This Is My Absolute LAST Trip to The Grocery Store!

No More Seasonal Magazines For Me!

Seems I’ve spent far too much time and money at the local Zehrs food store in the last week. Other people must be doing the same thing because I now recognize them in the lineup, as we pick up the idle conversation just where we left it the other day! After all, what else is there to do while you are tenth in line at 11:00 a.m.? (Yes, I have taken this long to get my act together and over to my favourite store and it took awhile to find a parking spot!)

Well, I have discovered that there IS in fact something else to do while waiting; something that is well designed by the magazine marketing scheme crew. You guessed it, and I admit that I have succumbed at every opportunity, much to my chagrin. Do not mistake me. I have not even looked at The Enquirer, let alone purchased it! Instead, my hand shoots out and grabs yet, another one of those, "Beautiful Homes December Issue" type magazines with the gorgeous photographs of the most magnificently decorated house in America on the cover.

The woman on the inside pages looks like she doesn’t know what the word stress means. She appears healthy and happy, her makeup job is professional, and she hasn’t a hair out of place! She is dressed in an expensive holiday dress from Talbots and her totally-calm-all-round-beaming children are posing in their matching outfits from The Gap.

You can’t tell me that she’s just finished baking those marvelous cookies, (from the highest level of difficulty section of the recipe book) that appear on the opposite page!! Why do I look so different after I’ve had my third disastrous attempt at Christmas-shaped cut-out cookies? Perhaps it’s the flour in my hair, on my face, (that’s MY makeup job!) pasted to my Santa sweatshirt and reaching my faded jeans that I recently bought from the second hand store!

And it gets worse……

The pages that follow, feature each room of the 4800 square foot house in its entire Christmas splendor! Every piece of furniture is adorned in natural greenery, beautiful bows, vases of natural holly, and gilded fruit. Each room is more elaborately decorated than the one previously shown. Unique wreaths grace every wall and the four fireplace mantels are draped with boughs, red bows and ribbons, white lights, bells, and of course, hand made stockings. Thick, pine garlands with gold bows and tiny lights are wound around the oak banister of the staircase.

In short, viewing this magazine that depicts the perfect people in their beautiful home, exquisitely decked out for Christmas, is quite disconcerting for me. Now, I have to go back to my small, inadequate home and face my own shabby decorations, which only an hour ago I proudly thought were looking pretty amazing. We don't even have a fireplace.

I become increasingly disgusted with this family staring disdainfully out at me from those glossy pages. They represent everything I am not….. the unattainable….the ultimate American Dream Lifestyle. And they make it look so natural, as if everybody lives like this. I’m getting angry and agitated just looking at them!

I am just about to hurl the magazine back somewhere near its rack when the cashier nudges me back to reality with a loud, "You’re up, dear!"
With everyone in the line-up now staring at me, I quickly thrust the magazine down on the conveyor belt. Bending down, I unload the cart thinking, "Oh, what the heck! Maybe it’s not too late!"

Another trip, another magazine to add to my coffee table collection!

Mother of Invention, thinking that I look darn good on the cover of MY OWN magazine!