It turns up at your door and flirts with you in the middle of the day when your partner isn’t home. It’s seductive and relentless and known for it’s tempting ways. It get’s to you, infiltrating your weaknesses and sparking your excitement.
It’s… the catalog.
It was this tiny little ad above that sucked me in. I saw it in the K mart catalog this week and thought gee that looks good. I was sucked in by it’s cuteness and Winnie the pooh.. SO I decided to go and buy it. Big mistake.
I arrived at Kmart at 10am.. they only opened at 9am and I went to little little Westfield nearby instead of the bigger ones to avoid any crowds. I get there and we have to park all the way at the back of the parking lot because there are people lined up for spots everywhere. I get inside and it’s like the easter show and Disneyland and the supermarket on Christmas Eve combined.. Seems that my new frame of mind where I skip over everything accept the baby section saw me conveniently miss the massive sign on page one that had 25% off all clothing store wide… eh.
Now I am not a people person at the best of times. I am the kind of woman who sees no problem doing Christmas shopping with a tazer and the ‘elbows out’ philosophy. Boy was this not the place for me.. there were people everywhere and suddenly I knew that my fight for a parking spot was only the beginning.
From here, I have two choices. I can leave, auction off my parking spot to the highest and most desperate bidder and leave in vein but slightly richer.. or, I can stay, get what I need (and possibly more) and make it home before midnight. What to do, what to do..? I saw someone walk to the checkout to join the queues with my pooh outfit. The fact that the queues were battling the great wall of china for length escaped me.. and I simply had to have what I came for. Since this checkout woman was protected by a community of her own children crash tackling her was out of the question so I trekked further and further into the black hole of the unknown.
Finally arriving at the baby wear section, after a slight detour past the women’s section.. and women’s change room and shoes… I’m confronted by thousands of mothers with strollers very unwilling to budge so I can get through. I am still in the newborn phase of stroller navigating.. I still offer courtesy smiles when I am in the way.. putting myself in an awkward position to save others.. and so on. Apparently most women hit a point where they think the world owes them something and screw anyone who gets in their way. So I wait, and wait and wait while other people clogg the aisles and push past each other, knocking things off the shelves as they go. After a while it kicks-in that I am just going to have to go for it. I adopt the uncertain approach of ‘my pram is bigger than yours’ and go for it. I reach my Romper outfit and grab it in two sizes because you can bet your boots, I ain’t doing this again.
The checkout is a whole other blog post, so is the part where we come out with bags and bags, it’s raining and I am running across the rooftop car park with baby, pram, shopping and end up in the car wetter than if i’d had a shower or two. I’ll spare you from it and jump to my conclusion.
Unless you are looking for something or need something.. DO NOT.. I repeat.. DO NOT bother looking through the catalogs that come to your mailbox. Everytime you circle something in them, the company who sent them is rubbing their hands together and thanking their lucky stars that technology hasn’t yet exhausted the cheaper-than-ever mailbox-drop avenue of marketing. If you DO in fact look through them and find something you like.. read the rest of the damn booklet and make sure there is not some huge, crowd drawing sale that you will inevitably become a part of because the $16.95 isn’t all it will cost you.
