i'm sure this is a phase but i have to share...

please bear with me. Sometimes my job is very boring. NOT all the time. Sometimes it's bam bam bam, day is over. Sometimes it's slow. Today is one of those days. It's not that I have nothing to do. It's just that the stuff that I should be doing is extremely boring and tedious and if I don't do it people aren't really going to notice, not for a while anyway...

So I get a lot of joy at work by shopping online. It's a full on rush. I'm completely addicted. I get paid once a month so this is an addiction that is not easy to feed. Also, Dup took my credit card away. Thank God he took it away because honestly people, I can not be trusted with the thing. I will justify a purchase the way a junkie justifies his next fix. I will think of a really good reason to buy the thing and swear up and down to myself that I will pay it off as soon as I get paid. This is a little game I call "spending your chickens before they hatch". Because of course when I do get paid, I want to spend that money on that month's expenses and treasures, not last month's. Pour Exampla: Let's say, I have racked up $350 in credit card purchases. When I get paid I tell myself, "Well if I pay all of this now, I might run out of money before the end of the month and have to put more stuff on my credit card so I'll pay $150 now and $200 next pay day." But of course before the next pay day, I've justified putting something else on my credit card so that now it's not $200 but $400 and I do the same thing all over again: wash, rinse, repeat. And THIS MY FRIEND is how a person builds debt. This is called, "living beyond one's means." My mother taught it to me and her mother taught it to her. It's a long, long family tradition.

I get paid once a month and for 2 days it's a full on party. I spend the whole month thinking of what I will buy with my small amount of expendable income once I get it and as soon as I sit down at my desk it's rapid fire. I swear I can enter my credit card number and billing address into an online shopping form faster than anyone I know, anyone except for Trisch that is. She's really, really fast at it.

So, I got paid on Tuesday and it's already gone, my expendable cash. Mostly because I bought one big ticket item this month (new rug for the front room) but also because Dup the PENNY MISER (aka smart person) has set up all of these automatic deductions so that money instantly gets sucked out of my checking account just as fast as it goes in. That money goes to rent, bills, household expenses (like food WHATEVER), long term savings & short term savings. This leaves me with very little to work with.

So yesterday I started doing what my mom and sister do all the time which is surfing craig's list for cheap and/or free shit. You don't have to buy the shit. You can just look at it and maybe you see something your friend needs to buy and you send it to them and that's great because you're not spending any money. You're shopping vicariously through them. Maybe you see something you do want, the great thing about that is that with craig's list half of the sales interactions fall through anyway and you have time to think about it. When you're shopping on line it all happens so fast that you don't have time to think and stop yourself.

So I'm loving my new hobby. You can kill some serious time with it and it kind of looks like you're working. Plus, lord there is some funny stuff out there, which was the original point of my post. I have to share this shit with you. I'm just going to have to start posting a favorite craig's list sale of the day. Yesterday was the turtle. (Please read my sister's comment on that. It's pretty great.)

Today it's the chair of tourture. (click the link)

$7! OMG. I wonder if it's the actual child who is selling it.