Compartment 14B
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Warning, consumerist frenzy pending. 2003-10-17 - 11:24 a.m. Gift certificates. They seem like the perfect gift for me as I�m apparently soooo hard to buy for. My charitable husband says I just know what I want, and conversely, what I don�t want. And he is right in a way; there�s a lot of stuff I know I need and a couple of things I want in my heart of hearts but don�t want to admit I want because they�re sinful by way of being either frivolous or expensive or both. Here�s the thing though, despite the fact that there�s stuff I want, I don�t want more Stuff. Does that make any sense? I have a bunch of Stuff I got for Christmas last year still in a box in the spare room. And it�s not that I don�t like the things I got, I do, it�s just that there wasn�t a lot I actually needed and my life seems to constantly fill with clutter so taking more Stuff out of boxes and making more clutter seems hard to face. If I have something that�s old and a bit worn but still serviceable, I just can�t get rid of it. It seems wasteful and to exemplify the decadence of modern western society. I know I take lots of things for granted in my day-to-day life but I make an effort to be a little aware of environmental issues and to not waste things. I still, I kid you not, have t-shirts that I wore in high school in the late 80s. On the very, very rare occasions I go to an 80s night at a bar, (and incidentally, I do not get the whole nostalgia for 80s music that has taken firm hold of so many people in their early thirties; there�s nothing wrong with today�s music and I think we�re too young to be so entrenched in looking back at �the good old days�) I can actually wear a Corey Hart or Def Leppard concert T from that era. My Vuarnet shirt may have a couple of holes now, but it�s still comfy to wear to bed. Thank goodness my acid-wash jeans wore out a long, long time ago; I�d have felt guilty at not wearing them any more, but we all have our limits. This tendency to not replace things until they unravel or break or collapse with a groan in a heap of exhausted parts apparently does not make me an ideal gift receiver. Nor does the fact that I have no real hobbies other than reading, writing and going to the gym. I don�t generally buy books that aren�t reference books for the simple reasons that I�ve always moved a lot and books weigh a ton, and I read fiction books so fast that it�s a waste of money to buy them when I can get anything I want to read for fun at the library. I can always use gym gear but that�s hard for people to buy me as fit is so important that I�d have to try it on, which kind of ruins the surprise. My gym membership itself is free as I�m an employee. I don�t care much about having the latest electronic gizmos, I don�t tend to buy a lot of music, I prefer to rent movies so that I don�t have to store them anywhere, and I don�t collect anything. I have to admit too that I am picky about what goes into my house. Hm. Now that I�m writing all this down I can see why people complain about how hard I am to buy for. Thus the gift-certificate solution I suppose. The only problem with that is that I�m not a great one for getting around to using them. Right now I have gift certificates to at least 7 different places with a combined worth of literally over a thousand dollars sitting at my house. BUT� This weekend I am going to try to use up a lot of it because there is, as I mentioned, stuff I want and, more importantly, need, that I�ve been putting off getting. I will go mad, MAD I say, because I need office clothes that fit well, and curtains so that I don�t feel exposed snuggling on my couch with my hubby, and dammit, I want matching bedside tables � not a small filing cabinet on one side of the bed and a $5 garage-sale special on the other. It will be an explosion of consumerism in the Talpidae household, just wait and see. I want to be cute and professional-looking at work. I want to live like a grown-up in my new house. I want to spend a weekend as a model member of the decadent modern western society I live in. Next week I�ll do my penance and donate some of my old clothes to charity, and find a home for the $5 garage-sale bedside table which is, after all, still perfectly serviceable.
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