And it didn't help that every purchase today was an anxiety-inducing one. First was a return. I'm not sure what it is about returning things I've bought, but I always get a little anxious, even if I have the receipt, proof of purchase, the items, photos of myself purchasing the items for return, etc. Once I open the door to the car, the thoughts start. What if they won't take them back? What if the price has changed and they only give me half of what I paid for it three days ago? What if they accuse me of shoplifting and then trying to return it? I could end up arrested!
But I sweated it out and Bed, Bath and Beyond gave me full retail value for my duplicate shower curtain without any hassle. (Side note - when two people are plowing through a store decorating a guest suite, be sure to check the cart for duplicate items. No one needs two of the exact same $45 shower curtain, trust me. I'm still not entirely sure I need ONE $45 shower curtain, but Mom remains convinced.) Out into the rain again and around the block to Joseph-Beth Booksellers. I was hoping to find a fabulous, cute, stylish, sleek purse calendar. Instead, I left with three bargain books - one for Tony (trying to encourage this reading habit of his), one cookbook on grilling (I have a cookbook addiction) and one book about the environment that I've heard a lot about and is one of those books that you feel like you SHOULD read, just to know what the pundits are talking about. A cocktail party chatter book that I'll probably never read, but at least it only cost $7.99. Joseph-Beth always does that to me. I walk in with one thing in mind and 45 minutes later, I'm shelling out a hundred bucks on books I don't need and might not even want. Today I feel lucky that I just spent $35. I assiduously avoided the home-improvement and gardening sections, which are extremely dangerous to me right now.
I'm convinced that as soon as I move in, I'll magically find time for 200 different gardening, home-improvement and craft projects that I've found, filed and mentally prioritized in the month that I've been off work. I have a hobby sickness, too. Now that I have time for one hobby, I want 50. I want to sew, embroider, decoupage, cook, bake, paint, throw lavish dinner parties, refinish furniture, wallpaper, scrapbook, write, garden (both vegetable and flower), learn archery and make my own hair products with items I dig from the aforementioned garden. And that's just this summer. Winter comes and I'll probably want to can, pickle, knit, tan leather, make my own baby food, chop wood, whittle wood, throw lavish holiday parties, make my own wine, brew my own beer, cook crystal meth in the basement bathroom and roast coffee beans.
So, I have to avoid the section of a book store that promises to teach me any of that stuff, because once you've purchased the how-to book, the pressure to produce fabulous products becomes intense. I was watching Martha Stewart's new show the other day and she featured Mod Podge, which is this glue made specifically for decoupage. Now, I've have been known to decoupage and have never used this product. I immediately phoned my mother and told her about it and how shocked I was that I'd never heard of or used it before. Her response? "Well, you were just dabbling before." Like now that I had a whole room in which to decoupage, I'd suddenly go pro, start one of those traveling decoupage teams, and compete in international decoupage competitions.
Because I couldn't find the intended purchase at Joseph-Beth (the purse calendar), I had to soldier on to one of those office-supply superstores. You know, the ones that always smell like spilled toner and electricity?
Is there any more anxiety-inducing small purchase than that of a purse calendar? You are spending at most $10 but it is a serious commitment. I have made hundred-dollar shoe commitments that lasted much less time (for instance, my last wedding ceremony, which was seven and a half minutes and required fantastic $75 ankle boots that no one even saw under my dress). But something about that calendar is so....weighty. You know that you are going to pull that calendar out of your purse for the next 12 to 24 months, displaying it for the world to see as you write in hair, nail, dentist, doctor and therapist appointments. It is an outward expression of your internal organization (or lack thereof) and whatever adorns the cover may be the only understanding anyone has of your likes, dislikes, hobbies, etc. Sure, this month you may be all about baby kittens playing with balls of string, but what if six months down the road you become a dog lover? Or, buy an iguana? You don't want Izzy to feel slighted every time you whip out your calendar to plan your day or schedule the cable guy.
Also, it becomes extremely important to foresee the level of planning detail your life is going to require. In November, I was given a very generous gift from one of my girlfriends in the cosmetics business and my husband. They went together to purchase me one of those super-fabulous, totally detailed Franklin Covey systems with calendar, goal-setting, address, financial and weight-loss tabs inside a binder that weighs more than my dog. It was fantastic at the time because I was running my own business. However, for a House Wife with no dependents and a very loose schedule, it is a bit overkill. Whole weeks of goal-setting would go by, goals unset and unmet. My expenses barely took up two lines on the fabulous month-end sheet they provide. So when I quit the biz, I set that calendar aside, knowing that someday I might need two 5 x 7 pages to organize each day again. For the last five weeks, I've pretty much been just winging it. I hold my appointments in my head and just remember where I'm supposed to be every day.
Last week, I missed three appointments.
Therefore, today I went shopping for the a new, smaller, more reasonable calendar. After 2o hard minutes of browsing, I went with a little 24-month calendar with each month spread across two pages. No weeks, no days, just months. Why 24 months? Because with the stranglehold the calendar cartel has on supply stores, April 2009 just isn't the time to shop for a 2009 calendar, and the only way I could get the months of April through December THIS YEAR was to buy 75% more calendar than I wanted. The two consolations were that it only cost $9 and didn't immediately rip the straps off my cute little purse the minute it hit the bottom of the bag.
My usual first pleasure with getting a new calendar is to fill in all the appointments I have in the future, giving myself a sense of satisfaction that I am, in fact, busy. Once fortified with my fast food lunch (there has to be some pleasure in errand-running), I cracked open the calendar and began writing. Thirty seconds later, I was finished. I couldn't even fill it up if I wrote in silly and unnecessary things, like when I was ovulating or birthdays of all my third cousins. Whole swathes of days were blindingly blank. It became terribly obvious to me that I am, in fact, not busy.
I guess blogging at 12:45 in the afternoon should have made that fact apparent, or that I pad my to-do list every day by writing in "dinner" or that my last shopping stop today was to buy an embroidery kit (God help me, the hobbies have started), but it was still a bit shocking to see it in the proverbial black and white. I don't even have any dentist appointments to write in. I'm barely relevant!
Obviously, I need to get on the phone. I have some lunches to book.
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