Re: Hubby’s Shopping Addiction…continued

I don’t know whether to be angry or giddy.  The man’s awesome, a machine.

He bought not one, not two, but FOUR different leather jackets for me for Christmas, from different stores.  I had to try them on last night, make a choice so that he can return the excess yet this weekend.  Cat’s out of the bag – not only do I know what Santa brought me, but I know this man can POWERSHOP.  (He’d even finished ALL the Christmas shopping for the family, in one day.)

No reason at all that he can’t go to the store and get a gallon of 2% milk and a head of romaine lettuce if he can get FOUR different jackets from as many stores.

I’ve grown to hate shopping, especially for clothes, do most of mine on line now.  I worked in retail for a number of years; the Christmas holiday season is the worst, people are schizoid and delusional.  They’ll snarl at help, throw stock (yup, been a target of a sweater assault by a 75+ year-old woman with an attitude), scream if you can’t locate any additional stock in a 28 inch inseam pant with a 36 waist anywhere in the store’s nationwide distribution after 30 minutes of phone calls.  Then they’ll smile, sing-song warble “Merry Christmas!” to you as you finish checking them out.  Bah, humbug, sing that crap to my aching feet.

Hubby didn’t used to be SUPER SHOPPER.  When we first met, he used to break into a sweat if he had to buy a business shirt or tie, would return to the store to try on a shirt or jacket 3 or 4 times before making a commitment.  Yeah, that’s what it was, not just that he’s always been incredibly frugal, but that he couldn’t make a commitment to save his life.  Not even to a shirt.

I had to buy the socks and underwear for him since it meant I was making the commitment.  It spared him the emotional trauma of marrying BVD’s or Gold Toe socks over Jockey or Hanes.

I’m not certain what turned him around.  I knew the moment when he was healed of this commitment-phobia.  He went to the men’s wear department one day as I went to look at purses.  When I was through, I tracked him down to the counter as he was checking out.  He said, look, I found 2 jackets that fit on sale, I’m buying them.  Whaaaa…?  No asking my opinion about the fit, the color, the style, no interrogation about my opinion ad nauseum?  No return to the store for second and third tries?  No comparison shopping with other stores?  Omigod, he’s HEALED!!!

Or not.

Hubby’s favorite store is a locally owned hardware store.  They have a weekly flyer published every Monday in the local newspaper.  The flyer offers coupons for “9’ x 12’ blue polyethylene tarps, now only 7¢ with coupon!” or “10 pounds of songbird seed, this week 10¢ with coupon!”  If something in this house breaks, it’s the first place he heads.  Not even megastores Lowe’s or Home Depot can compete for the privilege of the “first stop”.

But now that hubby’s a shopping addict, sales like the ones this local hardware has are anathema.  Do you have any idea how many blue polyethylene tarps there are in my basement, in his workshop?  I didn’t know until I cleaned the workshop last week, knew the problem was getting bad but had no idea about the magnitude.  Not five, not ten, but TWENTY-FIVE tarps now neatly piled on the shelf.  He has more than twenty utility knives (“This week with coupon only 15¢ each!”), not to mention packages of utility knife blades.  There is a veritable cornucopia of pry bars, spackling knives, paint rollers, drop cloths, you name it, squirreled away in the workshop.  It looks like the shelves of the store itself have transplanted themselves to my basement. 

The workshop has been his sacred personal space until this past week when my dad and I worked on projects around the house.  I simply didn’t trespass there, respecting hubby’s need for a space of his own -- only peeking once in a while, to wrinkle my nose at the mess.  Once my dad and I had to venture into the sacred unknown, the mysteries unfolded and rolled at my feet.  I’ve now got a hardware store as a marital asset.

Hubby’s been enabled, too, by well-meaning people who think the world of him.  The sitter gives him the sales flyer from Monday’s paper, knowing that hubby will want the coupons.  I think it’s husband-envy that motivates this; her husband fixes nothing, taking everything for estimates and paying through the nose for repairs.  Whilst my beloved D.H. will tenaciously tackle nearly every repair, from broken sump pump piping to disc brake replacements to new exterior lighting.  The sitter even brought the flyer last week, putting it under the windshield of his car at 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday; she apologized profusely because she’d forgotten to give it to him Monday evening.  I wanted to shout at her, “ENABLER!!!”

Of course, my father-in-law is just as bad, has incredible tool-envy himself.  He recently built a 24’ x 40’ “shed” to house all his tools.  (It’s true, I should have seen it; the acorn does not fall far from the oak tree…)  Whatever tools my husband does not have, my father-in-law already has or willing goes to fill in that bare spot on the basement shelf with that oh-so-essential tool for my hubby.  Another enabler…

There is an upside to this shopping addiction, though.  I can tell exactly how bad a day hubby has had before he even opens his mouth.  If he walks in the house after work and puts a bag on the counter from the hardware store, it means I don’t even ask.  It was soooo bad a day that he had to stop on the way home to get his fix.

His worst day: he called me at lunch time on his cell phone, from the hardware store, just to talk.  The store is only two miles from the house; he spent his entire lunch hour at the store and didn’t even make a feeble attempt to offer to come home for lunch with me (his normal habit).  I had a glass of wine waiting when he got home that evening, and a place on the counter for the hardware store bag; I didn’t ask (which he would consider getting in his face), let him veg out with ESPN and CNBC the rest of the night.

But we really didn’t need that 25^th blue polyethylene tarp.  Maybe I can sell them next year in a garage sale for 14¢ a piece…

1:04:31 PM    comment []