Vice

I've been feeling just so totally icky and grumpy this week...lots of mental eye-rolling coupled with a very short fuse. In other words, tons of fun.

Some folks, when faced with the doldrums, do emotional eating, which boils down to cramming in as many fist-fulls of high-caloric shit as they can while watching The Girls Next Door. Instead of testing my junk-food limit this weekend, I have had a compulsion of another sort: junk shopping.

I kid you not when I tell you that today I have darkened the door of a mega-Dollar Tree, a Burlington Coat Factory, two huge Asian markets, and a Big Lots. And our local Hood Lion. I didn't end up with anything even remotely sexy - just some deodorant and kitchen towels and a scrub-brush, but I was on the prowl. Since I am a total crap shopper because I hate to spend alot of money, potentially going for broke in a discount store is, for me, the equivalent of a dieter tearing through a church pot-luck with no witness. My heartbeat quickens a bit in the Dollar Store...What do I want? What do I want? With a twenty in my pocket I am on Supermarket Sweep.

I never really end up buying much, but that feeling of indulgence, even if it's mostly on crap, makes me feel a bit satiated, much like a full pan of caramel-pecan dark-chocolate brownies.