Hot, new back-to-school fashion trend: Cheap – Retail – msnbc.com
Hot, new back-to-school fashion trend: Cheap – Retail – msnbc.com.
In elementary school, I had a budget of $100 for back-to-school shopping. It was the only time during the year my mom and I would go shopping for something other than groceries.
I would plan my purchases weeks in advance to make sure I wasn’t going over budget and to make sure I was getting the most out of every dollar we could spend. I never thought it was difficult or embarrassing. I thought it was how everyone went back-to-school shopping. I thought back-to-school season was the only time everyone else went shopping, too.
I realized later what an incredible job my parents did raising my brother and me, with my $100 back-to-school budget. My parents never said we couldn’t afford something. It never came up. Growing up, I never knew my family went through rough times. My brother and I always had everything we needed, thanks to Mom and Dad, who showed us we didn’t need very much.
“We’re Not Bumfuzzled”
Posting has been über-lax lately – I’ve been watching season after season of The West Wing and staying on top of California’s many, many issues (the state’s going to reinstate drilling off the coast of my hometown, and that’s only one of things I’m upset about). It’s also summer and I try to spend more time looking around at the trees than I do at the computer screen.
I love and hate The West Wing fiercely. It was brilliantly written and beautifully executed by the actors who made the show so realistic. Its themes, conflicts, and characters are timeless. Episodes written ten years ago have relevance and meaning today, and the discussions evoked by the show’s plot lines continue to stir heated debate in our country. I love that TWW talks about the things I feel are important. I hate that TWW introduces tough situations that usually become resolved within 40 minutes of teleplay. Once I stop the DVD, my mind is reeling from drawing parallels between people, places, and events of the show vs. today’s political arena. The playback stops, but my mind continues to wrestle with all the issues going on right now, which have no end in sight and cannot be turned off with a power switch. When the end credits start to play, I feel pumped up to make this world a better place.
As the beginning of the school year draws near, I’m getting more and more excited about my upcoming years of training, and the possibilities that follow. I’ve opened up this blog several times to write about it, but I’m no Toby, Sam or Will, so I’ve been having difficulty finding the right words to describe how it feels to be going back to school. Insert something about the world being my oyster. Cue inspirational score and background cheering sound effects. A year ago, I wrote in this blog that I wondered how others felt when they figured out what it is they’re supposed to do in life. Now I know.
“FYI: I Hurt, Too”
As sung by Karen Walker:
I was cleaning out the one file cabinet drawer we have of so-called important papers today and came across a folder marked “grad school” that wasn’t mine. I used to have a similar folder, only it wasn’t marked “grad school” and it came in the form of two bankers’ boxes, and all of its contents were destroyed this past March.
There were a handful of envelopes containing short, canned responses on matching fancy official letterhead in the folder. I suddenly felt nauseous. This was the first time it hit me that I wasn’t the only one receiving these kinds of letters at the time. A couple of them were postmarked as early as January 2006, before I had received any of mine (which were going to arrive in droves a few months later). I wasn’t the only one hurting in March 2006, even though I certainly thought and felt that way. The reason I felt sick to my stomach is because I realized the entire time I was leaning on him for support (and really, really leaning – the entire time being the whole of 2006 and 2007), he was dealing with his own disappointments privately. I even remember being angry and saying to him something along the lines of “you don’t know how this feels because you got in somewhere.” Stupid, stupid me. Before he got in somewhere, he didn’t get in somewhere else. He must have felt the same way I did for at least a few months. Regardless of how long he may have experienced that infamous shoulder-slumping period known to so many applicants, there was a time when he knew exactly how I felt. But in my selfish grief, I hadn’t noticed.
I wonder if he’ll want to destroy those letters, or if he’ll want to hold on to them. Maybe he’s already forgotten about them, and if I hadn’t come across the folder at the back of the drawer, he wouldn’t have thought of them ever again. I don’t know. I do know that he was hurting at some point, and I wasn’t someone he could lean on.
Nerd
What’s the best part about going back to school? Seeing sales for school supplies and having a legitimate reason to pay attention to them. Paper, notebooks, writing utensils, anything that could be categorized in the pin/clip/flag/post/mark/note group (aka reading gadgets), messenger bags…oh, heaven.
Irrelevant
If you click on the “thumbs down” icon underneath the ads on facebook, you can select a reason for why you didn’t like it. Here are my new rules for tagging facebook ads in my free time:
All ads pertaining to programs for higher degrees are now marked “irrelevant.” I’m already enrolled in one.
All ads pertaining to parenting, mom networks, etc. are now marked “offensive.” I’m not pregnant.
All ads pertaining to making money from home are now marked “misleading.”
All ads pertaining to alcoholic consumer products are now marked “repetitive.”
All ads pertaining to facebook or other social networking tools (for bloggers, software, etc.) are now marked “repetitive.”
Racism at the Pool
I don’t remember ever being ridiculed for not being white as a school-aged child. I do remember one blatant act of discrimination in 3rd grade, but my mom and I fought through that episode.
The first time someone said something to me that was racially-based was when I visited Nashville, TN, attending an event with a youth group in high school. I was about to place my order at a Wendy’s when the boy behind the counter interrupted me to ask, “Hold on, do you even speak English?”
The first time someone made racially-based gestures at me was last year, when I visited a suburb of Detroit to visit D’s grandparents. While having pizza at a local restaurant, an elementary-aged girl stared at me, then pulled the outer corners of her eyes up and down, sticking out her tongue the whole time.
I’ve never had a sore spot about being Chinese before. Now when people ask me where I’m from, I tell them Santa Barbara. When they repeat their question, I say California. If they ask a third time, I tell them Santa Barbara again. Sometimes they shift to my parents and ask where they’re from. I always respond with Santa Barbara.
Hey – I don’t ask where anyone else is from.
Two Birds
This morning, a huge flock of crows (or birds sounding like crows) created a heck of a racket, going on for more than 45 minutes around 5 am. I have no idea what they were getting all riled up about, but they were certainly making themselves heard. Lots of annoying noise at a very early hour never fails to make me get out of the bed and start a very grumpy day. So began, I thought, another day in a series of grumpy days, filled with grumbling about things and people and people’s things that have been annoying me more than usual lately.
Then I saw this:
@AnnCurry: Morning! What is making you happy today?
At 6 am today, while sitting at my computer reading the early morning news and blog posts, sipping coffee and munching on half a bagel, a surprise breeze came in from the window and I smelled the kind of summer morning I used to know and love in Santa Barbara – a little bit of dew (although not a marine layer, the lake-i-ness substitute was ok here), a little bit of tree, a lot a bit of cool pleasantness. There’s a decent chance of rain today, but it’ll also be around 70 degrees. Thank you, Chicago, for helping me out on a Wednesday for once.
BFD
I was in middle school when Princess Diana died. It’s becoming apparent that I’m part of a very small number of people my age who remember the news and coverage of her death being a mega-huge deal. It’s even more obvious that I may be one of the few who cared so much as an American 7th grader.
No, we didn’t have Twitter or facebook in 1997. My family didn’t even have cable. I heard about her death on the radio, while listening to a local station’s nightly countdown of the day’s most requested songs. But just because the media chatter surrounding her death was low-tech doesn’t mean Diana’s death wasn’t as high-profile. And as a 13 year old watching her funeral on tv, hearing Elton sing “Goodbye, England’s Rose”, watching her brother speak, and seeing her boys grieving, I felt like the world was going to end.
I’m sad to see a Michael Jackson-less world, but this world lost Diana more than ten years ago and it has kept on turning.
In this world, people lose their parents every day. I can’t and don’t want to imagine what the world’s going to be like when the world continues to turn without my parents.
Zojirushi
My new rice cooker. Because the last one was gargantuan and incompetent. This one reminds me of EVE from WALL-E and it comes with a timer! Woohoo for automated rice cooking!
