Christine the Curmudgeon

Christine the Curmudgeon was just watching Rick Steves’ Europe on PBS. Today, Rick was in Spain. He was talking about some ultra-touristy beach area, and showed people laying on the beach, many of them reading American magazines and romance novels. They also showed several American chain restaurants, including a KFC.

Christine the Curmudgeon want to know…WHY bother spending all of that money on a nice vacation, when all you are going to do is stuff that you can just as easily do at home? Rick Steves himself does not encourage going to very touristy places, he was just showing it and saying that it was too touristy for his liking. He tends to go into much more detail about “off the beaten path” stuff. He also stays at little mom & pop B&Bs, and eats at the same restaurants that the locals frequent.

Even when traveling within the United States, it confuses me why people do the same stuff they do at home, and eat in the same fast food places. Isn’t a vacation supposed to be about experiencing what the area you are visiting has to offer?

There ARE some exceptions, though.  Even when you CAN do certain things at home, there are times of the year when you can’t. Say you love golf, for example. Well, here in New England, we have lots of nice golf courses, but golfing is obviously not a year-round pastime around here. So, if it’s February, and you are suffering from Serious Golf Withdrawal, you can always go online and look for the best Orlando golf courses. Then you can plan a winter vacation around that.

But if I were a golfer, no way would I spend the money to golf in Orlando during the summer.  I can easily do that here.  It would only make sense if you wanted to combine it with other Orlando attractions, such as Sea World, Disney, and Universal Studios.  They don’t have anything like that up here.  We have amusement parks such as Six Flags New England and Canobie Lake Park, but they are not the same thing.

No doubt Orlando is loaded with fast food restaurant chains, but I would not waste a single meal eating at any of them.  I’d want to know where the locals eat, where the best Florida cuisine can be found.  I would love to try conch, which is something that definitely does not live in the New England waters.  But down in Florida, a lot of people do eat it…I’ve seen recipes for it in cookbooks, and on TV cooking shows.

Mr. Curmudgeon and I will be going up to Maine over Labor Day weekend.  We will go to a couple of ballgames at a ballpark that we don’t get to go to as much as we’d like.  We will eat in restaurants that they don’t have around here, and drink beer that is hard to find on tap where we live.  And we’ll feel bad for the people we see lined up at the McDonald’s drive-through on Route One in Wells…probably most of them are tourists.  Oh, what they are missing.

Not ALL Stop & Shop stores, just our local one. They may have remodeled the store, the quality of the meats and produce are somewhat better, but the same crappy customers and employees remain.

But we went there today, because I didn’t feel like going all the way to Shaw’s, which is further away. We only needed a few things, I just wanted to go, get then, and get it over with.

I should have known better.

In the parking lot, some jerk almost hit our car. Maybe his steering rack wasn’t working right, but I think he just didn’t know how to drive.  There’s a lot of that going around.

Outside of the store were a couple of smart-ass kids, begging for money for some sports program.  Christine the Curmudgeon does not donate to such endeavors, she feels that the parents of the kids should finance this stuff, or let the kids do some actual work to EARN the money.  These two little punks were standing their with their cans, and yelling at people who chose not to donate.  Yeah, that’s a really good way to raise money.

We NEVER see this crap outside of Shaw’s…perhaps they don’t allow it?  Perhaps they know that it pisses customers off, and keeps them away from their store?  I know for a fact that Target doesn’t allow this sort of thing at ANY of their stores.

But Stop & Shop doesn’t care.  This isn’t the first time I’ve been accosted by punk kids collecting money.  I sent a written complaint to the manager of the store about some other kids who yelled insults at me a while back, and never got a response.

I had all but forgotten about the beggar brats until today.  And I’ll try not to forget it again.

And then there are the stupid customers inside the store.  This particular S&S has a full liquor license, a rarity for supermarkets in Massachusetts.  But we stopped buying our libations there long before we decided to just not shop there much at all any more.  The problem?  You have to be 18+ to ring up booze (but 21+ to drink it, go figure).  But the store, in an effort to save money and not give out benefits, hires cashiers who are an average of 15-16 years old.

Nothing wrong with that in itself, as Christine the Curmudgeon would much rather see teenagers working for money, instead of hanging around outside the store with cans and trying to bully people into giving it.  But sheesh, if your store is gonna sell booze, you need to have an easy and quick way to have it rung up.  The underaged cashier has to call for a manager, said manager takes forever to come, and then they’re all huffy because someone dared ask them to Do Their Job and ring up the damned liquor.

So we just buy our booze at the nearby Kappy’s, I think you have to be over 21 in order to work there.  So there’s never any waiting around for a surly manager to come and ring up our beer.

Anyhoo, we only needed a few things, and since we had less than 12 items, we went to an express lane.  The kid who was cashiering looked to be about 16, and there was one of those signs that said that “alcohol purchases will require assistance”.  That was fine, we weren’t buying any.  But then I noticed that the woman in front of us had some wine.  I looked over at the next lane, it was also an express lane, but it didn’t have one of those signs, and the cashier looked to be about 30.  Why didn’t the dumb bimbo go to THAT line?  I know that on the rare occasion that I do buy booze in that store, I scope out the cashiers, look for the signs, and try to pick one who looks old enough, if possible.  Once in a while, they do have an adult cashier working.

So I was about to go to that other line myself, when some other dumb bimbo with a cart full of stuff punched in, and started piling her crap onto the belt.  Since this was another “12 items or less” lane, she should not have been there.  I didn’t want to get behind her while she argued with the cashier, and then took forever to get her crap off the belt.  I decided to stay where I was and just wait for the surly manager to come and ring up Dumb Bimbo #1’s wine.  It turned out to be quicker.

Note to self:  stay the hell out of that particular Stop & Shop from now on!  It’s Idiot Central.

Christine the Curmudgeon admits that she likes to watch daytime soaps…most notably, the ones on CBS. So but me, it’s a not-so-guilty pleasure.

But, sheesh, some of these stories are just totally over the top. Take this story on “The Bold & the Beautiful”…PLEASE!

There’s this dude named Nick, and this chick named Bridget, they were married once before. Then they got a divorce and Nick married Bridget’s mother for about five minutes. Then he married this other chick, Taylor, and they got divorced, too, but not until after she underwent IVF and had a baby…with a donated egg. Turned out that Brooke (Bridget’s mom) donated the egg, so she is baby Jack’s bio-mom.

Okay, so when I wasn’t watching, Nick somehow got back with Bridget, and they have since remarried. But not before he went and knocked up Bridget’s aunt, Brooke’s younger sister, Katie.

Now, Katie has had a hard life. She suffered from serious acne as a teenager, and was publicly humiliated at her senior prom.  Yeah, this seriously sucks, but most people get over it.  But not whiny Katie.

So she had to have a heart transplant, and she almost rejected the heart and thought her days were numbered.  Kind-hearted (and very stupid) Bridget let aunt Katie live with her and Nick, and even encouraged Nick to be nice to her, to make her final days special.  Nick even went so far as to stage a re-enactment of the prom for Katie, with him as her date, making her feel good.  I admit, that was kind of sweet.

I don’t think that taking her out on his boat to some island someplace, and then schtupping her, was what Bridget had in mind, though.  But he did just that, only viewers didn’t know until Katie was shown going to the doctor, and was told that she was pregnant.

So  now. Katie is not about to croak any time soon, and she is pregnant with her niece’s husband’s baby.  Delightful.  No good deed goes unpunished.

If I had a family member like Katie who was sick and needed cheering up, the :LAST thing I would do is to send my husband to do said cheering up.  I trust him, but I still would never blindly allow him to be a fake prom date, nor take her out to some secluded island somewhere.  We’d find other ways to make her happy, my husband is, and always will be OFF-LIMITS.

Why does an adult woman even care about the stupid prom, anyway?  It’s nothing more than a high school dance, not the be-all and end-all of life.  I didn’t go to my prom, no one asked me, and I survived.  I just never cared.

And I would certainly not try to steal someone else’s husband after re-enacting the prom that never was.

I bet Bridget goes psycho when she finds out that Aunt Katie is knocked up with her hubby’s kid.  That might be fun to watch.

Christine the Curmudgeon often rants about the way that other people spend their money, and maybe that should stop. Just because other people choose to spend their money in ways that I wouldn’t, doesn’t always mean that it’s bad, right? I mean, there are probably a lot of people out there who think that restaurant meals, microbrewed beer, and baseball tickets are a waste of money. But as long as we can afford it, why not?

So I know of people who are choosing to reproduce, and of course, they have their online baby shower wish lists. I have been seeing this Bugaboo stroller on more and more wish lists, and at first, I was like, holy crap, that thing is expensive!

And it is.  The Bugaboo Frog stroller sells for $759.00.  Yes, it’s a lot of money, but how many times have I defended myself for buying expensive cookware and other high-end stuff?  A lot.  So if a parent wants a good quality stroller for their kid, why not?  As long as they can afford it (or find someone who can afford to buy it for them).  I know I’d be really pissed if I were going past the welfare office one day, and saw some well-dressed mother wheeling a Bugaboo stroller into the place.  If you can afford a nice stroller like this, you certainly should NOT be on public assistance!

I have to admit that these are nice, good quality strollers.  The “Frog” one that I linked to above is convertible.  It has a bassinet that is suitable for infants, and said bassinet can be used by itself.  Say you are traveling…this is good for baby to sleep in, in the hotel room or in your hosts’ home.  But then you can convert this to a regular stroller, for toddlers.

This will hold up well over time, and it can be handed down to younger children.  I guess if you want to have a lot of kids, and you just use this one stroller, you would definitely get your money’s worth out of it.

But, like a good car, it might also have resale value.  Say you only decide to have one or two kids…you can always sell the stroller, as it will likely still be in good shape.  Or just pass it on to other family members who can use it.

Just watch where you are going with it, people…try not to mow me down in the concourse at MerchantsAuto.com Stadium, as someone nearly did last week.  That is all Christine the Curmudgeon asks!

Sheesh, is that too much to ask? Okay, so Christine the Curmudgeon is a bit of a slob, but that does NOT give Mr. Curmudgeon the right to mess with her stuph!

I was sitting here looking up some stuph online. I wanted to write the info down, rather than wasting printer ink to print it. I reached for my trusty pen…it was one of those promotional pens, with a website address on it, and attached to a cord. It was hanging handily from a binder clip, clipped to my desk.

Yeah…WAS!  Now it’s gone.  He swears he didn’t touch it, but who knows? He is forever trying to “tidy up” MY STUPH when I’m not looking.

He doesn’t get it.  I may be a slob, but, for the most part, I know where all of my stuph is, even if HE doesn’t.  It’s when people mess with my stuph, that I can’t freakin’ find anything.  Trust me, there is a method to my madness.

I don’t mess with HIS stuph, I leave it alone.  Sheesh.