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Resilience, courage, and gratitude

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I was talking to a colleague last week about how her husband was in the military at the beginning of their marriage, and at the time the only way to communicate was via letters in the mail. Ah, the art of the handwritten letter, the love and care it takes to sustain a relationship via mail. Today, it is much easier for families that have a loved one in the military to communicate via email, text, and phone.

It still amazes me how families do it, when their loved one is away for such long periods of time. I do not think I would make a good military wife (thank you, Chris for sparing me). I would be a basket case. I do love how much pride Americans have for their veterans. I kept seeing Veteran’s Day specials on the Internet last week and thought I would share a few. This is a list of 32 freebies for Veterans, and here are a few more freebies. So if you are a Veteran, take a peek and see if you want to get a hair cut, visit a National Park, or eat for free on or around November 11 (depending on the deal).

I want to send out many thank you’s and my gratitude to the men and women of the Armed Services. Thank you for keeping us safe. Thank you for all you do for your country, and for putting your precious lives in harm’s way to make this world a better place. I also want to thank your families for their patience, resilience, and courage. I do not know if I am brave enough to do what you do each day as you pray for the safety of your loved ones.

In gratitude.

An interesting way to shop online

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A few weeks ago, I found a cool website that displays boutique products as though you are virtually in the shop itself. ShopStoree is the namesake, with the tagline: “Every shop has a story.” When you hover over specific products, you have the option to then purchase them online. It is a great way to merchandise products mixed with other items, rather than a conveyor belt option of items in silos unto themselves.

Each photo is of a different shop, and when you see the black dot, click on it and it will give you the name, price and link to the online shop of the boutique. You also can click on “About this Shop” to learn about the online or brick + mortar boutique. ShopStoree says: “We believe an amazing retail experience is not confined to a physical store.
 It transcends that. It is about the joy of discovery. And we believe that kind of discovery can be experienced in a digital world.” I have to agree with them. It takes online shopping to a whole new level. I can experience a boutique in Cleveland I have never been to, or explore one in Portland and see if I want to venture there in person.

It looks like they have an assortment of shop styles to explore. The only caveat is that you can look at a photo and find that there are many other things on that table that you want to purchase but does not have the black dot. Eye candy you cannot have! But, I guess if I saw an item in a photo that was not for sale on ShopStoree, I could always contact the specific store and ask them for more details on a that product.

Interested? Check them out!

Passionate about um…vacuums?

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I remember our Kirby vacuum from my childhood. That thing looked like it could make it through a war, yet I think I remember my dad fixing it more often than not. It had this thick large rubber band on the bottom that would often break, get off its track, or get caught with all our hair. I remember when the bag got fairly full and you turned it on, all this dust would explode out. Fun times.

A few weeks ago, we bought a new vacuum. I know not the top of the list of items to purchase, and you may be wondering why I am even writing a blog on purchasing a vacuum. You see the vacuum is just a vehicle to the real morale of the story. A little back detail first.

We had a crappy vacuum from Bed, Bath and Beyond. It was fine, but now we are living in the house that we hope to be in for a very long time. This house has both carpet and hardwood floors meaning that one or the other was not getting as clean as it could be from our current cheap vacuum. We decided that since we plan to be in this house for a long time, and are not moving every few years as we had been, that it was time to purchase a “grown up” vacuum.

Now to a few weeks ago. Inner east side Portland, on a Saturday afternoon. We decided to go to a local store that just sells vacuums. I say to Chris as we get out the car: “Let’s make this fast, this is the last place I want to be right now.” We go inside to a fairly large store with so many different types of vacuums that your head would spin. I am bored already. Stay patient Tami, if we find a good one the hardwood floor would no longer befriend your constant shedding hair.

We get the salesman that is about our age. We also learned that he grew up in vacuum stores. He father was a vacuum salesman. He is passionate about it. Who knew that in 2013 someone could be passionate about such things? He steers us clear from the Dyson, which shocked me a bit because those have the higher price tag. He tells us the ball on the Dyson has hard plastic which will be fine on carpet, but will scratch our hardwood floors. He steers us from upright vacuums (which is what I was wanting) to the canister vacuums. Chris asks him what are the perks for purchasing directly from you? The salesman says to support a local business. Chris said, well yes, definitely but any others? No. After demonstrations, dialogue, and explanation of which vacuum would be the best for us we thanked him and said we were going to think about it.

Chris went back the next day to pick up our vacuum. He researched online reviews and pricing. We could have purchased it online, but based on the service, care, and knowledge we received, we wanted to support our local business. No more hair all over the hardwoods. We are happy vacuum owners, and I am grateful that there are still businesses that care about customer service, their products, and truly finding what is right for their consumers.

#cleanfloors

Would you be mortified?

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I write. It is what I do. It is what makes me feel grounded and balanced, and how I make sense of the world. I cannot remember when I started writing in a journal, but I have a bin or two in a closet that contains all my journals from over the years. I am now slightly inspired to go and find my earliest ones and see has my voice changed? I am sure it has.

So when a colleague told me the other day about “Mortified Nation” I had a nice chuckle. Mortified Nation is a documentary that has just been released where individuals read from their teenage journals. Some of them are funny, some depressing, and some will speak directly to the title: mortified. I am sure I have plenty of journal entries that fall into each of those categories, and some that might lead me down a path to what life truly was like back then. Of course we have our memories, but I wonder if even at a less mature age if the words that flowed from within were telling to what was really going on in our lives?

Would you be mortified to read our teenage journal aloud? What would we find out about you? That you hated your mom, and had a crush on a different boy a week? Who knows but these individuals are brave souls, unless they have the writing ability of David Sedaris’ or their raw honesty just rings a bell in our own nostalgic thoughts of the past.

The documentary was available on iTunes and Amazon on November 5, and in some local theaters over the next 2 weeks.

#timetounearthjournals

Looks can be deceiving

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I know you probably know all you want to know about Photoshop, women, and the ads that show them as perfect. I am most likely not telling you anything new. But, here is the thing. Even though you know, even though it is not right, it is still happening. Whatever happened to transparency? What would it be like if a company photographed a model and shared the before and after shot? What if? Would that potentially open the eyes of young girls, hell, mid-life women who are telling themselves they are not worthy? If every time they saw an ad for their favorite actress, or model and if only they knew how many takes, how much work happened in Photoshop to make that perfect photo? Would that maybe help them think differently about their skin, their nose, their fat? 

Body issues tend to always be at the back of most girls and women’s minds. How can they not? We are surrounded by the media, onlookers of the testosterone mindset always looking us over for their approval. Hell, it is also known that women look other women over. Maybe it is just to compare notes of where they stand against another, maybe it is to get ideas for what they might want to wear, or maybe we are just as curious as the male species.

In any case, the woman’s body is over scrutinized beyond belief. What scares me most is how far from reality ads are today showing the woman’s body. Sure, there have been companies (Dove for example) that have shown real women without Photoshop, but that is the exception. The norm shows women without a single flaw. Now I am not excluding men here, but come on. The media will show George Clooney with a wrinkle long before it will on a woman. Just think of the newscasters today, you often see an old man, but you rarely see an old woman.

So when I saw this video of the before and after of a model, I wanted to yell: Stop it! Let us all be. Let us buy the soap we want because it works, or smells good, or makes us feel sexy, not because some model makes us think we will only be happy in life, and have what they have because we have been erroneously convinced that this product will change our life. It will not. I promise you. Tell your sisters, daughters, mother, friends to watch for these bullshit depictions of women in the media. To not get sucked in. We are all who we are regardless of our wrinkles, ripples, fat, and blemishes. Do not make anyone or anything tell you differently.