Generically Speaking

I was looking on a website for a television station that purported to offer shoppers real help in saving money buying their groceries. Some well intentioned, even-toned, highly made up beauty on the 5 p.m. broadcast reports gushes all about how you can save 'real money' buying generic brands. Well, duh.

Without her special skills and help, I might have been forced to pay higher prices because I am obviously too stupid to do otherwise. Thanks to her timely report, lo these 25 years into married life, I am now free to save my husband's money which he labors tirelessly to provide and to serve nutritious meals for mere pennies.

By the way, I have a revelation for you: generic milk prices are lower than name brand. I can hear you now, "DO WHAT???"

And the weeping now begins for those who have paid full price (or more) for milk in fancy cartons or from special organic dairy operations where the cows sleep on heated water beds to reduce that pesky flatulence from their all vegetable diet. Again, the leap of logic here is staggering!

It's not like there really are 'special cows' out in the field that can only be milked into the generically labeled bottles! Can you imagine the frustration of the farmer trying to grow the generic grasses and hay that are required? What if he plants the name brand seed and feeds the crop to the generic cows? Will there be a mutiny? Are the cows savvy enough to know they have been duped into eating 'the good stuff'? And if they know, is there some conspiracy to keep silent and simply offer generic milk from a couple of udders and high grade milk on the other side? MAYHEM!!!

Milk is milk. Grades may differ based on fat content, but they all come from a processing plant to a bottling facility that slaps labels onto the carton depending upon who is paying to have their milk made that day. We are paying the difference because we, as consumers, have been duped into believing that one brand is so staggeringly different from another that it is worth more of our money to bring it home.

Have you seen the price of good old fashioned toilet paper? While I am a total advocate of its use and the need for sufficient comfort on delicate areas of the body, I can't see paying the premium price for something that just goes down the toilet. It's not like you can wash and reuse it and besides - Ewww, GROSS!! So, the job here is to strike the proper balance between comfort and discomfort relative to anatomy and wallets. We have to decide the comfort level we can adjust to while keeping enough money in our checking account to pay for things like bread, milk and eggs.

The same can be said about paper towels. Since they aren't really sturdy enough to rinse and reuse (no matter what the slickly produced Madison Avenue advertisement shows) we shouldn't feel like we have to bankrupt the family budget to buy the name brand only. There are some perfectly acceptable alternatives and, by the way, did people forget how to use rags to clean stuff up and WASH THEM??? We keep a basket full of assorted washcloths and rags to wash and reuse all off the time. The really stained ones move from the house to the storage building for a new life as auto detailing rags before being turned into ashes.

While grocery cereal is another item that requires a leap in logic regarding prices, I must confess that for years I have been putting generic cereals in the plastic stay-fresh keepers boldly labeled with the NAME BRANDS. At first, there was some resistance to the store brands, but when I indicated that they would eat the food placed in front of them or starve, resistance became futile.Call me Queen of the Borg.

There is so little difference between most store brand generic labels and the name brand ultra priced items that it is a no-brainer to save the money and skip the name brand. However, now that full disclosure has become an amendment right, I must say there are some generics that most certainly are not worth the time of day nor the agony of purchase when you know they are just plain awful.The trick here is to buy one of the generic and give it a road test. If no one notices any appreciable difference, it's time to save the money. However, if said generic produces projectile vomiting or a sudden urge to make a home atop the chandelier, then you'd best stick to the trusted, if expensive, name brand.

Just remember that when you take your shopping buggy around the store the next time. There are some bargains and some surprises and it's up to you to figure out which is which.

The reality of generic purchasing was well known to our forebears who knew that they would save money by shopping local and pinching their pennies for the rainy days ahead. They used flour sacks for dresses and you couldn't find a single runway model who would deign to wear something that once held all purpose flour these days. It needs a big name label to count for them.

Sadly, I think that is the root cause of most of our problems. We have forgotten that name brands don't really mean as much as their manufacturers would like them to mean. They want us to believe that their processed and expensive food is somehow better and more nutritious than anything offered for a lesser price or at the local farmer's market.

The truth is, whether we purchase store brand or name brand, we still have to pay the bill at the end of the shopping trip. The difference is just how much money you are willing to part with, generically speaking.

Another day, another strange thread

Ideas aren't the problem.

Knowing what to do with them, if anything, is.

Sometimes the stories fly through my thoughts so fast that I can't possibly write them down. Like the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", they fly by so fast and, lacking a tricorder to record and save the information for later retrieval, they are usually lost.

I console myself by saying that maybe those flashes of 'inspiration' were meant only for me as a gift from God telling me that He is mindful of me. I am not sure that is true, but not having a complete playbook for this life I am living, it will have to do until greater knowledge and understanding distill upon me through my life experiences.

Other times, I take the ideas that come and put them down in terms that for me are so vivid, I can taste the cotton candy and feel the cool breeze across my skin all these years and miles later.

I see in Technicolor. I don't know if that is normal for anyone else since I don't inhabit either their life or their body. But for me, that is both a blessing and a curse. When my dreams and thoughts are pleasant, that sensation of seeing things in real world hues is amazing. But when the nightmares come, that wonderful palate of color and brilliance takes on an ugly quality that renders the scary into the terrifying in simple brushstrokes of fear.

Sometimes, I can recall enough detail to write it down and scare someone else. Other times, the horrible images are my own private horror movie that replays in my head until I pray it away.

Do others share that same relationship with daylight and darkness within the world of their dreams? I don't know.

But I do know that there are times that what I see is more than just a dream.