugged in my free shipping code and ... big red text appears saying "THIS OFFER IS NO LONGER VALID". What? I went back to the original email. No expiration date on the subject line. No expiration on the main title. But way at the bottom, in very small type, was the note that the offer expired at 11:59pm on May 4. The free shipping had only been good for less than one day ... less than 20 hours. Couldn't Land's End have made this a little more obvious?

I almost abandoned my cart at this point. The only thing that saved the sale for Land's End is the distinct lack of simple black dresses at most retailers this year. So I clicked "Submit" and my dress is on its way. I sure hope the damn thing fits, because after all this it is going to make me even madder to need to return it.

People with Way Too Much Time

I have ranted in the past about my distaste for Home Owners Associations (HOAs) and in particular the Architectural Review Committees (ARCs) that often come along with them. It infuriates me that someone has the gall to impose their own subjective beliefs on me under the guise of 'maintaining the community.'  Today, I found a kindred spirit in Tampa, Florida, who is fighting back to protect his rights to do rational, non-harmful things on the property that he rightly owns.

W00t! Fight the good fight, man. I'm gearing up for a battle, myself. I want to (gasp) repaint my house, and where I live that means I need to ask for permission.  Sigh. We'll just see how that goes.

The Royal Wedding: Should we care? Yes.

Yes, I got up and watched the Royal Wedding of William and Catherine this past Friday. I also TIVO'd it on two channels -- CBS for the American coverage and PBS for the British coverage -- so I could watch it more in-depth later.

It was breathtaking. I almost cried when the camera panned down from the ceiling of the Abbey during the procession. Some of my friends were just as excited as I was, such as my friend Christine who baked English scones the day before and sent one over to me.

But many other friends just didn't 'get it'

"Why would you get up so early just to see a wedding?" one asked.  Another, a bit disgusted at the coverage, wondered "With so many horrible things going on, why are people caring about this?" Still others were barely aware it was happening.

So I found myself wondering, why did I care so much? Why was this so special? I've come up with three key reasons:


A chance to see living history

The BBC coverage was better than a history lesson. It provided a crash-course in British political, religious, cultural, and art history for the past thousand years in the 'pre-show' hour. Some of the facts about Westminster Abbey were fascinating. And I loved the way one historian described the progress of royal weddings from the pre-arranged 'mergers and acquisitions' hundreds of years ago to the vibrant public spectacles they have become in the last century.

Want to see how a formal carriage is driven? Watch a Royal wedding. Want to hear about how traditional lace is woven? Watch a Royal wedding. Want to hear how medieval tile floors were constructed? Watch a Royal wedding. Want to see history WWII airplanes in flight? Watch a Royal Wedding.

I showed segments of the broadcast to my 3-year old son. He jumped with glee to see the Abbey's bells, from inside the tower. (We've watched that 10-second clip over and over more than his favorite episode of Dinosaur Train, and that is saying a lot.) He loved the royal trumpeters, who heralded the Queen's entry into the Abbey. He was mesmerized by the boy choir. He proclaimed "Look at that big church!" when Westminster Abbey was shown in his entirety. And he cheered when the "big plane and the little planes" flew over the Palace. These images got him really excited; he understood that something big and important was happening and he loved it.

A reminder of the importance of family heritage

My mother's side of the family is very in touch with our history. We still run the Rosebud Perfume Company; we still have pieces of my great-grandfather's drugstore from the late 1800s. As my cousin, who is in her late 80s, said last year "We are so blessed to know our roots and our family history. Some people today seem so lost; they don't know who they are or where they came from."

The Royal Family is a reminder of how precious and wonderful such a history can be. The ability to trace back, to see signatures of great-great-great grandparents, to walk where they walked.  They are the ultimate in family heritage preservation. It's not everyone who has the means to preserve a 110-year-old family carriage, but they do and they have. It's a treasure to be able to glimpse such heirlooms not in a museum, but actually cared for and in use by the same family, generations later.


Some good news, for a change

We're so used to the Media covering bad news, that we almost feel guilty when they cover something good. But quite frankly, news is by definition neither good nor bad. It's news. And it's good for us all to share in something positive.

David Starkey, a Royal Historian who did commentary for CBS, stated it very well:

"It [the wedding] really has caught the imagination. This is a bit of a grim time. We've had recession. We've got declining incomes. People want a bit of fun. Monarchy is brilliant at creating fun and entertainment. So many of the people I saw and listened to [on the street on the way here] were American, clearly coming back home in a funny kind of way and watching the royal family that -perhaps rather controversially - you got rid of."

 
I generally despise the media, but in this case, I found their coverage wonderful. Kudos to all the press teams who worked very hard to pull together commentary, history and coverage that would highlight all aspects of this fabulous event.

Besides the witty commentary by Royal Historian David Starkey, other highlights for me included BBC television's broadcast of the space station crew sending their best wishes
 and designer David Emanuel's breathless commentary upon catching the first glimpse of Kate's dress as she emerged from her hotel. (He designed Princess Diana's dress.) It's infectious to experience someone who really knows their craft and can share that knowledge and excitement.

Thank you for sharing it with us.