Do the Easy Ones First

October 7th, 2009

Well, so far it’s been only about half a year without shopping.*

*The deal was that I wouldn’t shop for clothes, shoes, or handbags from about the end of April to about the end of April.  Technically, I’ve obeyed the maxim.  I did exercise my replacement clause recently when I purchased a couple of bathing suits.  The two that I have been wearing all summer–one of them is at least six or seven years old, the other about five or so, are on their last legs.   The first one’s elastic has gotten to a point where I fear it will break while I am wearing it, which would spell disaster and possible arrest, since it’s the bottom part that’s in perilous condition.  The other has a bandeau top and the top edge is starting to roll down, which is unsightly and risks exposure.  Not that I haven’t been there before, but it’s no good for actual swimming in the ocean, which is frustrating.  So, because it’s the end of the season and the few stores that still have bathing suits have them super cheap, I went ahead on Mom’s advice and hit up the Dillard’s.  I got two bathing suits for about $50; one of them, I got two different tops for.  The first one was normally $96, and the other would have been about $190 for all three pieces.  I couldn’t see waiting until next year and then getting one suit for twice what I got these two for.  Photos:

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I also have to admit that although I haven’t bought clothes of late, I have still been using shopping as my therapy when I am depressed or cranked up to eleven from my extremely stressful job.  I bought a framed poster and a lamp for my living room, each $20, and orange Buddha head, also for the living room, since I had a sconce thingy with nothing on it.  I must say the lamp was a near necessity, since I only had one source of light in here.  Here’s the stuff:

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I don’t really care about Jimi Hendrix, but it goes with my India flavored living room.  It solved a design problem, allowing me to move what used to hang in that spot into the dining area, which previously had nothing at all on the walls.

That’s the thing I want to say about shopping, and why it works as therapy–it provides a concrete solution to an identifiable problem.  You need skinny jeans to wear with your new plaid shirt?  You want short cowboy boots to wear with your cutoff denim skirt?  Those things can be relatively easily solved, and when you’re finished, you have a small sense of accomplishment and something new to wear that you feel good in.  It’s nothing at all like “Am I in the right line of work?” or “How do I stop loving someone who ins’t available to me?”

If I could solve those problems with my credit card, no matter the price, I’d swipe it and sign.

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Further Abstinence: Cellf Denial

May 12th, 2009

I am starting another fast, but I don’t think I will describe it here in intense detail.  Okay, I guess I will.

I am turning off my cell phone, probably from now until next Monday, provided I can check voicemails from somewhere.  Do they still make payphones?  How much do they cost?  Is it $0.44 now, or is that stamps?  (I buy stamps one at a time since I mail like three envelopes a year.  Who cares what the postage rate is?  I’d pay a dollar to mail things if they would just stop cramming my mailbox full of garbage every three days.  Damn that makes me mad.  It’s ridiculous, it’s theater of the absurd:  The mailman stays employed by bringing me something I didn’t ask for and don’t want, then I shuffle it up the stairs, shake my bills out of it, and put it in the trash.  A few days go by, then I carry it downstairs covered in coffee grounds and chicken fat and banana peels at arm’s lenth.   Each month, I pay the garbage men to take it away.  Corporations not only have the right to harrass me by mail through the federal post, but I also subsidize them to do it?  That’s beyond asinine.)

Anyway, I am not sending texts, I am not reading texts, and I am not returning calls.  If you want to speak to me, send me an email, or drop a comment on this post.  Message me on FaceBook, send a pigeon, send one of your kids to my house to ask for a pat of butter or whatever, stop by, but don’t bother calling unless you’re going to leave a message, and don’t send a text because I’m not going to read it.  I have one of those curly tailed, hard plastic affairs in my office, old school.  It has letters, but it does not text (why?), and anyway I can just use that.

They say cold turkey is the way to go for these things.  I have very, very little self control or will power, so if I just have the phone OFF, period, that might work better than, “How about you just don’t text him, mmK?”  There are persons who think otherwise of my capacity for restraint that think they know me well, but I’d say I’m the authority on that one, don’t you think?  I’ve known me longer.  If the thought of a turkey sandwich crosses my mind at two am, I won’t be able to rest until I make it and eat it.  I don’t even have to be hungry!  Another more harmful compulsion might begin with “Oh!  My glass is empty!”

Something else I seem compelled to do send texts where they fall on deaf eyes and do nothing but lay waste to whatever progress the recipient and I have made extricating ourselves from the mess we made of each other.  I’m all like, “ButIjustwanna–,,  Ineedasaythat–,,,  Can’tyoujust…?”  Um, no.   Oops, I wasn’t going to lay it out like that.  Well, there’s an example of mygift of unceasing blather and nearly shameless self-disclosure.  I can keep other peoples’ secrets just fine, nearly 100% of the time, except this one teeny thing I accidentally blabbed at work, but technically what I promised was that it wouldn’t leave the room and I blabbed in the same room I heard it in, at least I did after I blabbed it somewhere else first, but anyway I’m usually good about OPB, though I am prone to tell anyone who will listen all about my own.

So yeah, I need to stop.  It’s been clearly demonstrated that I was caught, tried, convicted, and condemned without having been able to utter a word in my own defense that was even entered into the court record.  No proposal that things may not be as presented by the prosecution, no appeal, no plea for mercy, no character reference, no expert witness, has ever been seriously entertained by this judge, and there’ve been far more innocent defendants than I who weren’t able to sway him from the mandatory sentence of life in solitary confinement.

It’s time to hang it up and quit trying.

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