Girl Detective

On the inside back cover of Consumer Reports, there is usually at least one example of a fraudulent or misleading magazine solicitation. My husband’s favorite is the one that was a check. When you endorsed it, you authorized someone to charge you for the cost of a subscription, which was, of course, greater than the amount of the check. I’ve had a spate of solicitations, recently, some more insidious than others.

One, from Cook’s Country, I would like to think is just an administrative error. It took me some time to renew my subscription, I did it online, then our next issue had the “YOUR LAST ISSUE” brand on it. I double checked to make sure we had indeed paid them; we had. So I ignored it, and hope that no more solicitations would be forthcoming. In my other interactions with Cook’s, they have been sometimes slow, but scrupulous, especially about renewing our online subscription.

Another, from Everyday Food, is a little more suspicious. Friends recommended the magazine, and I decided to give it a try and signed up for a new subscription online. I got the magazine promptly, but I also got a bill. And another. I checked to confirm that I paid them; I did. If I get one more bill I’ll probably cancel the subscription. The magazine is fine. It’s a nice digest size, and it has recipes that are easy to shop for and prepare. Unfortunately, as my father is fond of saying, everything is a compromise. I’ve found that the recipes compromise convenience for flavor. This is a magazine for good ideas, but I’ve not yet made a recipe good enough to make again. I was already uneasy about giving money to the Martha Stewart empire. While the magazine is good, it’s not good enough to excuse sloppy or deceptive billing.

Finally, last week I received a “bill” from Yoga Journal, a magazine I subscribed to a couple years ago. It’s a lovely magazine, with good paper quality, good yoga information, and many stories about the spiritual side of yoga that is often forgotten in its trendiness as exercise. Apparently, the spirituality does not extend to solicitation practice. The item I received said it was an invoice for a three year subscription for $65. Funny, I don’t recall having contacted them to request a subscription. I discarded the “bill”.

These are all good reminders of why I’ve cut my magazine subsciptions to almost nothing. Not only are you getting a magazine, you’re getting all their solicitations and sometimes solicitations from others. Subscriptions are a tempting deal. They are inexpensive compared to individual issues. They also play to your fear that you might “miss” something if you don’t get every issue. What I’ve found, though, is that my life is a lot simpler and less cluttered when I don’t have magazines and their solicitations piling up. And I have more time because I don’t have to check whether I’ve paid or not. If I don’t have a subscription, then I don’t owe them anything. I can pick up single issues on a whim, and I buy them rarely enough that they never add up to the cost of a subscription. I must, though, admit to having taken some magazines away from recent doctor appointments. This is not a practice I can really condone as a way to avoid subscriptions.

Finding books that both our two-year-old son Drake and his parents like to read is sometimes a challenge. Also, sometimes a book has a good story, but so-so illustration, or vice versa. So books that we all like and that are beautiful both to look at and to read are something of a trifecta.

I came across Mo Willems’ books during a search at www.amazon.com. I find amazon’s links to “people who bought this also bought this” is useful to learn about books and music that I haven’t heard of. Many people dismiss amazon and its links out of hand–”oh, anybody can write a review, how can you tell anything by that”. But I use the links to browse, and I can often readily identify more and less reliable reviews. I usually only attend to the editorial ones, anyway.

There are four Mo Willems pigeon books–two hardcovers and two board books. In Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, the pigeon begs the reader to drive while the bus driver is away. It’s an interactive story that allows a toddler to yell “No” with abandon, unless s/he’s feeling sympathetic to the pigeon. In The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog, a cute duckling heckles the pigeon before it can consume the serendipitous weiner. The board books are shorter and sturdier than most, and quite charming. The Pigeon Has Feelings, Too! shows an interchange between the pigeon and the bus driver. The Pigeon Loves Things That Go caps toddler-fascinating vehicles with a clever appearance by the duckling.

Willems’ two other recent books, Knuffle Bunny and Leonardo the Terrible Monster, are very good, but did not inspire the mad repetition Drake demanded of the pigeon books. Willems worked at Sesame Street, and was the creative mind behind the strange but charming and short lived cartoon Sheep in the Big City. His simple but engaging illustrations combined with the clever, odd humor make for a great set of books.

Shopping with Drake is a challenge. He is easily bored, averse to sitting still, shrill in his displeasure, and can easily defeat the strap in shopping carts. One time he even fell backward over the toddler seat into the cart. But we went to our local food coop yesterday and had NO screaming. Here’s how I did it:

String cheese in aisle 1.
Pirate’s Booty in aisle 3.
Spiced meat stick before checkout.
Pear nectar sample on the way out the door.

Luckily, our coop is on the small side. The woman at the register was very nice about ringing up toddler-mangled, empty food packages.

For Drake’s birthday, his grammy kindly sent a bookstore gift card. It was burning a hole in G. Grod’s wallet so we went book shopping this weekend. Plus, I think G. may have harbored a small hope that maybe he or I could justify getting something for ourselves, like the new TPB–trade paperback–of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, or the Low CD The Great Destroyer. We were good, though. We used it all on Drake.

Choosing children’s books has been more of a learning curve for me than I would have thought. My mom thoughtfully kept all the books from when my sisters and I were young, and I oversaw the kids’ section of a large used book store for a year. I felt pretty knowledgeable about kids’ books. But a former colleague from the bookstore shared that he spent years collecting a tremendous children’s library, yet all his kids want to read is Pokemon. Like him, having a kid sharpened my appreciation for what really works. Omnibus collections of multiple stories (George and Martha, Curious George, and Madeleine all have these) are heavy for toddlers to lift and too long to read in one setting, causing tears once the book is shut. Deluxe editions, like The Essential Eloise by Kay Thompson, contain extras that might be interesting to adults, but do not make easy reading to children. And some stories are just disliked, either by parents or by the kid. Both my husband and I dislike Curious George stories, which are long, disjointed and often feature odd or disturbing details, like George being kidnapped from the jungle and later smoking. Other books are fine once or twice, but can become tiresome when asked for several times in a row. Some of our books receive a temporary, and some a permanent, time out. Some of Drake’s favorite books are classics from when I was a child, like Bedtime for Frances, but some of the most successful new books we’ve acquired have been recommendations from other parents. Pancakes, Pancakes by Eric Carle, and several of the mouse books by Kevin Henkes are now well-loved and oft-read books in our library.

As I struggled to winnow our choices, I was reminded why we normally shop in used book stores. Yes, there are some dodgy ethics about the author not getting the proceeds, but I just can’t argue with the sheer bang for the buck of the used books. (Last week, for example, we got 11 books–one for us, 10 for Drake–for $30.)

New bookstores, though, have their own joys, like a wide selection, including new releases, of non-shabby books. I was torn by all the choices, though. Should we get new books, classics, hardcovers, paperbacks? Just as I’d finally made my decisions, G. Grod drew my attention to the book clutched in Drake’s hand. He’d made a choice of his own, so I had to put back a copy of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. Here are our new books. Try to guess which was Drake’s pick.

Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
Swimmy by Leo Lionni
Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton
Lift the Flap: Things That Go
I Am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go to Bed by Lauren Child

It’s taken me some time, but I’ve finally managed to work my way through at least one issue of each of the shopping magazines: the original, Lucky; spinoff #1 Cargo for men; copycat #1 Shop, Etc.; and spinoff #2 Domino for home.

Years ago a friend told me Lucky was a great magazine. I scoffed. The shopping magazine? Then I checked it out, apologized and became a subscriber. Lucky is one of the most successful magazine launches in recent years. It positions its editors as in-the-know girlfriends, dispensing advice on how to dress and what products–classic and new–to try. Lucky is a great magazine for ideas, and it features a wide range of items, from drugstores to exclusive boutiques. The production quality is high with accessible layouts, and good photography, models, writing, and paper stock. Editor-in-Chief Kim France and Creative Director Andrew Linnett are alumni of the late, lamented Sassy, to which Lucky is a much more worthy heir than is the celebrity-suck-up Jane.

I picked up a few copies of Cargo to get fashion ideas for my husband, who tends to be somewhat sartorially challenged. Cargo, though, gave me a headache. It was too bright, too busy, and it’s pitched to a young, metrosexual consumer.

Shop, Etc. has tried to copy Lucky’s success. I found its first issue to be like a low-rent version of Lucky–poorer photography, cheaper paper, fewer models to save on costs, and clumsy attempts to write Lucky-like copy. A subsequent issue themed “everything under $100″ got my attention, but then annoyed me when I spotted the $100+ Mason Pearson hairbrush. I noticed from the letters column that readers seemed to believe it was a shopping magazine for more average lives and budgets, but I’m not sure that’s intended. It may be a response to the cheaper price and production value of the magazine. Aside from the under $100 issue, it features a wide range of items and costs. I found nothing in Shop, Etc. that Lucky doesn’t do better or that I felt Lucky lacked.

Finally, the newest entry, Domino, is like Lucky for the home. The premier issue did all the same things as does Lucky, but didn’t strike a chord with me. I found some of the items in the ads more compelling than the stuff in the features. Maybe it’s that I’m not a DIY-er, so I’m not the target, but I found the mini sections that Lucky has on home items to be sufficient. This full-length magazine was just too much for me.

Interesting, also, was that Cargo, Shop, Etc., and Domino were all difficult to find. Lucky is available up front at Target. The others I had to go to a bookstore to find, and even then, I had to go to more than one bookstore. At the end of my experiment, I’ve found I’m loyal to Lucky. One shopping magazine is enough for me, if not for the magazine industry.

Two movie tickets: $16.50
Medium (quite yucky) popcorn, bottle of water, box of Junior Mints: $11.25
Discounted parking: $2
Friend who offered to watch child at last minute so both of us could go to movie together: priceless.

DVDs are easy impulse buys, which my husband G. Grod and I have successfully managed to curtail in the last several months. Instead we’ve been watching movies from Tivo (too often not in widescreen format. Why? I think only Turner Classic Movies and the Independent Film Channel get this right.), watching DVDs previously bought on impulse, or renting them from the library, though it has a prohibitively long wait list for most good, new releases. But tallying up the costs of our night out means that most DVDs are less expensive than a night out for two, even without paying a sitter.

There are certain movies, like Batman Begins, which is what we saw, that benefit from being seen on the big screen. Yet there are many others that are fine viewed at home, where we usually have much better snacks. Yes, Netflix is still a better deal than buying, but only if you keep returning those movies. We had the same three movies for three months around the time Drake was born. I don’t even remember what they were. We returned them unwatched when we cancelled our subscription. But perhaps impulse-buy DVDs are not the worst budget wrecker in the world. Plus, I bet they’d bring good re-sale if sold quickly at either at Half-Price Books or on Ebay, lowering the cost even more.

From Carolyn Mackler, The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, (Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2003):

Strawberry is a funky discount store that I’ve browsed in before, but I’ve never had the guts to buy anything there. I like that they have cool clothes in every size, from extra-small to extra-large. And they’re all mixed together, so the fat girls aren’t banished to the fat floor where the dresses look like gunnysacks and the mannequins resemble embalmed grandmothers. (P. 187)

I just finished this book, and recommend it. It’s shelved at libraries and bookstores in teen fiction, formerly known as young adult–more on that distinction later, I promise. The main character, Virginia Shreves, has an emotional depth of character and a strong, funny voice.

I’ve written before about fashion injustice for non-mainstream sizes here, and here.

That isn’t entirely true. Just last week I bought him two toys: a bouncy plastic ball for $2.49 and a baby doll. I couldn’t stomach buying the blond, blue-eyed girl doll, so instead I bought the non-white, potentially gender-neutral doll. (The doll came with a purple headband, which I threw in the trash.) The doll came with a toy bottle and a rattle. We handed the baby doll to Drake and he lunged for the bottle, then put it immediately to the baby’s mouth. We didn’t show him, I swear. Is it innate, or just painfully obvious?

But, back to the originally intended topic of this post. I try not to buy toys for Drake. Obviously, sometimes I do not succeed. He has friends and relatives that have been very kind to him, and he really seems fine with the toys that he has. Occasionally, I feel as if I should be buying him developmental toys, or fun toys, or arts and music toys. I fret that perhaps he isn’t learning because we don’t have what he needs.

And then, he starts to play with the empty mustard bottle. And won’t let it go. And wants to sleep with it. Later, he takes the mini-loaf pans out of the cupboard and stacks and unstacks them.

He will find what he needs, when he needs it. And it does not have to cost money and be colorful and have batteries.

But a mustard bottle?

Oh, for the love of Mike.

I forgot one thing I did while I had my getaway last weekend, and it was to browse in a well-stocked book and music store. I went book by book through the young adult section and then traipsed around the whole store looking up books that had been on my list for a while and seeing if they had them (almost without exception, yes) and if they looked cool enough to stay on my list (also mostly yes.) I had time both before and after the movie to do this. It was so much fun to browse with no time limit, with no one waiting for me. I managed not to buy any books, but I was persuaded to buy two CDs from my list, since one was on sale and the other was relatively inexpensive, and I played them both once I got to my hotel room: Tift Merritt, Tambourine and Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken. So far, I’m pleased with both purchases.

Conventional wisdom varies on how often one should replace a tube of mascara. Some generous sources say a year, but others recommend every six months, or even every four. Such frequent replacement can mean that mascara is an expensive part of a beauty regimen.

My previous favorite mascara was Bobbi Brown’s Thickening Formula, which was discontinued and replaced with a combined lengthening/thickening formula called Everything Mascara. I bought a tube last spring. I didn’t like it as much as its Thickening predecessor, but it had a good brush and a not very wet formula that didn’t clump much. It had two strikes against it, though. It was hard to remove, even with the normally very efficient MAC eye makeup remover, and it wasn’t cheap. At $19 a tube, I didn’t love it enough to replace it even twice a year, much less three times. And so I embarked on a search for a decent, reasonably priced drugstore formula.

Most magazines and makeup artists tout Maybelline’s Great Lash regular formula as the best (and one of the cheapest) drugstore mascaras. I tried it a few years ago and didn’t like the brush and got a lot of clumps. I didn’t see the need to test it again.

I did some online research and found some good reviews of products by Maybelline, L’Oreal and Almay. Picking out just one was daunting, though. Each formula comes in multiple colors and waterproof or not. Each brand had about a half dozen different formulas, so there were at least fifty different tubes among which I had to choose. After about ten minutes of deliberation, I chose Maybelline’s Lash Discovery in blackish brown, non-waterproof. It’s both a thickening and a lengthening formula and has a tiny brush. The brush is easy to maneuver, requiring fewer strokes, using less product and lessening clumps. It’s a very good basic mascara and I’ll buy it again. It cost about $6.50, so I could replace it every four months and pay just a bit more than I did for one tube of the Bobbi Brown.

I’d seen the Hanky Panky #4811 touted in several places as that most unlikely of products, an attractive lace thong that is not uncomfortable. I picked one up recently, and it doesn’t disappoint. The 4811 looks good and doesn’t feel bad. Sorry, but I’m not quite sure I can make the leap to the statement that it’s comfortable. For me, the best I can say is that I mostly forget that I’m wearing it.

Some of you may wonder why women put up with any discomfort at all from our undergarments. But for even moderately low-rise pants–which are pretty much all that is out there over the last few years–a low-rise undergarment is de-rigeur. Yes, one can go commando. I prefer to try to get a couple wears out of an item before laundering it, though, and I feel better about this when I’m wearing underpants. One can wear bikinis, but VPL (visible pantie line) makes everybody feel like a victim. Thongs eliminate VPL, don’t ride up over the waistline (unless encouraged to do so, and I think most of us were thankful to see the quick end to that tarty little trend), and allow me not to feel too skanky about wearing a pair of jeans more than once.

Stuff for babies is a fast-growing and profitable market. Note how Babiesrus is one of the few big-box retailers to have survived the Wal-Mart and Target growth-fest, while its parent company Toysrus bit the dust. There’s a lot of stuff out there, and it all costs a lot of money. Some of it is good, some of it is mostly harmless, and some of it can make a poor, sleep-deprived parent feel even stupider. Buying needless baby junk is a nasty bit of business. Not only are you wasting time to shop, but also scarce money and finally, once you get the thing, even scarcer space.

We’re recently retired an item, and I’m feeling pretty strongly that we probably could have gotten along without it just fine. It’s his high chair. We’ve had to retire it because the straps have gotten too tight and because he can detach the tray himself and send it and all the food on it flying. As I was readying it for retirement, though, I became very aware of how hard it was to clean, and how many features it had (multiple heights, recline) that we’d never bothered to use.

Instead, we’ve moved our toddler Drake to a booster seat, which attaches to any regular chair. It is small, portable and easy to clean. Best of all, Drake cannot detach the tray himself.

The high chair was big, unwieldy, hard to clean and able to be defeated by toddler tricksiness. It cost about $60 and we only got about ten months of use out of it.

The booster seat is small, adaptable, can be taken to restaurants, and is still immune to Drake’s machinations. It cost about $25.

If I had it to do over again, I’d skip the high chair completely. They’ve over-supplied it with features and upped its price past the point of utility. The booster seat is the way to go.

I live in the Twin Cities, home of many things, including the largest enclosed mall in the United States. Notice all the qualifiers and you’ll see that there are larger un-enclosed malls (King of Prussia, PA) and larger enclosed ones not only in the world, but on the same continent (Canada).

Nonetheless, the Mall of America, known to locals as the mega mall, gets a bad rap for its hugeness. All anyone ever has to say is “It’s got a roller coaster in the middle!” and listeners will nod, assured that it is huge beyond all other malls. I worked at the mall for about a year, though, and during that time I learned its secret. It’s not that different from other malls.

Yeah, there’s the roller coaster. But it’s really small. MOA has the usual four department stores, and all the shops you’ve come to expect. There are also some surprises, like the cheese shop that hands out free squeaky cheese curds. Yum. Like most malls, it does not include clear lines of sight from one end to the other, and there are no public clocks to tell unwary shoppers that it’s time to go home. Malls and department stores are constructed like this on purpose; they lure you in and then make it difficult to leave. If you know the traps, though, they’re easy to avoid. The Mall of America is manageable, but many natives avoid it because of size, crowds, and a sense of general distaste. I can’t help with the latter, but I can offer a few tips on how to get the most out of a trip to the mall.

One, set a time limit before you go, and don’t exceed it. One of the worst feelings is being in Nordstrom Rack, trying on shoes, and shoes, and shoes, then finally finding a pair that fits only to get in the “get the other shoe” line, which takes FOREVER. It’s agony. A corollary to setting a time limit is that if you’re going to Nordstrom Rack, just do that–you’re probably not going to have much left in you for anything else.

Two, have a mission. Don’t go to the MOA if you’re just going to hit the Gap, Ann Taylor or other mall standards. Head to the mall only when necessary, for things that can only be done there. Today, I went to Nordstrom (that’s Nordstrom without an ’s’, thank you.) with my husband G. Grod to get our son Drake fitted for shoes for the first time. He’s only ever had Robeez, which did very well for him but are not able to stand up to our Minnesota winter. Drake got a pair of Chuck Taylors for his birthday four months ago, which he finally deigned to wear last month. And his feet promptly grew too wide for them. A shoe-fitting was in order, and Nordstrom was the place, so the mall was our destination.

Three, park as close to your mission as possible. For Nordstrom, you take the Lindau Lane exit, and go up the West parking ramp. For Bloomingdale’s, take Killebrew and park in the East lot.

Four, go when the mall opens. Mid-day is hell.

Sadly, I must confess that I went to the Mall of America twice today. Once to get Drake’s shoes, after which I did a whirlwind scour of the clearance rack in the toddler department. I was too hurried, though, and picked out pants that didn’t fit him. Baby sizes and their ridiculous ranges are maddening. He has outgrown several outfits that were size 18M, so I picked out pants that were 24M, only to find when I tried them on that they were four to six inches too long. When you’re not even three feet tall, that’s a pretty long pant. What’s most maddening is that I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THIS WOULD HAPPEN. Drake had gotten several pairs of pants for Christmas that were all too long, and then I went to the mall and bought him several more, without checking to make sure that they weren’t too long. And, of course, they were. Argh. So tonight I went back to the mall and returned the over-long pants. Armed with a pair of pants that I KNOW fit him, I found a few other pair that were just a skoche bigger at Hanna Andersson. I’m going to try them on him tomorrow to be certain. Drake is an active, screamy toddler and I don’t bother trying clothes on him in the store. The shoes were challenge enough. A further difficulty of baby sizes is that, like the baby, they’re a moving target. Yes, I’m pretty sure Drake just had a growth spurt, since his belly is now hanging out of most of his tops, but no, I’m not sure how long he’ll stay this size, so I want to buy clothes and shoes that have room to grow, but that are not so big that they fall off, or impede his movement.

I take some comfort that the original mission of shoes was achieved quickly and successfully. That the pants took two trips was discouraging, but may yet be worth it if they fit.

Bah, pants. They’re more trouble than they’re worth, except for that pesky social convention that insists that we wear them.