Marmalade, STUFF and the occasional bag of salad

 A belated “Merry (whatever you celebrate)mas!!”, dear Reader. I hope the week was festive and glorious and The Santa-Jesus Lord gave you and your family lots of really really cool shit.

Christmas was just fine in our household. The children got Furbys and a gratuitous amount of “STUFF” to go with the rest of the STUFF they already have. My beloved Caveman got  me some fancy new speakers for my computer and tickets for us to to see my comedic Jesus, Louis CK.

LOUIS FREAKING CK, you guys. OMG.

Words cannot describe how excited I am for this. I think I may have actually squealed like a small, very excited girl when I opened the tickets. Watching my favorite comedian LIVE with my favorite person ever? If happiness could make you sick, I just might die during the show. Or, you know, throw up or something.

MOVING ON…

Christmas is a time for love and family and good cheer and a lot of food and what not. It’s also a time of year that we’re forced to participate frequently in one of my least favorite activities EVER. An activity that is often done with enthusiasm and vigor by most normal, warm-blooded people, ESPECIALLY the lady-folk (oh yes, it’s Lady Fail time):

SHOPPING.

I. Fucking. Hate. Shopping.

“OMG SHOPPING! FUCK YEAH!!”~ something I’ll never say. Ever.

Yes. It’s true. I despise all forms of shopping. Food shopping, clothes shopping, makeup shopping, doctor shopping, coffee mug shopping, shoe shopping, ”window shopping”, whatever the fuck that is. It has the word “shopping” in it, therefore, I do not like it. Also, I’ve learned that it has NOTHING to do with buying windows, and that’s just ten shades of what the fuck.
I don’t even like shopping for awesome, non-mundane things that would add entertainment and/or meaning to my life. The whole ordeal of driving to the store, walking around to find said thing, standing in line with my thing, avoiding small talk with the cashier who is allowing me to take my thing in exchange for money, then leaving with my thing in a bag sucks horribly and I avoid it as much as humanly possible.

I have my reasons for this. Aside from the mild to moderate dizziness and disorientation that immediately sets in the moment I walk through the automatic doors of a place that sells items, stores are places where there’s people, and where there people, THERE IS INSUFFERABLE NONSENSE.

Example #1: The grocery store.
I have children. These children have mouths and stomachs. This causes me to frequent grocery stores more often than I care to. Sure, I need to eat, too, but my eating requirements would have me visit the food store three times a month TOPS. I can survive easily off of meat, coffee, cucumbers (FOR EATING, weirdo), and the occasional bag of salad*. Oh, and green olives. Those things are fucking amazing. My girls and part-time sort of step-boy, on the other hand, need things like milk and peanut butter jelly sandwiches and kiddie kibble cereal and school snacks and other various things that get depleted rapidly, forcing me to shop for food three or four times a week.

*and bacon

I have my top two food stores mapped out in my head which allows me to navigate through the aisles, get my shit to get the fuck on out of there MACHT HASTE. That means with a fucking quickness in German.  Yet, no matter how hard I plan, I always run into annoying obstacles that make each trip more lengthy and difficult than necessary. It’s either Chatty Cathy’s or rambunctious free-range children running amok, or  scooter-mooses blocking the aisles or elderly coupon enthusiasts holding up the check out line to save thirteen cents on english muffins, marmalade, and colace. ALL OF THESE THINGS complicate my mission, and I don’t like it one bit.
Don’t even get me started on the inconsiderate fucks who split their cartload into two so they can make their purchases in the “15 items or less” line. I don’t care for whatever clever math you did that makes you feel this is acceptable. FOLLOW THE RULES, ASSHOLE.

Fifteen items are THIS MANY, fucker.

Example #2: The clothing store
I have a healthy respect for the necessity of clothing. If it weren’t for clothes, we would all be naked, and let’s face it, there’s some folks that we would never want to see sans pants. As a female, I’m apparently supposed to have an understanding of lady fashions, and sadly, I don’t. My fashion consists of a dark shirt, jeans that don’t look terrible, and shoes. Preferably boots. The end. My simple tastes screw me royally if I’m in a situation where it’s required to look as though I give a shit or marginally above plain, however, and the confusion that comes with “what to wear?” coupled with soul-crushing body issues makes the whole buying clothes experience torturous.
I partially blame those dreadful fitting rooms. I honestly would rather douche with pickled jalapeno brine than enter those brightly lit mirrored stalls of  anguish and shame with an armful of shit to try on. To some folks, this apparently makes me an asshole, as I’ve actually been verbally scorned by a gang of giant women when they saw me fighting tears of frustration in front of a mirror wearing some fitted, pretty frock that I didn’t understand and was very uncomfortable in. Who knows, maybe I am a vain piece of shit for agonizing over whether the skirt I’m wearing furiously flaunts my unfortunate shape, but telling me to “get over myself” and “gee I wish I were fat like you” is highly unnecessary. Pardon me for not wanting to draw attention to areas of my body that are in dire need of a highly trained surgeon with a scalpel improvement. I have mad respect for the notion that not everyone wants to see the dimpling wad of sagging human dough that is MY ASS.

It’s such bullshit. Mark my words, if I ever become God of Everything I will write into scripture that jeans and boots are acceptable attire for ALL situations. To those of you that are with me on this one, when the time comes, you’re welcome.

Example #3: Walmart

If I had it my way, I would never ever ever step foot inside a Walmart. I do go there often because that place is a utopia of bargains on shit we use daily like toilet paper and cat products. What can I say, we poor bitches love bargains. Enabling my need to penny-pinch fails to compensate for how awful Walmart is. It has weird lighting. It’s dirty. The layout is often confusing. My IQ drops 16% for every fifteen minutes I’m in the damn place and that’s terrible because I like my IQ right where it’s at: AVERAGE AT BEST.

Not to mention all of the STUFF they sell. Walmart is 12% practical items, and 88% useless, bull-shit, nonsense STUFF. Need to pick up a monster-sized bag of kitty chow and a tube of cooter cream? Have fun navigating through aisle after aisle of mind-numbing STUFF to get it, and you know what? FUCK STUFF. STUFF equals CLUTTER, and clutter destroys my mental processes the same way chronic meth use or watching a twelve hour marathon of Jersey Shore would. Clutter has the ability to completely retard my mental capacity and ability to reason with my surroundings. I can’t tolerate that sort of thing

This is why I die a little on the inside when Caveman says he’s going to Walmart. Aside from buying stuff for day to day necessities,  a trip to Walmart means that  he is going to buy MORE FUCKING STUFF. Why? Because all of that useless STUFF is at an irresistible price and we may need it at some point or another. Never mind that we are three cereal boxes, two broken computer towers and a litter of dead kittens rotting under the couch away from starring on an episode of Hoarders. STUFF IS IMPORTANT AND WE MUST HAVE MORE OF IT. Apparently. New STUFF simply joins forces with all of the old STUFF, forming an army of nonsense that wages war with tattered remains of my sanity.
Not like I have much of it to begin with.
Fucking Walmart.
I could keep going on and on about my beefs with STUFF, but I’ll let my other comedic Jesus sum it up for me instead:

THE END.