First of all, please accept my apologies for yesterday’s holiday downer. It’s true, I’m having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit, but really, it’s not THAT bad.
The single bit of Christmas that I have genuinely been enjoying is the wreath my dad brought back for me from Upper Michigan. A neighbor who lives across the road from our cabin makes them every year out of branches she gathers from the trees in the woods up there. She uses a variety of cedar and pine boughs, so the wreaths she makes are lush, fragrant, and a gorgeous mix of textures and shades of green. Every time I see mine on my front door, I think of the woods and my lake in the snow, and that fills me with the joy of the season in a way that Beyonce’s whole bootylicious family opening their Wal-Mart bounty on TV never will.
I haven’t baked any cookies yet, but I did sign up for a cookie exchange at work, which means that I am now obligated in writing to produce seven dozen of something by next Friday. And, probably, I’ll get a tree this weekend. Mr. Crosby still has not hit the CD player, but I have been making and acquiring gifts.
Which brings me back to the subject of Wal-Mart, and my moral dilemma du jour. I am a loyal Target shopper, and can count on one hand the number of times I have set foot in a Wal-Mart store. My children have been so thoroughly propagandized by their former-union-steward father that they will gladly spout the myriad reasons why Wal-Mart is the devil. They would harass me without mercy if they knew I had given money to the Walton family.
So what is a budget-conscious Goddess to do when she finds that the Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture DVD game that Demigoddess the Younger really, REALLY wants for Christmas is priced $15 less at Wal-Mart than anywhere else?
On the one hand, I understand that this is how they get you. They entice the ethical shopper with their nefariously low prices, and the righteous ease their guilt by telling themselves that it’s just… this… ONCE…
...then the next thing they know they’re dragging around the weight of a thousand child-labor sweatshop souls and the misery of legions of underpaid and uninsured workers, and that smiling yellow crack-pushing demon haunts them in their tormented dreams.
But, on the other hand, $15 is, like, five gallons of milk.
Six if I buy them at Costco.
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3 comments:
The key to it is not bothering to find out how much the item costs at Wal-Mart. I'd rather inadvertently overspend than to venture out to Wal-Mart and its assortment of inbred shoppers. The ones out here are high on the sketchy factor.
Um, you could consider putting your dilemma before a close relative who happens to work at Target and has an extra discount day coming up. She might take pity on you. Just a thought.
You could also refuse to buy the Pop Culture DVD Trivial Pursuit because it sucks. You'll get two good plays out of it before you're hitting repeats on the DVD.
aside from that, I'm all for you saving $15 anywhere you can. Go to Wal-Mart, girl. I won't tell.
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