Monthly Archive

Even before the pandemic we were online shoppers–it’s usually easier to find exactly what you want when you want it and we have better things to do than go into stores where there are other people. Oh wait, that second one was true before but is truer still today. And you can order something online in mere seconds. I recognize the danger in this. The allure of convenience is strong. Impulse buying is no longer just about candy bars. Is it instant or delayed gratification, when you know you have found what you were seeking, but you must wait for it to arrive? Does it matter? No, it does not matter. This is simply the state we’re living in, and we have (mostly) come to terms with it.

Here are some of the items we have bought online in the past couple months. You can guess who these were for.

• Green Gobbler drain cleaner (worked great on our bathroom sinks!)
• Snacks for high school teachers (the PTA is putting together goody bags–will these delicious snacks address the extreme mental and physical stress that educators are facing? Only time will tell)
• A new recording of Mozart’s Requiem
• A sample vial of the perfume that Hailee Steinfeld wears
• Brightly colored extra large women’s underwear (they’re not granny panties if they’re not plain white, right?)
• KN95 masks for kids and adults (hopefully the legit kind and not the counterfeit kind)
• Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza card game (theoretically this was for Niki but I really love it. The whole family plays)
• Iron supplements (who needs anemia? We don’t!)
• Beethoven piano sonatas
• Stainless steel cups and insulated tumblers with lids and straws because all four of us seem to break a lot of glasses and spill a lot of drinks. What is wrong with us?
• Three angled plastic measuring cups (1 cup, 2 cups, and holy cow 4 cups! because see above we broke all our glass measuring cups)
• Mozart symphonies 39, 40, and 41
• A set of new Pyrex dishes with lids primarily because I was trying to make cornbread recently and realized our 8×8 pyrex was missing and remembered that we had broken it (seriously, why can’t we hold onto a piece of glassware?) and it turns out if you’re ordering a new 8×8 Pyrex it’s only slightly more expensive to order a set of 20. And this way we can phase out the plastic containers that you can never find the lids to and that crack and get stained and sometimes warp. The lids to the glass containers always stick around. They seem to be more loyal.
• Subscriptions to Jenny Lawson’s Nowhere Bookshop Fantastic Strangelings and Happy Endings book clubs where you receive a new book each month (Fantastic Strangelings=a variety of weird stuff, Happy Endings=romance) because you know, I definitely don’t own enough books. But I do read them. And I love them. And they sustain me during dark times, which are currently all the times.
• Tarot cards–I have a deck that a friend gave me when I said I wanted to learn to read them, but I realized that I don’t love the images on the deck and that has kept me from studying, so I started reading some books–still using that deck as a reference–but I found a couple decks online that look absolutely amazing and feel right to me. And Zoe ordered a deck because she wants to learn as well. I gave my first ever reading to her the other night (only using six cards from the Major Arcana, and completely relying on my notes) but she said it was amazingly accurate and made her think about her question in a new way. I’m excited for the new decks to arrive.
• Venetian music from 700-1797 which comes with a very pretty book of paintings of Venice
• Of course groceries.
• And dinners.
• And COVID tests.

So what does this say about our family? We are hungry and thirsty and clumsy. We love music and books and games. We are trying not to succumb to Omicron, but who knows if we will succeed. In the meantime, we will shop.