at least I don’t live in a trailer with 50 cats
I am a hoarder. This is partially by disposition and partially by circumstance–when you depend on the kindness of others for rides to the grocery store and whatnot, you tend to stock up as much as you can, particularly on things that you use a lot and know you will pretty much always need more of, eventually. Witness the 150 pounds of kitty litter currently stockpiled in my apartment.
However, the problem with being a hoarder is that most of this stuff gets stored kind of out of sight, and there you are at the grocery store thinking, Well, I’ve been baking a lot, I use a lot of unsweetened applesauce, I know there’s some in the fridge but it stores well… And then you get home and discover that you are ALREADY storing an extra giant jar of unsweetened applesauce in the cupboard. Now you have two. This also happens a lot with mustard, for some reason.
So really, what I need is not a shopping list but a NON-shopping list, recording all the things that I already have way too much of and should under no circumstances buy when stricken with a vague sense that, god forbid, I might be running out.
This list will also now have to include wine. Woodman’s gives a nice discount on many of their cheaper vintages if you purchase by the case… Shut up. I love the Yellow Tail shiraz/grenache blend. And it’s going to be a stressful summer, what with the social psych prelim in August.
I also bought sunscreen, because by god, it has been super warm for the past two days and even though I know, as a compulsive student of the weather report, that temperatures are going to drop like 20 degrees in the next couple of days, they will rise again, and I would really like to repeat last summer’s amazing feat of Not a Single Sunburn, Not Even a Little One.
I spent a long time in the sunscreen section, studying the billion available varieties as if I have any idea about anything having to do with the active ingredients of sunscreen. I finally just started popping them open and smearing dabs of them on myself, because the two qualities of sunscreen about which I DO have a real opinion are scent and viscosity.
I surmise from the frequent claims of “light feel” on the packaging that most people do not prize thick, viscous sunscreen; however, I have no confidence in a preparation whose presence cannot be felt ten minutes after application. I suspect those spray-on formulas are about as effective in the prevention of UV damage as prayer. I like a sunscreen that FEELS like a sunscreen, dammit. Fortunately, just as I was despairing of finding such a thing, I discovered my preferred brand, Ocean Potion, hidden behind a display of some other kind.
I got two tubes of it, plus some Hawaiian Tropic SPF60+, because I couldn’t resist. I know they say anything above 30 probably isn’t any more effective, but I am very, very fair. Hawaiian Tropic actually had some stuff marked SPF70, but it felt too thin and smelled too coconutty. I realize that an element of coconut is pretty much inevitable when it comes to sunscreen, but pure coconut makes me gag.
I do wonder why they can say something is SPF70 if it really isn’t any BETTER than SPF30, but I guess it still blocks more rays; you’ve just reached the point where blocking more rays provides negligible benefit. And of course none of us are actually putting on as much sunscreen as they use in laboratory tests. And obviously it works as a marketing device, especially once one company starts doing it: I am too fair-skinned to be taking chances, so if your brand doesn’t have at least SPF50, I will go with the brand that does.
The same principle probably applies to the Pepperidge Farm 15 grain multigrain bread I saw in the baked goods aisle. I frequently get Brownberry 12 grain. I like multigrain bread, and I like the thought of 12 whole grains. One can imagine that at some point I might be swayed at the thought of three additional grains, but I think Pepperidge Farm will have to make their bread bigger first. That’s the other thing we consumers like: big portions. Huge quantities of bread and sunscreen and Yellow Tail red wine.
Not to mention TV on DVD, the ultimate in media big portions. I don’t want to go into too much detail on my most recent failure of Amazon.com impulse control, but I will note that they are having another 50% off sale on select TV season sets. Including Firefly, which doesn’t seem to be on that list page, but which is currently available for $24.96.