Why can't people leave people alone, part the nth

I guess this is as good a place as any for my rant about how Black Friday is emblematic of everything wrong with American culture these days. It isn't enough now that stores have to open at 5:00 AM... now they start at midnight, or even the night of Thanksgiving. So people who work retail have to cut their family holiday short to accommodate our collective lust for competition to buy cheap crap. Yeah yeah, we're grateful, we gorged ourselves to prove it, now get the fuck out of our way or suffer the consequences. Pepper spray is the new elbow to the ribs.

I know that everyone who shops the day after Thanksgiving doesn't behave this way, and I guess I should be thankful that unlike last year, nobody was trampled to death. Still, the whole concept disgusts me. Pffft.

I have some shopping to do today myself, hopefully while Black Friday lovers are still sleeping it off. Not Christmas shopping, which I plan to do only very locally or online this year -- just for groceries. Yet, even with Thanksgiving still visible in the rearview mirror, I can expect to encounter the bells, the bells, the relentless bells.

So I printed out my little notes for the red kettles, politely explaining that my donations go elsewhere while the Salvation Army maintains its position that homosexual people should not only not be allowed to marry, but should be celibate. 

Hopefully I won't forget which pocket holds which paper.  Both my purposes will be amusingly defeated if the red kettle gets my shopping list, leaving me with a scrap of cheerfully expressed social activism to guide me through the grocery store.

re-entry

We've been back about a week, and it is great. We arrived in the height of last week's snowstorm (which nobody remembers, after this week's). You know how houses have smells, and you don't notice the smell of your own house unless you've been away? I was relieved to notice that ours smells mostly like... wood. In a nice way, I think. I guess. Anyway the girls went beserk, running around remembering stuff and hollering their discoveries at each other: "LOOK! The play house! The piano! The PINK TOILETS!" (Yes, we have pink toilets... the house was built in the 80s, and we've had more important improvements to make since we bought it in '00, but the pink toilets are SO on our list.) They were especially happy to get in their own little beds. They liked sharing a room out west, but neither of them says they will miss sharing a bed. Evidently the Bean steals the covers.

In the morning we went right to the service station to address the tire pressure warning light that, along with the icy roads, had me stressed out all the way home the day before. I'd put air in the tires, but it kept coming back on. I've been assured that the tires weren't dangerously low and that those warning lights are more trouble than help. It hasn't come on since, so I'm happy to forget all about it.

We next hit the post office to pick up our mail and notify them to resume delivery (incidentally, if you've got an ongoing home improvement project - and who doesn't? - ask the post office for a change of address packet. Inside is a coupon for 10% off at Lowe's, which can be a fair bit if the project is enormous, as ours tend to be. There, don't say Noted & Blogged never gave you anything), and -- what was this sentence about? Oh yes -- then stopped for lunch at The Bee-Hive Tavern. I can't make up my mind about that place. The food is always good, but sometimes I don't get a particularly friendly vibe there, especially if I have the girls along, which I both understand (lots of kids behave badly in restaurants) and resent (mine don't, and I'd appreciate the benefit of the doubt, at least at the front door).

On to the grocery store, which, of course, has been significantly reconfigured in our absence, and will take longer to get through till I've got the new pattern down. We were almost done when the Bean just completely crashed. Out of the blue she said "Mommy I feel terrible," and had a distinct fever. We left right away to get her to bed.

Rest and ibuprofen had her on the mend, but not well enough to go to school on the 23rd. The Peanut was raring to go, though. The last thing she'd done at her west coast school, on the day before winter break there, was wear pajamas to school and watch The Polar Express. She was ecstatic to learn that on the last day before winter break here, her class would be doing the same. Must be a nationwide 1st grade tradition. So she put on her PJs with cupcakes on them, and off we went.

After school she said she was glad to be with her old friends again, but that "it felt like I was famous, and I didn't really like that." I guess they made a huge fuss of her, because the Peanut seems like someone who would dig fame. Anyway that's much better than having her feel lost in the shuffle. She also reported, in detail, what everyone else had on their pajamas. Kids are really interested in other kids' pajamas. I'm sure her classmates went home and told their parents the Peanut has cupcake pajamas.

All in all, getting settled in has not gone as smoothly as I'd hoped. The snow, the girls being sick (the Peanut has since come down with what ailed the Bean), a couple days in a row of constant sibling bickering that had me fit to lose my ever-lovin' mind, unpacking, laundry, a newly broken dishwasher door, and trouble getting to sleep before 2:00 AM... I'm tired. Really tired. And there is still our postponed Christmas -- not my favorite holiday even under normal circumstances -- to prepare for.

The big picture, though, is all good. We are safe, sound, and content -- and tomorrow, we are leaving the house No Matter What. (Please melt, please melt, please melt.)


Oh! Before you go, because you were doubtless wondering, here is the cheesiness that was in my head yesterday:



Today's earworm is a distinct, a-u-t-omatic improvement I think. I love me some artist-formerly-known-as, and boy, did I play this album a lot in its day. This "video" is just the song playing to a still of the album cover, but you get the song anyhow.

Things I will miss when it's time to head home, part the first

I love my home.  I say that a lot, and I mean it.  A lot.

Happily, I love it here, too; I'm going to miss several things about living here.  Rather than wait for a comprehensive list to spring from my mind to the keyboard and emerge from these hallowed intertubes crafted, complete and suitably comical for your brief amusement, I figure I'll just post stuff as it occurs to me.

Pause, sip, savor... mmm.  Here's what occurs to me first:

I will miss being able to buy wine in grocery stores.  They even sell it at Rite Aid here, fer cryin' out loud.  Not just the cheap stuff, either, although particularly for wine, even very good ones are much less expensive than at home... by half, in some cases.  And cases are what I should be buying, because I'll be back in the land of overpriced "package stores" (= liquor stores.  It's a New England thing) before Paul Giamatti can holler "we are NOT drinking Merlot!"  (What did he mean by that?  I love Merlot.)

A while back there was a ballot question in Massachusetts about allowing supermarkets to sell beer and wine.  I honestly can't remember how I voted on it; I do like the idea for its convenience, but I think in the end I was concerned that losing grocery store shelf space to beer and wine would make for fewer choices in the food aisles, which are largely full of mainstream junk as it is.  The bigger worry for most people (well, maybe for less selfish people) was what effect (not "impact," goddammit) it would have on the folks who own package stores, who wouldn't be able to compete with prices the big grocery store companies could set. 

I don't know how that plays out in places like this.  There are wine shops here practically adjacent to supermarkets that sell wine, and neither seems to be suffering for it, but I really don't know.  I think that at home, unless being able to sell beer and wine would result in the food stores immediately adding square footage, my concern about allocation of shelf space is valid.  Grocery stores here are freakin' huge (about which more later).  Wine shops are nice for getting advice and discovering new things, but to stock up on familiar wines, I want to go where they're least expensive.  Here in my home-away-from-home, that means one-stop shopping.  Bread, milk, eggs, peanut butter, bananas, Pinot Noir, IPA.  Cool. 

The Massachusetts ballot question failed, so for better or worse, package stores will remain for the foreseeable future.  In my home town of some 23,000 people, I can think of at least ten stores that sell wine; probably there are more.  My favorite (I would link to it, but its home page appears to have been designed by used car salesmen) has a good sale on the first and third Thursday of the month.  Even so, I'm in for some sticker shock on my return.

Do you think it's a good idea for supermarkets to be able to sell beer and wine?  How does it work in your neck of the woods? 

house and home

We are renting a three-story Tudor which sits prettily on a small corner lot with a neat front yard and the back garden made private by dense vegetation between neighbors and a fence on the street side. Thick, tall rhododendrons block the front and side windows. There is an enormous white pine, an herb and flower garden, and a hot tub in the back. The driveway is very narrow. Since the dense hedge of sharp-leaved holly alongside it scratched my arms to ribbons on Day 1, I have decided street parking is the way to go.

It's a very different setting than at home, where we have a neighbor on one side, nothing but woods on the other side and behind, and a treed island in the circle between us and the neighbor across. Here, houses surround houses on streets laid out in a tight grid. Some blocks are charming, some shabby. Everywhere has sidewalks and bike lanes, low speed limits and lots of stop signs. (After a couple of weeks here the Bean asked me, "Mommy, are there really stop signs every 15 feet in this town?" I guess I had been grumbling about it.) The density is nice in some ways -- it certainly feels less wasteful than the acre+ subdivision zoning we're used to, and the neighborhoods have histories which if I lived here, I'd want to get to know -- but not so nice, in others. It's noisier, obviously. I really, really like quiet. I savor it, at home, and when I am home again I am going to savor it all the more.

It is strange, living in someone else's house, with all their stuff. We have settled in, but everything still feels not-quite-right, and we won't be here long enough to make it so.

The girls have been given the third floor as their play space; it's cool to play at the tippy top of the house, and by happy coincidence, that room has the fewest antiques. For a bedroom, they are sharing the one opposite ours on the second floor. They're doubled up in a queen bed. I wasn't sure about that at first, because they have very different getting-to-sleep and waking-up styles. At night, the Bean needs quiet, and the Peanut is almost incapable of quiet; you can guess who's the early bird and who's hard to roust. But they felt strongly about having each other close in this unfamiliar place, and with the other bedrooms on different floors from the master, this seemed the best option. It hasn't been entirely trouble-free, but working things out is good for them, and I think they'll treasure the memory of When We Shared A Room Even Though You Sometimes Drove Me Nuts.

We spend a lot of time in the back of the house, an addition to the original structure, which has a sunroom with the TV/DVD player, and a cozy library where we've set up our desks. Well, Mr. Sandyshoes has the proper desk. I am perching at a corner table. I tried out the desks in the other two studies (yes), but the wireless is strongest here and, well, I need those Daily Show clips to stream smoothly, damnit.

I am still not used to the noises this house makes, or the shadows cast by its big dark furniture and the foliage which seems in constant motion outside the windows. It is impossible to move around quietly through the main part of the house; every floorboard makes a deep squeak. In the darkness, I see movement where there is none, and hear sounds I can't identify from rooms with nobody in them. More than once, very late at night, there has been a kind of brushing sound from the main part of the house while I worked in the library. One night, with the girls long in bed, I walked by a hallway and a light was on that hadn't been on earlier. I turned it off. Next time I walked by, it was on again. The next night it happened again. This was, of course, while Mr. Sandyshoes was back in Massachusetts for a week. Were I easily unnerved, I'd have been pretty unnerved.

I miss my shamelessly huge home theater screen and sound system. Movie-watching is so awesome at home.

I miss the Atlantic; but I love the mountains and big national forests that are everywhere here, and the great Pacific right within reach.

I miss my pantry, clean, bright, and stocked to keep us going through the zombie wars if need be. Paradoxically, in order not to accumulate too much stuff here, I feel like I am shopping all the time.

I do not miss having a bathroom right off my kitchen. Having it down the hall is a really, really nice difference.

I have learned that I do not like dark cabinetry, half-ring dresser drawer pulls, or kitchen counters made of tile, but I do like a Tempur-pedic mattress, a gas fireplace, and a good radio in the kitchen. The kitchen radio seems an obvious thing, but I don't have one at home, and now it's on my wish list. Sadly, I have no hope for a Tempur-pedic of my own, as Mr. Sandyshoes hasn't taken to it. (I won't even comment on a gas fireplace. He wants a wood stove, and I hate them, and round and round we go, but we'll end up with a wood stove.)

He has taken to the hot tub, though, and what's not to love about that? Well, besides the electric bill. I'm not sure I could stomach that part of owning one myself, but as the nights get chillier, soaking in the heat under the stars makes not-quite-right feel just fine, for a while.

Waste paper much?

Number of items I bought at Stop & Shop this morning: 10
Length of my receipt: 36.5 inches.

Ridiculous.

In my defense, I've never bought the parsnip chips.

So I stopped at Trader Joe's for extra virgin olive oil and inexpensive hormone-free milk today, and also picked up a bag of Savory Thin Mini crackers that I don't, strictly speaking, need, but which will come in handy.

I noticed that they still don't have soba noodles or chocolate gelato -- are these things gone forever? why? -- and that they newly don't have the fruit roll-up "ends and pieces" I had just started buying for the Bean. Sigh.

Then I came home and saw this:


Excellent.

Fortunately, our local Trader Joe's doesn't have that cart-stopping force field, or whatever it is (what is it, anyone know?) Unfortunately, it also doesn't have wine.

We do have more elderly ladies in bright white sneakers than beautiful Moms in yoga clothes, but that's probably a Cape Cod thing.

What's *wrong* with people?

And by "people," I certainly mean "me," as well.

So yesterday? After the dog shit incident? I went to the closest grocery store to grab some mozzarella for the awesome spinach-and-ricotta stuffed shells I was making for dinner. I thought I already had the cheese in the freezer -- you can do that you know, buy a huge bag of shredded cheese and freeze it. In theory this saves money and time. In practice that's usually true, except there I was on my way to the store at the last minute, so draw your own conclusions -- but either I didn't have any, or the freezer is so unworkably full of other things (mostly overripe bananas waiting to become banana bread) and the mozzarella so deeply buried as to functionally not exist, which is a separate problem, and should probably be a separate post.

I digress.

I went to the closest grocery store, instead of the best grocery store. I only do this under duress, because the closer store is horrid, from its awkward parking lot to its layout and stock and vacant-eyed employees. I parked, ran in. Got the cheese. Headed to the checkout -- express line for me, with my one item.

And I landed right behind a cheater. It's one thing to go through the express line when you have 13 items instead of 12... by mistake, or just trying to squeak by, I guess we've all done it. But to do it with several more than 12 items, most of which are produce? And it's one of the self-check lines where you have to look up the produce items individually and key them in on the touch screen? Which takes forever, especially if you're not really up on how to do it? Sorry, but that's rude. Rude rude rude.

But whatever. I just scrubbed dog poop off my kitchen floor -- I've experienced more than my fair share of rudeness today, and this isn't going to make it any worse.

But she's still a cheater. And a thief! Look! She just scanned through some of those tiny hot peppers, and the register announces "move your GREEN BELL PEPPERS to the belt... TWENTY TWO CENTS." HEY! If those are green bell peppers, lady, I'm Miley Cyrus. And if little hot peppers are less expensive than bell peppers, I'm Billy Ray Cyrus. THIEF!

She scrambles through the rest of her stuff... including a bag of three limes, which she counts as one lime. I can't watch any more. She goes forward to bag her loot, I step up to scan my cheese. "DON'T FORGET TO TAKE YOUR RECEIPT," says the machine to the lady. Back she comes.

"Green bell peppers are getting smaller every day," I say, before I can stop myself. She has the decency to look sheepish and scuttle away.

So why do I include myself in "what's wrong with people?" Because I don't want to be a finger-wagging busybody. I just want to get my cheese and go home. But these things get to me, when I see them. What's the point of playing by the rules if well-dressed middle-aged ladies are shamelessly stealing limes and jalapeno peppers in broad daylight? Who do these people think they are?

Not-death, resurrection, and taxes

"I'm not dead... I'm feeling better... I think I'll go for a walk..."
"You're not fooling anyone, you know."

I am recovering, sort of. Now I just feel like I have a garden-variety cold. Mr. S. has a sore throat but has "decided to fight." He's taking one of every vitamin supplement in the house, and rummaging through the pantry looking for cures. "How about coconut milk, is coconut milk good for a cold?"

Well sure, if it's mixed with crushed ice and pineapple juice and rum, and served in low latitudes. Which is to say, no.

The girls are coughing but not feverish anymore. They need to rest a lot, but forced rest makes 'em cranky. Bean is perkier; she can go to school. Peanut is going to have some serious couch time.

So that's our status.

Easter came and went much the same. None of us was well enough to manage church. Mr. S. colored eggs with the girls on Saturday. Bean was concerned that they might not be feeling well enough for a protracted hunt, so she had him leave the Easter Bunny a note: "Dear Easter Bunny, Please hide the eggs easy. Bean and Peanut are sick." At bedtime she asked him "what does the Easter Bunny look like? Is she like a regular bunny?" Oh! She really does believe there is a bunny that does this stuff. I imagine she will experience some righteous indignation at her eventual enlightenment. Hopefully we can mollify her by letting her keep the Peanut fooled. When Peanut finds out, she's not likely to mind so much.

Also in the spirit of the season, we submitted our tax stuff. Getting it all together occasions a general review of how much we've spent and saved, and whether it's more or less than previous years. Oil and gasoline have eaten up more money despite our stinginess with them. However, we've done better with electricity and some other things. I noticed a huge savings on groceries, accounted for by my shopping less at Stop&Shop and more at Trader Joe's. I'm so glad Trader Joe's came to Cape Cod.

And with that: more chicken soup.

New. Improved?

Stop & Shop has recently installed a "self-scanning" system in most of its Cape Cod stores and probably elsewhere. Not the self-check out, which has been in place for years now, so we consumers are used to the idea of doing stuff for ourselves. This is the next step in fully automated, employee-free shopping: a scan-and-bag-as-you-go, pay-at-the-end system. No humans required.

Here's how it works, in theory: You enter the store, get a cart, scan your card at the stand, pick up a handheld scanner and some bags. Proceed through the store, scanning items as you put them in the bags. Done shopping? Head right to a self checkout, scan an "end of order" barcode posted there, scan your card again, pay the total, return the scanner, and scram, smiling at the time you saved bagging as you shopped, while the rest of the poor consumer schmoes shopped the conventional way and are now stuck staring blankly at the latest cover photos of Brangelina while they wait for a cashier to become available.

Here's how it works, in reality: You enter the store, get a cart, stop just inside the door with said cart while you get out your card. Wait for people ahead of you to pick up their scanners. Scan your card at the kiosk. It doesn't work. Try again. It doesn't work. Try again. It works. Pick up a handheld scanner. Get bags. Empty plastic bags don't stay open in the cart, so you use paper. Open up a few paper bags in the cart. Head to produce section for squash. Select a lovely squash, grown, oddly, without a bar code. How to scan it? Park squash in top of the cart (getting crowded up there with a scanner and a child and a squash), because you don't want to bag it till you've scanned it. Look around for a scale. Find one on the opposite side of the produce section. It doesn't work. Find one that works. Someone is using it. Wait till they're done. Put squash on scale, and key in the PLU code... um, there's no sticker on the squash. Look up the code on the handy chart over the scale... is it under b for butternut, or s for squash? Key in the code. Print out a bar code. Scan the bar code. Put squash in bag. Repeat for every item of produce you need. (I did learn to select all my produce first, pile it on top of the protesting child, then go to the scale to print labels all at once, but still, the idea that this is a timesaver? is just silly.) Proceed through other aisles. When bagging cans, rearrange produce items already bagged, so they won't get squished. Midway through shopping, run out of bags. Go back to scanner stand for more. Resume shopping. When finished, head to a self-check out. Scan card. Scan end of order bar code. Hear buzzing noise. Repeat. Hear buzzing noise. Scan end of order bar code first, then card. It works. Pay the total, return scanner and unused bags, and scram, wondering 1) if you really saved any time, or if you're the schmo, and 2) if Brangelina are still the picture of family bliss.

What I like about it:

• When I'm shopping for just a few things, and without children in tow, and using my giant flat-bottomed tote bag instead of grocery bags... under those circumstances only, it is faster.
• The no-humans required part. More than once a well-intentioned cashier or bagger has said strange things to my children, and/or touched them. This is not OK with me. Frankly, I don't mind not dealing with store employees for that and other reasons, especially in flu season.
• The endless variety of bar codes is kind of fascinating. Yeah, I'm reaching here.
• It's cool to save an extra few dollars for using it, but the "incentive" period is over soon.

What I don't like about it:

• The scanner racks are located just inside the store entrance. They need to be more out of the way so as not to create a big clog of people and carts right where it's least convenient to block the way.
• If I misjudge how many bags I need, even by one, it's a hassle. Too many and I have to return the extras, too few and I have to come back, against traffic flow, to get more, which may be not enough again or too many, so repeat that as needed. I know the store throws away plastic bags that are unused but not untouched. The potential for waste bothers me.
• Picking up and putting down the scanner a thousand times is a pain in the ass. You can't hold the thing all the time and have your hands free, so you pick up an item, pick up the scanner, scan, put the scanner down, put the item in the bag, instead of just picking up an item, putting it in the cart, and moving on.
• The scanner makes a "ka-CHING!" sound at you every few minutes to advertise a product you can get for 50 cents less if you're using the scanner. I don't want anything to make a "ka-CHING!" sound at me every few minutes unless it is going to start spitting out hundred dollar bills. There is no way to turn off the "ka-CHING!" sound.
• I shop the store systematically, end-to-end: produce first, dairy and frozen products last. But I don't want my stuff bagged in that order. If I bag as I go, I have to either rearrange things periodically, or shop for heavy products first, stuff I don't want crushed, last. But neither logic nor the store layout (coincidence, I know) dictates shopping that way. People say it doesn't make sense to load your cart, unload it to pay for things, then load it again. But packing-wise, it makes very good sense. I take things out of the cart and put them on the belt in the order I want them bagged.
• Not my problem, I guess, but this system strikes me as a loss-prevention nightmare. I guess Stop&Shop figures they'll make up the difference in cashiers not hired.

Now, I'm the first to admit I can be reluctant to change. I don't store music on my computer. I am a text message virgin. I even still write checks to pay bills. However, I am not going to become one of those elderly grouches who complains about newfangled this n' that and how everything was better in 1952. I well know that new does sometimes mean better. DVD is way better than VHS. My Dell is way better than my PowerMac. My husband is way better than my ex-husband.

But since my shopping habits are formed -- nay, honed -- deliberately and for good reasons, I'm not eager to change them to make things more convenient for the store. Because this new system is not proving to be more convenient for me, which I'm falsely (and straight-facedly!) told is supposed to be the point.

Which brings me to my last objection: At least in some stores, the scan-it-yourself system is being rather aggressively promoted. If you express any reservations whatever about it, you are either outright pooh-poohed as behind the times, or met with affected surprise -- "really? No one else has said that" with "obviously, you are some kind of dolt" clearly implicit -- which I find insulting, both when it happens to me and when I hear it happening to other customers.

We bond, those other customers and I. We are not falling for it.

And yes, most of them are older folks... sigh.

tidbits

Here's a kind of spirograph thingy. Eh.

In case there was anyone left in the known universe who doesn't think Tom Cruise is crazier than a shithouse rat: be aware he's building a bunker for when the aliens come. Course, maybe he'll have the last laugh. I dunno though, my pantry is preeettty well stocked from that time the canned tomatoes (no salt added, natch) went on that crazy sale, and also from the time I thought Stop&Shop was going to quit stocking cans of Goya low sodium red kidney beans and I bought every single one they had. What can I say -- I have high blood pressure and I make a lot of chili.

Check out the astronomy picture of the day. I'm going to put the link on my sidebar. Cool.

Also: the earworm of the last few days, to go nicely with my headache (which is just abating over the last couple of hours, tyvm), has been that "Tub Thumping" tune by Chumbawumba, or whateverthehell that band was called. I say was, because somehow I can't imagine they're still crankin' out da hits.

More pissing into the wind

(submitted on stopandshop.com, for whatever it's worth)

TO: STOP & SHOP
FROM: SANDY SHOES
RE: GIANT SANTA

Hello -
May I just say that it is WAY TOO SOON to be displaying that stupid giant inflated Santa thing in the grocery store? People say that Christmas commercialization happens earlier and earlier every year, and that is certainly true at Stop & Shop, where you now have Christmas displays up and running within hours of the autumnal equinox.

It's gross. Please stop it.

The poor employee who was stationed in front of it, and taking the brunt of everyone's comments, said that everyone -- EVERYONE -- who came in was disgusted and complaining about it. I know I'm one of just a few who will take the time to write, but you know and I know that HUNDREDS of customers feel the same way. Hello? Do you care?

I would really appreciate Christmas displays being held off until after Thanksgiving. Otherwise it's one more reason I'm doing more and more of my shopping at Trader Joe's. (The other reasons include that they sell eggs for $1.19/doz. Where does Stop & Shop get off charging twice that?)

Thanks for reading.

Were I Queen of the Universe... II

...supermarkets would notify people when a product has been discontinued and they won't be getting any more of it.

A while back, there was a brand of sweet potatoes canned without syrup. They were great, especially for feeding to babies in high chairs. We *loved* them. And one day, poof! they were gone. Had I known this was going to happen, I'd have bought ALL OF THEM, and run around to all the other Stop & Shops buying 'em out there too.

I can't get El Paso "medium" salsa in the large jar any more.

Lately I'm noticing that lower sodium versions of things are disappearing. Goya had some varieties of beans with less salt that aren't being restocked. Nabisco has just discontinued Low Salt Triscuits. Anywhere I can find those things, I'll buy all that are left.

I feel a bit like Elaine Benes with the sponges. Except way more (read: totally) pathetic. In my tedious midlife crisis, I could care less for a convenient OTC contraceptive. Give me a low salt whole grain snack, damnit, or I'll get all angry consumer on yo' ass.