Every year, around this time, they start coming.
Not the falling leaves. Although I’m sure they’ll start soon.
Not the pumpkin spice, well, everything. (Hasn’t that been here since late August anyway?) Not kids dressed up begging for candy. That’s not until the end of the month. Instead, the Girl Scouts are selling cookies.
Mmmmmmm…cookies.
But I digress…
Holiday catalogs—that’s what’s coming.
While they’re just a trickle now—I’ve gotten five in the last week—soon they will be like a blizzard. I will some days get four or five inches of mail—all catalogs.
In past years, this would bother me. Then, it began to intrigue me. Last year, I even kept every single catalog I received just to see how many I actually got and what companies sent me the most.
In case you’re wondering, last year during a two-month period, I received 157 catalogs. Yep. 157.
I’m keeping track this year only because I’ve already received one that I’ve never gotten before. And, I’m a nerdy writer who can fall down an informational rabbit hole by something as simple as a friend mentioning, “Did you know that there was a flood of molasses in New England that killed a lot of people?”
Boom—there goes at least an hour of me looking up everything I can find about it. Can’t help it. I’m too curious.
I look through each catalog, even the ones I’ve received previously. Because sneaky buggers that they are, the sellers add things. And they switch the pages around so you can’t find the same item on the same page in two catalogs from the same manufacturer.
It’s kinda like when I go to the grocery store, and they’ve moved everything around. I’m first really ticked off. But then it becomes a game to find what I’m looking for.
When the catalogs arrive, I look through them. If there’s something I’m interested in, I fold down the page.
Yes, longtime readers, I “dogear” it. I mean, it’s just a catalog; it’s not a book. Doing that to a book is a crime against humanity. But that’s a topic for another column.
I let the catalog sit for a day or two. Because here’s what happens: when I pick it back up and see what I’ve marked, I inevitably say things to myself like Why in the world did I want that?
So this saves us a lot of money.
Sometimes, like this morning, my husband gets in on it.
I was looking through a holiday catalog, and I spotted something to put raked leaves in. I fell for it. The description said that it was better than those stupid, ripped up tarps we had in the garage. And it was way better than our small wheelbarrow.
Okay, it didn’t really say this, but we all know that’s exactly what it was implying.
It was the superstar of raked leaf holders. (I’m already realizing how I don’t really need this, but bear with me.) Full of excitement, I showed the photo to my husband. “Look at this! It’s much better than our crappy tarps or tiny wheelbarrow. That thing can probably only hold two dozen leaves!”
Yep. I was full-on in a frenzied state! I had to have it!
“How much is it?” my husband asked.“
“Only 40 bucks!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah. Our tarp’s fine.”
I was upset. How could he not see the benefits to this wonderful new piece of lawn-care technology?
Next, I saw a Victorian-style bird house. It had lights. It had a porch. It had a witch’s hat. I’ll bet the birds who went in there could sit at a bay window and read books in the house’s library. It was $150. There was no way I was buying this.
I must have made some kind of disgusted noise because my husband looked up from what he was reading. I told him about the ridiculously priced bird house.
“That house wouldn’t be used by birds,” he said. “After all, birds are supposed to live in trees, but instead, they like to build their nests in our gutters—and we have tons of trees around. Remember before we got the garage door fixed, and they built nests in our garage—one in an empty box and the other in a planter?”
I did. I had found another cool item that there was no way we were going to buy. But that’s okay. I can count on receiving at least another 152 catalogs. I’m sure I’ll find something.
Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski, when she’s not getting a backache from carrying all the catalogs she finds in her mailbox, writes Wojo’s World® from Baltimore. She’s also the author of the award-winning humor book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box. You can connect with Wojo on Facebook or on Twitter.
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