paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- crusty stuff at the bottom Quinn and I have one major difference that comes up in our relationship, occasionally -- when it is time for a new mayonnaise, a new tube of toothpaste, new shampoo. Quinn uses all of her resources before moving on. While I am not known for my ability to stick with a container of something until the bitter end. Because that is what is at the bottom -- bitterness, crustiness, backwash, dregs. About 2/3 of the way through a bottle of shampoo, my hair is no longer moved. It becomes unaffected by the cleaning agents. My oil glands or whatever it is that dirties up hair, work extra hard to counteract what is happening, as I wash and wash. At least that is my shampoo argument. Every situation is unique and I think that I keep making the same non-decision, over and over, because I don�t think about it. Ever try being late for work, faced with a mashed down, almost completely empty toothpaste tube? The clock is ticking, I work and work to try to get enough out for a good brushing. Or, the clock is ticking and there is the full, new toothpaste. Being a good American, what do I do? Am I a wasteful consumer? Or, am I the more thrifty style of American who works that tube. My internal major would observe that if I had not been up so late the night before, I would have been able to get out of bed in the morning, and the whole situation would be a non-issue. Quinn is exactly the opposite. She will get out that spatula in the morning, making a sandwich hastily before work, and carefully scrape the insides of the mayonnaise jar. I on the other hand have great difficulty shaking the sleep out of my head and just open up the fridge and reach in for something. It is scary when I make lunch because things don�t get spread and I take the one-condiment short cut. But Quinn just says, �oh you made lunch, thank you,� and is happy about that. Last night, I was making a tuna salad for dinner and asked Quinn for some mayo. And she surfaced the old mayo jar. All week I had been using the new mayo jar, completely unaware that there even was on old mayo jar. In my 33 years, I have seen many old mayo jars and frankly, they scare me. I would rather forgo the whole spatula thing and call it good enough. Quinn would never waste a resource. This has served her well over the years. As a single mother, she has had to maximize a tight budget. It really is an admirable quality. Quinn gently teases me about these things. Prompts me that it happens more than maybe even she mentions or I am aware. We do not fight over it, because it is silly, and is not worth negative feelings or bad energy. In a way, it is a funny difference we have. I know I am no saint and if it ever got to the point where someone needed to change, I could identify myself as the one who �ought� to change in the scenario�. But I have so much work to do on myself that this fickleness of mine keeps falling off the list. What intrigues me, and this could be one area in which our age difference is at play, is that Quinn is that much closer to what I call the great culture of thrift. This would have been at its highest point in Quinn�s grandmother, making Quinn only once removed. In my family, I would have been twice removed. I don�t know that it has anything to do with levels of affluence. Few have earned less in their life than my father and I have never seen him carefully use his resources. I don�t know that I have ever even seen him eat mayonnaise. He generally just uses butter or olive oil instead, sticking only with staples. Any condiments in that man�s fridge quite possibly date back at least a wife or two, and should not even be handled without plastic gloves. My mother has never bought a thing of paper towels in her life, and not because she is frugal, but because the whole apparatus is unsightly. Saving plastic containers for leftover food? Just chuck the plate in the fridge and let that food taste just like the inside of the fridge smells. Finish shampoo? Never. My father thinks you ought to just have one bar of Ivory soap for everything and leaves the shampoo purchasing to his wives. His current wife gets leftover shampoo from her twin sister and so their shower looks like the sale aisle at a drugstore. They have a system for this fickleness. His previous wife was really crunchy and sort of blended all sorts of things together into some sort of concoction with natural perfume oils. Sniff it once and go lightly. On the other side of my parental influence, the Major has only used one brand of shampoo his entire life and I think he is still working on the same super-size bottle that he got in 1989. Even though I was grown and gone from the house during the time of its purchase, I know that it replaced some incredibly huge bottle with a distinctly 70�s label, so there is a decade at least in that formula. My mother is just as bad as, if not worse, than I am. Even when it was the two of us, before she married the Major, sometimes she would just need new shampoo. We would put away the old bottle and then surface it, usually in an emergency, and delight in how wonderful it was to have that bottle still with some shampoo. But then this is my mother whose favorite payday meal was to bring home a box of Figurines for us to eat for dinner. My mother whose favorite Friday meal was a bottle of Coke and barbecue potato chips. Every other time of the week we ate frozen vegetables, cottage cheese, stuff that just gets used up. Condiments? My mother has condiments in her fridge just for looks. Last time I was over there I saw a thing of Quince jelly that I know was received in a holiday gift basket in 1984, probably half-eaten for dinner on toast in 1986,� I guess the thing that is so funny about living with someone is that you get a glimpse of things that you come by honestly. I see my characteristics from a different perspective. Characteristics that I probably would not have identified as items for reflection. These are things of temperament � invisible forces that run through generations of people. No matter how different I am from my parents, the three of us still have this approach to life that began sometime in 1967, before I was even born. Although they each lead completely and drastically different lives, there are still these aspects of them that just feel like home to me. 10:36 p.m. - 2002-08-07 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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