Apostrophe Atrocity

A new pizza parlor opened up on my side of town.  It's called Blaze Pizza, and it serves the best personal pan pizzas around.  I love it.  I am bothered, though, that their promotional materials all advertised "Fast Fire'd Pizza."  Why is there an apostrophe in "Fire'd"?  It really bothers me.  It shouldn't be there.  This weekend I asked some employees about it, but they didn't have a solution.  I decided to write to corporate and see what they had to say.  Here is the e-mail I sent this afternoon:

Hello,

I'm writing because I have a question about your marketing materials.  I notice that they all say that your pizza is "fast fire'd."  I'm confused by the presence of the potentially superfluous apostrophe.  The word "fired" is usually spelled without an apostrophe, so I'm wondering why one is utilized in this case.

You're probably thinking to yourself, "Why does this girl have nothing better to do than question our apostrophes?  Why doesn't she just shut up and enjoy our wonderful 'fast fire'd' pizza in peace?"  I do, Blaze. I do.  I love your pizza.  I'll patronize your restaurant with or without erroneous punctuation.  Your pizza is too delicious to miss.  My conscience forces me to ask, though, because I'm an English teacher.  I'm always telling my students to be on the lookout for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.  Errors lurk in every corner of our society.  I would be hypocritical if wasn't on the lookout as well.  

The way I see it, grammar and punctuation are huge issues in the American mainstream population.  Due to various educational failures, many citizens walk the streets without any knowledge of proper English.  It's appalling.  Therefore the main request of this e-mail is an educational one.  If the apostrophe has a legitimate grammatical reason for appearing in your promotional materials, please explain it to me so that I can be more knowledgeable in instructing my children about punctuation.  If it's not supposed to be there, can you please remove it so that we are not perpetuating apostrophe misuse to our impressionable youth?

I asked the staff at my local Blaze pizza about this issue, and none of them were able to help me.  One of them is a college-level English student, and she too was perplexed.  Please help me solve the mystery, and I will pass my answer along to the employees at my local store as well.  Thank you!

Christine Webb

I don't know how far I'm willing to go with this grammar crusade.  After all, Krispie Kreme has horrific spelling, yet I still eat their doughnuts.  For some reason, punctuation errors seem worse than spelling ones.  Especially since the spelling error at Krispie Kreme is obviously intentional.  The error at Blaze is baffling.  I wish they would fix it... it hurts my eyes.  I will have to update later with a response if I get one!

Curtain Conundrum

It's weird to move.  Your old home isn't your home anymore, but your new home doesn't really feel like home yet.  You're an aimless drifter with no real place in the world, even though the name on the deed says the house is yours.  Home is where you feel comfortable, where you know what to expect, and where you spend most of your time. Unfortunately, my current home isn't my old rental house, and it isn't my beautiful new house either.  My home right now is the curtain aisle.

Which curtain aisle, you may ask?  Oh, any one really.  Kohls, Wal-Mart, Meijer, Target, Hobby Lobby...you name it.  If the store has a curtain aisle, I've been living in it.  I've spent probably around $500-$600 (and way too many hours) on curtains in the past week.  Keep in mind that I've gotten most of the money back because I keep returning every curtain I buy, but my life is basically a revolving door of go-buy-more-curtains and no-wait-I-hate-them-take-them-back.  I don't know why I can't just find some curtains that I like, but I can't.  I keep looking for better ones.  None of them feel "right."  If you ask me how a "right" feeling curtain feels, I can't tell you that.  I can only tell you that I'm hoping I'll know when I feel it.

My curtain aisle home is great.  No matter which store I visit, they're all the same.  Every aisle has the suave sample curtains to touch and inspect - are they too thin?  Too thick?  Too wild?  Too bland?  Then, when you think you might have found "the one," you have to rummage through all of the packs of curtains on the walls to find the one that matches the sample you like.  Back when I was a curtain rookie, this was a difficult task.  Now that I'm a seasoned pro, I understand that the curtain I want might be halfway across the aisle from the corresponding sample.  I've developed an eagle eye for matching curtains to samples, just not for matching curtains to a living room.  Do I want cheap curtains or expensive ones that insulate my room by giving "thermal protection"?  Do I want light blocking curtains or breezy sheer ones?  I don't know!  I need help!

As I bought my seventh set of curtains today (!!!), I realized that this is a problem.  I gave myself a mental newsflash: No one even cares about curtains!  It's not like someone is going to come into my home and say, "Wow, Christine, you have such a beautiful house!  It's just lovely!  It's simply....oh.....uh....sorry, those heinous curtains ruined the whole thing.  I hate it now."  I don't recall ever judging someone based on their curtains.  Come to think of it, I couldn't tell you what the curtains look like in any of my friends' houses.  I don't even remember what the curtains looked like at my parents' house when I was growing up.  Why am I wasting so much time and energy on a veritably invisible home good?!?

I need an intervention.  Is there rehab for this?  A support group?  "Hi, I'm Christine, and I can't stop buying curtains."

"Hi, Christine."

A few days ago I finally found curtains for my dining room that I really liked.  I thought, "YES! Finally!  A curtain dilemma has gone my way!"  Then when Rex got home, I pointed out our new curtains.  He raised his eyebrows and said the worst thing ever: "Those ones? Are you sure those are the ones you actually want?"

*cue immediate spiral into self-doubt and curtainy insecurity*

Ahhhh!  I immediately started to do the natural girly dumb thing to do: "You hate them.  Why do you hate them?  What's wrong with them?  I like them!"  Rex quickly backtracked and assured me that he doesn't hate the curtains, he just wanted to make sure that I liked them.  Hmmmm...I secretly think that he might hate them, but you know what?  I'm still juggling five sets of curtains that are sitting in my living room.  I don't have time to do this for my dining room too.  The curtains are staying unless Rex makes a formal complaint.  The truth of the matter is that I don't think Rex will really notice them anyway.  I could probably put Sponge Bob curtains in our bedroom, and he wouldn't notice unless I (misguidedly) asked him for his opinion.  Note to all men: when women ask your design advice on something you don't actually care about, just tell her that whatever she's asking your advice about looks AWESOME!  She's asking you because she needs to hear those words.  She probably asked the dog earlier and interpreted his tail wagging as tacit approval, but she really needs it verbalized.

Not that I actually asked the dog about the curtains.

Because that would be ridiculous.

Right?

*nervous laughter*

It's like I took all of the anxiety I had over buying a house, and I've now channeled it into finding the perfect curtains.  This is seriously messed up.  Am I stressed about wall art? Tablecloths? Furniture?  Of course not.  But curtains?  AHHHH!  I shall never find the right ones!

That's it, I'm buying Sponge Bob curtains and calling it a day.