My Darlings

It's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and I am all mushy and squishy with thoughts of tomorrow. I am not cooking this year, so it will be a relaxing day for me. I am looking so forward to it. I decided to write you a letter instead of an article this week. You all are so busy with stuffing turkeys and eating and shopping, you wouldn't even have time to read it.

It's that most wonderful time of the year when Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the bookends to 4 great days of shopping for crazy good bargains. I used to be out there at O Dark Thirty with all the other crazies, but I am an online girl for the most part these days. I never want these love letters of mine to sound like a commercial for LoveFifi.com, but I will say we have some great stuff at some stupid cheap prices. I guarantee you will have fun when you are not at the mall shopping for bargain undies IN your undies. Good times!

I wish you everything wonderful tomorrow and always. We should always give thanks for our gifts in this life and there is nothing that brings that home more than being with family and friends. It doesn't get better than being with the ones you love. I will get up when I wake up which is a luxury in itself. I will brew a perfect cup of coffee and sit with my doggies and watch the Macy's parade. It's corny, but it's tradition... and I love tradition.

We are going to a fine restaurant. We started doing this about 5 years ago and it has been great. It's not home cooking, but it is really good. There is no getting up at dawn to stuff a bird, no worries about timing all the side dishes perfectly, no dishes and no mess. There are also no leftovers, so I always cook a turkey breast and dressing at home. I don't buy a pumpkin pie for my house because that would not be wise. I would eat it all and never confess. Only my hips and bottom would tell the truth. I will buy the cranberry sauce with the whole cranberries in it. Nobody else in my family likes that one so now I can be a rebel and NOT buy the jellied one. So I will have turkey sandwiches, which is the best part of Thanksgiving food, if you ask me.

Have a beautiful holiday and get your shopping done. I will be decorating this weekend. I like my Christmas wonderland to be up for as long as possible. It takes me forever to put it up and it takes me even longer to take it all down. It really shoots the hell out of February.

Before I say goodbye for now, I think I will tell you a big secret about me. I may have mentioned it before, but it is certainly in keeping with the spirit of this holiday. When I was 6, my first grade teacher asked each one of us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Without hesitation, I answered "a pilgrim". My teacher smiled and never let on that my dream was pretty impossible. She then asked me why. Again, with great conviction, I told her it was because I liked their outfits with the stiff hats and the big buckles on their shoes. Isn't it ironic that I wanted to wear clothes that covered every inch of skin, yet I ended up designing and selling apparel that doesn't cover up much? My sister has always cracked up every time she thinks about me wanting to be a pilgrim. OK, so I wasn't a big thinker at 6 and it never occurred to me that this wasn't a real job. Still, my sister finds my early aspirations hilarious. This from a woman who wanted to be a mermaid.

A Loss Of Words

My panties are in a huge knot right now. Of course they are LoveFifi.com panties and they will be like new again after I have my say.

Here goes. I met a man at a friend's dinner party. He is attractive, accomplished, very well spoken and unmarried. We talked the evening away and there was truly a connection. It was nice. He asked for my phone number and email address and I obliged. I was surprised at myself. I have mentioned before that I loathe dating, especially that first one. I find going to my accountant for my yearly tax appointment more enjoyable than most first dates. But since the dinner party kind of got all that out of the way, I threw caution to the wind and gave him my contact information. After all, a handsome man with such impressive credentials, a sense of humor, the ability to speak knowledgeably on so many subjects may be the treasure of a man I had given up trying to find.

The next day I received a text message from Mr. Fabulous that said. "How r u? IMHO last night was GR8! I will call u tonight. xoxo PQ". I stared at this damn text in complete disbelief. How could so few words say so much about a person? "How r u?" Really? He is so busy he doesn't have time to write "are you". If he doesn't have time for four extra letters, could he have time for me? Now IMHO baffled me completely. It looked like some new medical insurance category like a PPO or an HMO, but that didn't make sense. Thank goodness for the Internet. I soon found out that it stood for "in my humble opinion" in texting-speak. I got the "last night was GREAT" part without looking anything else up. And he finished up his message by flattering my existence once again by referring to me as "u".

Did some 14-year-old skate boarder kidnap my my articulate and successful new friend, Peter Quigley, and is now writing to me in his stead as some kind of sick prank? This guy earned an MBA and owns a successful consulting firm. He obviously enjoyed my company because he stuck to me like glue and wrote me the very next morning. But this mish-mash of goofy acronyms and abbreviated words left me disappointed and completely bewildered as to how to write back.

I like the English language. I like communication. I don't want to have to refer to some new age cyber glossary to try to figure out what he is saying. I realize that he thinks it's young and techie cute to speak in shortcuts and acronyms, but it really put me off. There are enough acronyms already in our language and for the most part, they make sense. They were created for efficiency not laziness.

Acronyms like these below were totally necessary. Too scientific to remember the whole thing!

SCUBA Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

RADAR Radio Detection and Ranging

LASER Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation

JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group

ZIP (Code) Zone Improvement Plan

Acronyms like these are forgivable because they get the point across quickly and are succinct. Very efficient, I would say.

DIY Do It Yourself

ETA Estimated Time of Arrival

AKA Also Known As

TBA To Be Announced

ATM Automated Teller Machine

RIP Rest In Peace

I am not offended when someone asks for my ID, or wants to know if they can use my PC or complains that their car keys are MIA. All are acceptable modern additions to our language. But when some man tries to woo me in a short text by making it even shorter and requires me to decode what he has to say, it makes me crazy. This guy graduated from HARVARD with honors. It so distresses me that people don't realize that taking these shortcuts is not flattering to the person on the receiving end, unless you are a teenager. I am not a teenager and I am going to stick to my infatuation with whole words and complete sentences. And I would also like to mention that many school districts in this country are no longer teach cursive writing. No more handwriting; you heard me.

There is no rhyme or reason to this epidemic of whittling down perfectly easy phrases to type. OK, I can live with LOL. It's cute enough to stay. But if you want to thank me very much, please refrain from typing TYVM. I can guarantee that I put effort into what I did for you and I deserve better. If I made your day better, please don't text me YMMD. It wouldn't feel as good as you spelling it all out.

So what am I going to tell the man who so romantically refers to me as "u"? I wrote to him in a way that is the complete opposite of what he wrote to me. I emailed him for one thing. I started with "Hello Peter". I channeled my Emily Bronte self and wrote lovely, ladylike complete sentences without an acronym to be found. I signed it "Warmest Regards, Fifi"

I've gotten nothing back so far, but my guess is that he either won't "get" it or won't like it. Whichever is fine with me. If he replies to my email and sounds like the man that I met at my friends house, then there may be something there between us. If he sends me another one of those "too cool for school" abbreviations-from-Hell texts, I probably will not ever reply.

Whew... My panties are officially unknotted and I am breathing normally once again.

P.S. If I am ever lost and you are on my search team, if you see this from the air, please disregard everything I just said.

Nap Dance

I just returned from the most fabulous road trip vacation. My sister did all the driving and I was the navigator. It was all so perfect, yet I returned home completely exhausted. One of these days I am going to go away and do nothing but relax, contemplate my navel and return home revived and refreshed. I was pretty stymied as to why I was so dog tired when I got home. I honestly did nothing but have a wonderful time. We got up when we wanted and we did our sightseeing at our own pace. No pressure. No place we had to be at a certain time. Our biggest decisions each day were what we felt like eating and what we felt like seeing. Life was aimless and mindless and delicious, yet we came back feeling like our Cousin Clint’s 18-wheeler had run us over. We saw him and his lovely wife, Millie, on our trip and it was the best. Clint is an avid reader of my articles and I am so grateful to him for his love and loyalty. It feels so good to have a fan even if he is a relative. He doesn't have to read this stuff at all and he does!

Anyway, Sister and I returned on a Friday and even though I had fully intended to unpack, do laundry, catch up with the mail and try to explain my absence to my traumatized dogs and give them quality time, I only got the latter accomplished. It was then that I realized why I was so freaking tired. I had gone nearly 2 weeks without a single nap. Yes, I nap. When I got divorced and started my life as a single woman, I discovered the true bliss of napping. On a typical Saturday I would rise early, get my chores and errands done and when I arrived back home in the early afternoon, there were these two furry babies waiting at the back door for me. They had their "where in the hell have you been?" sad faces going on. I learned a long time ago that the best way for me to make it up to them for being gone for 4 hours is to head for the bedroom for cuddling time. I would fall off to sleep and they would guard me and keep the flying monkeys away. It was heaven and when I awoke in the late afternoon, I was a new Fifi. I could hit the ground running and actually have a night life. What a revelation this was. What a life changer! Before this cathartic moment, my last nap was on a mini cot in Mrs. Gordon's kindergarten class. Funny how something that used to seem like punishment when I was 5 is a guilty pleasure as a grown up. I have to thank Twinkie and Beau for showing me the way.

If there was a Pro-napping Movement, I'd be at the front of the parade. This habit has completely changed this girl and made it very clear that I need my naps, even on vacation. We had fun non-stop on our trip, but I didn't get one nap in along the way. I couldn't doze while Sister was driving; that wouldn't be fair and plus... I had a job to do. I was the navigator, the DJ and the one in charge of opening the Cheese Doodles. And if I WERE to fall asleep, my sister would have nudged me and told me that it was OK because she was planning on taking a nap too... without stopping the car. It's kind of our little joke.

The practice of napping isn't just for babies and geezers anymore. Presidents of the United States and captains of industry have long ducked out into private quarters for a mid-day nap; they just fancied it up by calling it a POWER NAP. I must admit that when I plan to stay late at LoveFifi.com, I sometimes sneak off to my private Fifi cave and grab a little power nap. The best part is that I have fantastic support from some of the most important members of my company. See Below.

Branching Out

For the last 10 days I have had the luxury of sitting in the passenger seat of a very fancy SUV and watching the world go by. My sister did all the driving from Atlanta to Cleveland, where we arrived a few hours ago. We took our time along the way and stopped wherever we felt like stopping. Our route took us through two national parks, miles of pastoral scenery, alongside placid lakes and rushing rivers. I saw a million postcard-worthy views of this beautiful country. I had time to get lost in my thoughts and come down from a life at home that is wonderful, but often crazy busy and jam-packed with stress. Every day has been both an adventure and a dream. The whole trip was planned out perfectly so all we had to do was show up to our next destination and enjoy the sights in between. We shopped, we antiqued, we dined at local eateries and we took in the points of interest at our own pace.

If all that wasn't blissful enough, sister and I got lots of time together in the car to talk. Between the oohs and aahs of appreciation for the exquisite scenery, we talked and planned and even schemed a bit. We kept the CD player playing our favorite songs and we snacked on goodies we don't indulge in often. Skittles never tasted so good. We got up in the morning whenever we woke up. No alarms, no wake up calls. We followed our whims and did what we felt like doing. After over a week of living like this I can truthfully say that being irresponsible is highly underrated.

This is a trip I will never forget for many reasons. I think my brain and my body have finally learned to truly relax. Sitting there and appreciating the wonders of nature while traveling down the road with no demands on my time has been so good for me. All I had to do was suck in all the beauty of my surroundings and let my mind run with it. And that's just what I did.

From the moment that we hit the road, I have marveled at the trees. It's fall, so the trees along the way were particularly spectacular. The more trees I saw, the more I thought about them. No matter where we traveled, the trees were amazing. I thought about how long it took them to grow to be so tall and grand. I thought about the significance of trees in our lives. They shade us from the heat, they give texture and beauty to every landscape, they make a brilliant playground for kids and squirrels and their trunks provide a permanent monument for lovers carving their words of undying love.

This trip has opened up these green eyes to so much and I am so grateful for the experience. I have even seen the true meaning of what Brenda Bettencourt wrote in huge writing on the first page of my high school yearbook. I was a little insulted at the time but now realize what a fantastic compliment she gave me.

"Remember the mighty oak tree was once a nut like you."

These words are now music to my ears. Thank you Brenda for likening me to something so awesome.