Do I need therapy for my therapy?

05 Nov 2011 10 Comments

by Being Jewish in Hawaii in Family, Mothers and Daughters Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I would not describe myself as a shopaholic. I am not that extreme. But I could definitely be considered a shopper. It’s in my jeans.

My mother was totally a shopper. You could probably refer to her as the Queen Bee of shoppers. She gleefully put together a fall, winter and spring wardrobe every season. I think she chose her last residence for its proximity to Chicos, Talbots and Coldwater Creek that were just down the block. The Jewish Community Center was nearby as well.

My sisters and I have definitely inherited her propensity for supporting the economy (not to mention a definite resemblance in the good looks and charm department as well). We got a lot of practice growing up.

I can remember many a childhood evening spent with my mother and sisters at Southern California’s Buena Park Mall. We tried on clothes at the local Sears, J. J. Newberries and smaller clothing shops. We’d always stop half way through our excursion and call my father from the pay phone in the middle of the mall to let him know we were going to be a few more hours.

I think he was happy for the time to himself and the quiet calm in our home on these evenings. Three Gershun girls can make a lot of noise.

These days my oldest sister does most of her buying online. The younger one is more like our mother and a regular at Kohl’s and T.J. Maxx and always happy to take us there when we visit since we do not have those gold mines in the shopping arena in Hawaii.

I fall somewhere in between.

A few years ago I began to refer to it as retail therapy, noticing the  positive emotional payoff after a satisfactory excursion to Pearlridge Mall or Ala Moana Center.

I definitely took that form of therapy to an extreme after a few major life changing incidents like divorcing my first husband or several years later breaking up with my new boyfriend when we were dating before we made up and he became my second husband.

My overwhelming feelings during those difficult times were not assuaged by the purchase of a new pair of shoes or a cute jacket. They required much grander gestures: redecorating or buying moderately expensive jewelry.

Over the past few years I have tempered my shopping habits. The combination of only needing a wardrobe for one season in Hawaii, trying to stick to a budget along with a concerted effort at trying to be satisfied with what I have usually work to keep me from visiting the local stores and malls a bit more than I used to.

However, recently I have been shopping up a storm.

When I told my friend Linda about this and that I had several things to return at Macy’s, she said that she does that a lot too. She referred to it as “Bulimic Shopping.” It totally made sense.

I also got this from my mother and I know that my younger sister does it a lot too. I purchase way more clothes than I need or convince myself that it looks good on me in the fitting room. When I get home, I realize that I was fooling myself and wonder, “What was I thinking?” So I take it back.

Some times I simply find something that I like better and buy it knowing that I can return the other stuff later.

I started to look at my recent shopping patterns and have clearly identified myself as a bulimic shopper.

Binge and purge.

If you saw all of the receipts stuffed in my wallet you might be inclined to think that I am a hoarder!

In my defense I will mention that I recently lost a bunch of weight (25 pounds, thank you very much) and am in need of new clothes. The old ones are two sizes too big. So I deserve a bit of shopping for a stylish wardrobe to hang in my closet and from my now visible hip bones. It’s a reasonable reward.

But I’ve been doing that buy and return thing A LOT!

Perhaps the shopping is also replacing the eating? It certainly takes my mind off of the food. Some times I go so far as to consider it exercise too. If I shop for an hour is it an hour of walking? Do you think I should seek professional help?

However you look at it: genetic propensity, retail therapy, bingeing and purging,  if not taken to the extreme, shopping  can both fill the basic need to be clothed (in a moderately fashionable) way) and be a reasonable form of recreation.

So, thank you mom and sisters and Linda for sharing this habit and its many symptoms. I do believe I will drop the kids off tomorrow at Religious school and hit the mall….just for an hour or so.

Let’s talk about the F word…

01 Nov 2011 6 Comments

by Being Jewish in Hawaii in Family, General, Kvetching Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Every where I go I bump into people who are doing it, on street corners, at the local supermarket, at my kids’ school.

It’s hard to turn around these days and not find somebody asking for money in support of a program or a cause or a trip to the mainland for a championship game. The F word of which I speak has more than four letters. It has 11–FUNDRAISING. But the sound of it is becoming just as distasteful as the vulgar term that usually comes to mind.

I am not unwilling to support a worthy cause. On the contrary. I am an enthusiastic supporter of all causes worthy. I just don’t agree with the  plethora of methods employed to garner my precious support and am not sure that other people’s definitions of worthy match mine.

My husband created an acronym that aptly relates to the title and shares the sentiment. In order to avoid being accused of using profanity, I will spell it out for you: Fundraising Using Children and Kids.

Yesterday I went to the Kapolei Safeway and met a group of cub scouts who were set up next to the entrance. I approached their table without being asked, eager to support an esteemed organization such as theirs. They were selling popcorn. I like popcorn. I was ready to buy. The smallest bag was $10. TEN DOLLARS for a bag of caramel corn? I couldn’t believe it. The one that had nuts was $20. That’s nuts!

That’s what got me thinking about how fundraising has become big business and that too many people besides the actual beneficiary are out there  making money off of my support.

Raise your hand if your kids have had to sell Zippys chili tickets, huli huli chicken tickets or some other kind of tickets for their school or sports team? Then raise your hand again if you ended up buying those tickets, picked up the said chili or chicken and applied it to the next potluck invitation you received.

Or maybe you paid for an entire box of  48 bags of M & M’s because you and your kids ate them over the course of the past month.

I would rather write a check than sell all of those tickets and candy. It is cheaper, so much easier and I can write it off as a charitable donation.

I would also rather support a car wash. That seems like good value for my money and reasonable return for effort.

I wonder how much money each of us spends buying snacks and candy and magazines from every kid that comes knocking on our wallets. What if I applied the money that I spend on your kids to my own and you kept yours to yourself and we all stopped asking everybody to support each other and simply took care of ourselves?

At least these young peddlers  are selling something. I have ranted before about the groups who stand on street corners with scoop nets asking me to drop some cash from my car window so that they can travel to the mainland for “The most amazing opportunity ever.” Usually it is a sports team that has qualified for a national tournament. It looks like begging to me: Children standing on a street corner asking strangers for money so that they can go on a trip to play a game. I say, if you can’t afford it, don’t go.

I also think that these leagues should provide a viable way for their teams to garner support. Find sponsors for these kids. Apply for grants. Give them jobs.

We have come to think of so many luxuries and privileges as necessities for our children and then ask other people to spend money in support of them. Let them concentrate on school and local activities, earn a scholarship for college, get a job and then travel to their heart’s delight.

Please do not misunderstand me. I know that there are many children in our community and beyond that cannot afford even the basic necessities. I am not talking about them. I am the first in line to organize a school supplies drive for these students and to donate money to organizations that feed and clothe and house them. I also think that they deserve the opportunity to participate in extra curricular activities and sports. I am willing to make a donation in support of that too.

I also know only too well that our public schools are under funded and in dire need of support. That is an entirely different blog post.

I just think that our community fundraising efforts have evolved in a  direction that ends up using our children as a means to a somewhat capitalist end and in the process we end up selling ourselves and them a little bit short.