Impulse Shopping

Doug and I have been known to impulse shop. And not on the stuff that marketing gurus have determined that people will impulsively buy if you position them near the checkout or at end of aisles. We’ve gone out for breakfast and come back with gym equipment. Gone for coffee and come back with a television. Gone on vacation and bought an apartment. And the conversations that took place to get us from say, eating breakfast to "hey we need exercise equipment", were quite interesting. No marketing executive could have predicted how impulsive people are if they are Doug and me. There was nothing at the cashier that hinted to us that we needed to get in shape. Nothing! That would be counter productive to them – they don’t want people to stop eating. Except that one of us probably said “ugh, I ate too much”. That’s all it would take. Off to the races! We need to get in shape and we need to do it RIGHT NOW – let’s go buy some gym equipment!

Last Christmas our stove went on the fritz. It started cooking the turkey and then suddenly decided to shut itself off and not start up again. It’s a gas stove so there really isn’t a lot that can go wrong. It’s old, it didn’t cost a lot and really, didn’t owe us anything (and once it caught onto that concept it went "oh hell yeah"). Doug took it apart, we ran it through the clean cycle and it would work, sometimes. And if it did work it would take up to 40 minutes to come up to temperature. Dinner parties were a luck of the draw. Come at 6:00, we’ll eat by oh maybe 9:00. Or we’ll order pizza. Who knows???

Here’s the thing. We buy only big ticket items on impulse. You would think that we would have gone out and bought a new stove long before we had major problems. I wanted to. Doug didn’t think we should. WE should try and fix it. Really?? WE can buy an apartment in Hawaii because we went there on vacation once and we had the discussion that kinda went like “Wouldn’t it be nice to live in such paradise and holy crap look how cheap it is to buy apartments here”, but we can’t buy a stove that will actually work without me threatening to stick a fork in it’s face. For a year we have had the discussion. Granted, all of our appliances are white and if we are to replace any one of them it will change to stainless, and then I suppose, you can surmise that all would need to be changed in order to match.

Regardless, fast forward to this Christmas and the game we like to play called “Spin the Dial on the Stove”. The first three hours passed uneventful as the turkey aroma filled the house. The aroma was interrupted by the distinct smell of gas around hour 3.5. So we did what most people would do. We turned it off, then turned it on, then turned it off, then turned it on and it still wouldn’t light. 10 people for dinner – no pressure. Start up the barbeque. Only it completely dries up any juices that might have turned into gravy. Doug takes the stove apart yet again and realizes that he can light it with the barbeque lighter once it shuts itself off. The turkey comes off the barbeque and back into the oven. And each time it gets to temperature and shuts itself off, Doug relights it and we continue on.

Using the handy dandy device that Roddy bought me for Christmas, Doug and I are elated when it registers that the turkey is cooked. An hour and a half late, but no matter. Everyone has wine, there are plenty of veggies, salmon for the non meat eaters, gravy thanks to chicken broth, and non-dairy non-wheat dessert.

And the Christmas Miracle – besides the other one….

We’re getting a new stove – one that’s planned.