I am now THAT old.

This is the week. It’s the week that I bought a high-end bird feeder so that I can watch the birds from my kitchen window and I discovered that, from the side, I have jowls. 

And then, as I headed to Shoppers Drug Mart to replace my bottle of Women 50+ multi-vitamins, I realized that my level of frugality rivals that of an octogenarian. 

Recently, when I had to stay at a small pharmacy for 15 minutes after my flu shot,  I was pretty psyched to discover Canada Style at Home magazine’s Christmas issue – for $6.99! It’s been easily a decade since I’ve bought a magazine. It’s a blast from the past to my early days as a stay-at-home mom when I would open a magazine and be completely transported. 

Christmas is my jam. I’m that person who, in the dead of summer, if I find a Christmas store? Frickin’ ECSTATIC! If I had the start up funds to RUN a Christmas store? Done. And not one of those crappy add-your-name-to-an-ornament stores. I’m talking high end – Patience Brewster Krinkles, Kurt Adler Nutcrackers, glass-ornaments-shipped-from-Germany shit. If you want to see me in a near-constant state of animated joy, catch me anywhere between November 12 and when David and Rissa go back to school after the holiday break. 

So, my trip to Shoppers for the vitamins, that literally list me as being middle aged, is just that little bit easier because I figure that I can grab maybe four or five holiday magazines and distribute them around my home so that if I ever feel the need? I can get a quick hit of Holiday Heroin. This will be great and economical, because I’d recently been on Amazon sourcing retro decorating coffee table books which were upwards of $35 a piece. Which, I’m sure that we can all agree, is too much.

I look at the magazine rack and I’m very happy to discover that there are tonnes of Christmas magazines. Hooray!! I will just grab up… this one… to start… and… 

When, may I ask, did magazines start costing $15.99? Or $17.99? I go from magazine to magazine and the cheapest Christmas magazine on the rack was $12.99. For a magazine?!? I mean, it’s just a magazine right? Printed on paper? From a large organization like Better Homes and Gardens? Or House Beautiful or Oprah? Oprah’s was $17.99. What the actual fuck? It’s a MAGAZINE!!!

And then I start to doubt myself. Had I completely confabulated the $6.99 price from before?? From when I was waiting to see if I’d go into anaphylaxis from my flu shot? I don’t think so, because I distinctly remember thinking that $6.99 was a perfectly reasonable price to pay for that magazine. 

And then I recognize that this it one of those ‘unmet expectations’ moments. Where you have an idea in your head and then reality doesn’t match up with it and you freak the fuck out. So, I breathe in. And breathe out. It’s all good. They’re double or almost triple the anticipated price, but that’s okay, because I’ll just buy… two… magazines then.

Except I can’t. I just can’t spend almost THIRTEEN DOLLARS on a magazine! I have the magazine in my fully-sanitized hands – because we’re still in the midst of a PANDEMIC –  and then I put it back and then I pick it up again and replace it. I just can’t!

I look like a crazy person for the entire 8 minute walk back home. Gesticulating wildly – talking to myself. “Grumble, grumble, grumble… THIRTEEN DOLLARS?!? Grumble, grumble, grumble SEVENTEEN-NINETY-NINE?!?!?” 

So I get back home and I hop onto Amazon. My logic has me believing that spending $35+ on a hardcover coffee table book is now more than reasonable. (It’s not.) I start sourcing coffee table books, because if I’m spending a ridiculous amount of money – it’s at least going to be a hardcovered something. But all I can find are Country Christmas Crafts and Southern Living Christmas and Christmas Baking. I don’t want to do crafts, nor do I want to decorate my plantation!! And I sure as shit do not need any more holiday baking recipes. And now I can’t even find that Mid-Century Christmas book that had me all fired up to get the magazines in the first place! 

But then I get a brainwave! Maybe there are discounted magazines somewhere from the clearing houses!! 

Nope. 

Not for anything related to Christmas decorating. 2021’s issues are still all $12.99 or more. Except for Style at Home, which seems to be the only… Except for STYLE AT HOME!! I google their publisher TVA Publications, and am thrilled to discover, that they offer back issues of actual, physical, hold-it-in-your-hand, magazines!!! I also discover that Style at Home does holiday issues for both November and December!! At a crazy discount from the original cover price! Seriously, the lowest priced issues are from Nov and Dec of 2018 and they are only $1.80 per issue!!! I put 7 holiday issues (one from 2021 at the completely reasonable full price of $6.99 and then two from 2020, 2019 and 2018) into my online basket. HAH! I have foiled the magazine robber barons and their exorbitant prices!!! And then I look at the shipping. It will cost $17.07. 🤦

But you know what? Even with that shipping charge? Totally worth it. I will get 7 magazines shipped to my door in 2 days’ time and if I average out the cost of everything?  $7.83 a magazine. And that I am more than willing to pay. And I will be able to peruse those festive magazines as I watch the birds from my kitchen window while doing my jowl-reducing exercises.

***

ps.  Did you know that they make ‘decorative’ books? Which aren’t books at all – they just look like books? You can stack them so that they make you look either well-travelled or festive.  Guess how much they cost in Canada? Go ahead. Take a stab.  $26.77 FOR A FAKE BOOK. You can’t open these books. They have no pictures of Christmas or pictures of anything at all in them!! Plus, I just looked at the dimensions, and they’re not even coffee table book size. They are 7.5″ x 9.25″ And they charge $26.77 for a single one. You’d have to spend over $100.00 to achieve the look below!!