Bees do it. Birds do it. Rabbits never stop doing it. You know what I’m talking about. You know because you aren’t doing it. But you think your neighbours are, for sure. Your best friend, the bank teller and the cashier at the grocery store; they are all doing it. Everyone but you, that is.
You do know what I’m talking about, right? Home renovations. The bees are building hives, the birds are making nests and the fox was looking for scraps for his den. Only you and me, we don’t have a budget to renovate anything. It’s depressing.
That’s not what you were thinking? Oh. You mean you really thought I would write about, um, you know, sex? People, get real. None of us are getting that either. If we did, we wouldn’t rely so much on drive-thru coffee to get a buzz. Seriously.
We love to think that the proverbial grass is always greener on the other side of the chainlink fence. Admit it; you look. You want to see who got new patio furniture, who can afford real stone retaining walls, a new roof or one of those shiny new barbecue grills. Yep. We all want what they’ve got over there.
I blame this on department store flyers. Those weekly mini newsprint catalogues are the crack cocaine of households all across this great land of ours. Nothing turns a Canadian on faster than the Canadian Tire flyer (except drive-thru coffee). Every now and again, I remove that flyer from the newspaper stack and hide it on the Carpenter. He is so addicted that he actually starts lifting up other stuff around the house to find it. That’s right, he starts picking things up and moving things about, in an act that vaguely resembles housework.
But I know what it is about. At first he’s all nonchalant, looking through the other grocery store and big department store flyers, as if he cares about the cost of bacon or women’s shoes. Then you see this little twitch in his cheek. The search gets a little more intense. Papers get scattered. He scratches his head.
“Anyone seen my flyer?” he asks calmly, at first. When he has to repeat it, the voice sounds a little more intense.
I deny knowing a thing. I explain that we have no budget anyway. He counters with a great argument that looking is not actually buying, and you never know if that power tool he needs for the bathroom renovation could be on sale, or maybe a nice sink fixture. I cave in every time. I really want a new bathroom.
Once I actually caught myself flipping through the flyers, scissors in hand, glue stick ready to create a scrapbook of all the things I felt I needed to make our home and garden look Architectural Digest ready. Thank goodness I have ADHD and got distracted. All of this stems from a case of “the wants.”
Consumer culture and real-life budgeting collide on the pages of those cost-saving flyers. They help me dream of the future where the furniture will actually match, my clothes will too, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll finish the bathroom. Is that wrong? If it is, then I don’t want to right.
By the way, if the grass is really greener on the lawn next door, just assume they have more manure to spread on it and giggle to yourself quietly. Smile and wave.