Order Now!

I woke up at 4:00 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep, so I went downstairs to watch TV until 5:30, which is when I normally get up. I'm flipping through the channels and notice that there are an obscene number of sports channels and home shopping channels. What does this say about our culture? Why do we need five bajillion sport and shopping channels? I guess I'm more amazed by the fact that there's actually a demand for this much stuff. Have you ever watched a home shopping channel? How long do you have to sit there before something pops up on the screen that you actually want? My mother ordered a camera once off QVC or whatever and I couldn't believe she had actually ordered something off television. The camera was fine and all, I just couldn't believe she actually picked up the phone to make an order after watching something on television--that she was actually moved to the point of spending money because of a commercial. I have a strict rule about ordering off television: Don't do it. My daughter often gets caught up in the glitz and glamour of commercials selling various devices she thinks will be useful to me like vacuum cleaners or tools of one kind or another. She'll often run to the phone and bring it back to me yelling, "Order it, Mom. Order it, now. That could come in handy." Then I have to remind her I never buy anything off television and she always says, "Oh, that's right." She always seems a little disappointed that I don't make the order. I don't know why. Kids are weird.

I used to like shopping, in real life, I mean. I used to enjoy going to the mall and wasting an afternoon there. Not anymore. I pretty much hate the mall now. I only go if I can't get what I need somewhere else. Basically, the mall takes too much time, and if you've got a kid with you, you get dragged into the Disney store and the pet store and Nature Company and all the other stores that have nothing you need. My main shopping outlets now are Target, Wal-Mart and Meijer's (a local Wal-Mart type store). If I can't get it from one of those three places, I probably don't really need it. Of course, there might be a direct correlation to the fact that I don't much enjoy shopping anymore and there being no good shopping here in this god-forsaken place I unfortunately call home. When I go home to DC, I always make a stop at Tysons Corner or Fair Oaks to get what I can't get here, like MAC products. But, of course, that doesn't end up being much fun because it's usually Christmas-time and shopping is never fun at Christmas, especially in DC when everyone in the metropolitan area is crammed into a giant concrete box trying to beat out everyone else on the two-for-one sale of George Foreman grills at Sears. It sucks.