50% off bath linens

Black Friday

While my wife makes her way through the stores today to cash in one some deals we’d otherwise not take advantage of (for example, it’s a great day to get your new linens and bath towels – while everyone is fighting over the latest toy, these sorts of mundane household items are often on sale at deep discounts, and so we use Black Friday to do that kind of shopping)., I’ll be watching our kids for about 8 hours today.

By the way we measure economic activity in this country, my watching of the kids is a bad thing! Since no exchange takes place, then the value of the “child care” that I deliver on this Friday never can be calculated and added into GDP statistics. There is no reason an effort to do so could not, in principle, be attempted. The point of measuring GDP is to add up the total value of all goods and services produced within the borders of the United States, regardless of who does the producing. When I deliver child care services, or attend to a skinned-knee, or brew my own coffee, or clean my own gutters (not fun when you are scared of heights), and mow my own lawn, each and every one of these actions constitutes valuable goods and services produced. But those values (and indeed the quality of the output from those vis-a-vis trading for it) are not included.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving y’all.  It’s been a busy couple of days here and I’m full – both in my heart and in my tummy.  We had my father-in-law, sister-in-law and nephew over at lunch time today for our little feast and some play time for the boys.  The evening portion of the festivities usually takes place at one of my husband’s aunt’s house, however she has lots of feline friends and I have asthma and cannot attend.  It works out for everyone, though, and my husband is a dream.  He takes the little ones over and I have a few hours of mommy time at home.

Note: I have a standing invitation to my brother’s house to hang out with their crew, I’m not left hanging by myself on Thanksgiving.  I continually thank them for their gracious offer, but declined this year to run around like a mad woman while the kids were gone.

Last year my husband was all enthusiastic about me going out to do something – a movie, a manicure, some shopping….Um, honey?  It’s Thanksgiving.  Nothing’s open.  Tonight, I did the next best thing.  DISHES!  I tackled all of our holiday dishes – including a lot of pots and pans from this morning.  All is clean and dry and put away.  I laundered all of the linens, disposed of all the pumpkins we had left, packed away the Thanksgiving decor and brought down a half dozen boxes or so of Christmas goodies.  I wrapped colorful lights up and down our stair railing and bannister and hung some giant ornaments in one of our trees outside.  All this productivity and I still squeezed in a bubble bath and some dinner.  GO ME!