travel mugs and craft books

  To begin with, I have spent A LOT of money the last few days. Most of this has gone towards moving costs though, so I’m not going to spend much time on that here. The biggest expenses were renting a moving truck and hiring movers (because despite my sizeable guns, I just cannot manage my ridiculous wooden furniture). Beyond that, my only superfluous purchases involved pizza and vodka for myself, Jason, and Amanda after a long day of packing. Both were purchased at local shops at least.

  Prior to leaving for Baltimore I did have a shopping purchase that I’d like to reflect on here. The first was a reusable cup. On my way to an orientation for a new job, I realized I was really thirsty and forgot to bring a water bottle. I stopped at Wegmans and spent about ten minutes trying to decide whether or not to buy a bottle of water or buy a cup to put water in. In the end, I decided purchasing the cup would be better. As it is, I now I have one travel mug, one Nalgene water bottle and one reusable cup. I’m going to try to keep it that way. Buying that cup did make me think a little bit about how even purchasing what is intended to be reusable and sustainable items becomes, well, not that. I have a lot of friends with loads and loads of Nalgene bottles. Or close ones with 10 travel mugs. We, myself included, feel really justified with these purchases because the items are reusable. But why am I buying something if I already have it? Because it looks cool? Because I want to buy something? Because I’m too lazy to wash out the other five travel mugs sitting in my car? At some point, I have been guilty of all these excuses and probably more. At the end of the day, I still bought another reusable item that’s real cute, but I don’t need. I am happy that I reflected a bit on it before the purchase was made, but pretty soon I will need to bridge the gap from reflection to (in)action and not buy stuff on a whim. The bottom line is that I will always have a justification for not buying something – or for that matter, I will always have a justification for not acting in accordance with how I want to be.

  Today, I am happy and pained to say, I did not buy something that I really really wanted to buy. On our way home from returning the Penske truck I’d been driving, Jason wanted to stop at Barnes and Noble for some dvd’s he’d had his eye on. Anyway, as per usual, I gravitated towards the craft/sewing section of the store and was drooling over a crochet book. I just recently learned to crochet and really wanted to buy this book as it had a lot of cool patterns, ideas etc. But here’s the deal – part of what was really fun about learning to hook was that a really awesome person taught me. He was great at explaining what to do, was really excited that I wanted to learn, and then (I think) felt sort of accomplished and proud of himself for teaching someone else a great skill. I don’t have access to that person now, as he lives sort of far, but I do have access to both my mom and step-mom who both crochet and would LOVE to spend the time teaching me how to make whatever my crazy brain comes up with. It’s an opportunity to engage and bond with other really cool people rather than dole out some more cash to an author I don’t know. So, I didn’t buy the book. And, oddly/awesomely, when I got home I went to see Bonnie (step-mom) and she had crocheted some examples of granny-squares for me because she knew I wanted to learn how to make them.