This
morning Meme was reading Ellen’s book, a woman so well known Meme says she
doesn’t even need a last name; not many people like that in this world …
Madonna, Cher, Kiss (oh, wait, I don’t think Kiss is a person’s name) Anyway, I’m way off the path!
She says Ellen writes as if she is sitting
there talking with you, almost a stream of consciousness, and I was thinking I
usually write that way; words just seem to spill out of me randomly. Anyway, Ellen was writing something about
shopping and somehow that got me thinking.
I
just don’t “get” shopping; I guess you’re either a shopper or you’re not. I don’t see what’s fun about it at all, but
Meme loves it. She says it’s hard to
shop in bad economic times because you gotta have money to do it and when times
are tough, evidently, there’s just not enough money. This isn’t a personal problem for me, you
understand, because I’m basically a parasite.
But I do give what I can by loving everyone even more than they may
deserve. But back to financial woes … even though the government can evidently just
print more bills when they run low (another problem altogether), we can’t do that in
our house. Well, we could but that would
be illegal. The good part about that
would be we’d be put in jail and be taken care of forever but from what I hear
the accommodations aren't anywhere near as nice as here so that's not an option.
One
thing is for sure, even if it means buying something stupid, Meme is going to
shop and Poppy is going to keep getting upset when the UPS truck parks in front
of our house. He even said maybe we
should invite him for Thanksgiving dinner since he comes by just about every
day, more than a lot of our friends! Plus he brings presents every time he comes and sometimes they're treats for me!
And no matter how many days he pulls up, I bark. It’s what I do.
Back
when Poppy was working Meme could just sneak her new stuff into the house and
put it away before he got home. She
would put on a new pair of jeans or something and Poppy would say “Are those new?” and she’d say “These?
No, no … I’ve had these for ages”.
And sometimes if it was something big she would keep it in the trunk of
her car and sneak it into the house when he was out. Now they only have one car so that technique
is down the tubes! Sometimes she goes virtual shopping just to get it out of her system. You may wonder what that is so I’ll explain
it to you.
She
drives to a store like Marshall’s, Target or Costco, someplace with shopping carts, and
starts her journey through the aisles.
She loads up her cart with all kinds of stuff she thinks would be nice
to have in her house or hanging in her closet. After an hour or two of this she
pulls everything out of the cart and thinks about it really, really hard. Then she reverses direction and puts
everything or almost everything, back where she found it. She feels virtuous if she leaves the store
with an empty cart and thinks about the $500 or so that she’s saved to spend
another day.
I
know. Weird. Makes no sense at all, but she calls it a fun
day. Then there’s “online shopping”
which is completely different but really fun, too. What you do is think of something you want
a lot, type it into Google and you’re off and running!!! This is a most magnificent joy for her as
store after store pops up selling exactly what she wants!!! So then it’s a surfing spree to see where she
can get it for the least amount of money, on sale, no shipping, maybe a Retail-Me-Not
coupon or a cash back from her Visa. You
can spend an entire day shopping for just one thing. The opportunities are endless. Meme has full “shopping bags” all over the
internet some days and her inbox fills up with little “Did you forget something?” notes which make her feel really
important, like someone is looking for her.
Eventually she deletes everything in her “basket” and moves on to
something else.
Poppy
doesn’t get it, I don’t get it, but she does and isn’t that all that
matters? I fill my free time with
stuff I love to do. Life is short and we should fill our time doing things we love to do. As long as we’re not breaking any laws, or
getting in anyone's way, or peeing on someone's grass, who cares? Find what you love to do and do it … if you
can make money doing it, or even save money doing it, all the better. But more important than anything is that we
look for what fills us up and makes us happy. Happiness is contagious. We can't make the world smile all at once, but one smile at a time works for me!
‘Til
next time,
Molly
