Nashville home to BIG spenders

Woo-eee, do Nashvillians like to spend money!

According to Bundle.com, a site that lets you compare your own spending habits with those around the nation, Nashville ranks seventh on the list of the 25 top-spending cities. Austin, Texas, ranked No. 1. Nashville ranked higher than Miami, San Francisco or L.A.

The list ranks mostly discretionary spending and does not include mortgage, insurance or health insurance. What surprised me is that most of it is spent on eating out.

In Nashville, residents spend a little more than $500 per month dining out. But in my home county, Williamson, residents spend an unbelievable $700 per month eating out.

I can't even imagine. The things we could do with $700 a month...

This might be why Tennessee ranks second in the U.S. in personal bankruptcies.

All this just makes me want to hurry up and write my post, A Case For Cooking.

Getting in the Christmas spirit

I don't shop at The Fresh Market often because I'm not rich or an empty-nester; that seems to be their target market whenever I go in there. I mean, I don't think Fresh Market carries the box of 44 fish sticks, if you know what I mean. But my mom and I strolled through yesterday because Fresh Market always has a great holiday candy display that gets me in the giving mood.

I should have taken a picture of the candy, but I couldn't think once I passed the pastry case in the one photo I did take.

I have to go lie down now.

Keep your head down

In the aftermath of Bloody Monday yesterday, I am posting the best quote I've heard in a long time, as reported by my bro-in-law who works for a major international corporation.

The word around the office is, "Employed is the new promoted."

Puttin' on airs

I adore offbeat shirts and accessories, like this crime scene tape scarf I found on Girlz Lyfe.com.

My problem is that I usually get stuff like this and then, the first time I wear it out into The World, I'm overcome by a fit of self-consciousness and wish that nobody would ask me about my really cool item that just begs to be asked about. I know I've written here before about this old T-shirt I had that read, "Just researching my novel." One time as I stood waiting for the Sam's Club guy to check my receipt on my way out the door, he said, "What's your novel about?" I never thought someone might not buy into the irony of my oh-so-clever T-shirt. And some things just turn out to be stupid when explained.
Once Tim got me these awesome earrings that are miniature levels, the kind you'd find in a toolbox, but I cringe when people lean in to get a closer look. I know, 'Make up your mind, Mrs. Passive-Aggressive Deviationist! Notice me! Don't notice me! Which is it?'

I could just keep getting this stuff and enjoy it without an audience. The truth is, though, it's no fun to be fabulous at home all day. The kids are not adequately impressed by my intermittent eccentricities. I like to wear stuff that has a sense of humor. I just get embarrassed when everybody's not in on the joke.

Fake-tree huggers

This is the year we Burgins bought an artificial Christmas tree.
Our last enchanted experience selecting the perfect tree from the Home Depot outside garden center converted us into fake-tree people.
Nothing against The Home Depot, of course. It is what it is. I knew going in that taking my family there to buy our tree would not resemble that commercial where the Budweiser Clydesdales are pulling a sleigh full of smiling models with hatchets snuggling up to a hot beverage during a holiday tree-seeking expedition.
No, our escapade played more like an episode in the Dr. Phil house -- still with the hatchets, though.
Once Henry overcame his initial embarrassment over his dad’s cold-weather getup, he was surprisingly game. Mason, however, had a social studies deadline bearing down on him, Tim kept counting down the minutes until tip-off in the UT/Memphis basketball game, and Owen spent the entire time boycotting the buggy.
Toddlers can be ruthlessly critical shoppers, anyway. If it wasn’t their idea, nothing will please them. Of nearly every tree Tim picked up, Owen said, “Not that one. We don’t need that one. That one’s not good for us.” Never mind that we never asked him. We just needed a tree big enough for our immense collection of ornaments made from kid footprints.
Oh, how far Tim and I have sunk from those kidless days when we’d go out to dinner, then peruse the selection at what my friend Andrea calls World’s Most Expensive Christmas Trees, Santa’s Trees on Moores Lane. You get what you pay for, though. Each of their trees is fluffed out and spaced so you can walk around to evaluate its shape and fullness.
Back then, I thought nothing of plunking down $90 to $100 for something we’d throw out in less than a month.
We’ve always been staunch proponents of the “live” Christmas tree. “You can’t beat the smell!” we’d say. “Picking one out is a tradition.”
Well, scratch that last one. Somehow we forgot we live on the low-ceiling side of Brentwood and came home with a 9-foot tree we had to cram under our 8-foot ceiling like Will Ferrell in Elf.
While our tree tradition has degenerated into a blindfolded dart throw, recent advancements in fake trees are staggering. A Web site called Balsam Hill offers what they call True Needle technology so lifelike, I’ll have to convince my friends it’s fake! Their pre-lit trees are “thoughtfully strung” to guarantee no wires are showing.
Next year I’ll just be thoughtfully strung out.

The retail experience ain't what it used to be

I only shop when I NEED something. Recently I've asked to try on shoes at major department stores only to have them tell me my feet aren't petite enough. No, just kidding. On two separate occasions, when the sales clerks brought out the shoes, they were obviously worn. I'm talking creases on the upper and visible debris stuck in the soles! Too tacky. Don't they check this stuff? At Kroger I bought a Lean Cuisine Sesame Chicken entree that had one chicken bite in it instead of the usual five. The worst, though, is when I bought a coffeemaker at Best Buy, brought it home and found dried coffee in the bottom of the carafe. When I told the girl in charge of returns, she expressed immediate concern and dismay and was like, "OK."

I'd bet $50 it got restocked later that day.

I will always compliment good service, often in writing. And if something's not up to par, even snack foods without the requisite amount of cream filling, I will let the appropriate people know about it.

Polyester curtains and a redwood deck

Apparently all the same fools who run to Kroger if our local meteorologist mentions snow flurries have decided to cause a gas shortage here in Middle Tennessee. Just here, nowhere else.
No one can explain why, but panicked drivers yesterday caused such a run on gas stations that the paper reported today that 85% were out of gas. OUT. As in "can't get any, now matter how much money you have."
Oh, believe me, it was a crisis here in Brentwood. You know it's bad when moms driving Escalades are sitting 15 cars back in line to get gas, because they don't like to wait for anything. There was no interruption of cell phone service, of course, so those were fired up and in use as the No. 1 boredom-prevention device.
I drive a Ford Explorer, which is like a junior varsity SUV. I justify it by reminding myself that it uses regular gas. But I had let my gas gauge drop below 1/4 and just assumed, like I always do, that I'd fill up after dropping Owen off at preschool Friday. See around here, we're used to getting what we "need" when we need it. So when I pulled into my favorite Mapco, which was eerily not busy, my heart sped up when I saw plastic grocery sacks over all the gas nozzles.
No, no, no, this can't be happening here. Only the teeny tiny country towns actually run out of gas. This Mapco is about 50 yards from Interstate 65 and the biggest mall in the state. I still have to pick up three boys from three different locations and drive to a birthday party at Glow Galaxy! We cannot be OUT OF GAS.
Same story over at the Shell station. Grocery sacks. No gas. No prices on the signs. That's when my "low gas" light came on. I went home and began thinking about hoarding canned goods.
At this point we only had one vehicle that had a couple of gallons in it. To illustrate how our lives were thrown into a tailspin during the Brentwood gas crisis, my husband and the boys RODE BIKES to Owen's soccer game this morning. I, of course, drove the vehicle on fumes because I was bringing the chairs.
On my way there, Tim called my cell phone and whispered, "I just heard someone say the Concord Corner Market has gas and there is no line." I drove straight there and took up spot No. 9 in the newly forming line. Rather than piling up cell phone minutes, I commenced to judging the other people in line in front of me.
"Well, she got done pretty quick," I thought. "She must not really have needed gas. I'M ON FUMES HERE, PEOPLE!" I started thinking it would be a good idea for the store employees to come out and order the lines according to need. If cars have half a tank or more, send them on home. Of course, I assumed I'd be near the front of the line since I was running on FUMES.
My nominations for worst violators of the unwritten gas crisis rules were the woman in the Yukon who kept trying to top off, and the man pulling a trailer that carried a lawn tractor and three five-gallon gas cans. "Oh please, does he really need to MOW today? I'm running on FUMES here, mister, and I'm late for my kid's soccer game."
I mean, what's next? I may actually have to carpool.