Consumer Research

 Sunrise #1- November 1st

 Sunrise #2 - November 1st

 Keeping It's True Colors

 Light through lilac leaves

 Tongue River - Hill House shows above the island

daily tanka

tan ecru umber
the colors of late autumn
wait for the first snow
when blankets of white contrasts
bark against montana blue

We are having typical fall weather - bright sunshine, azure skies and days in the fifties.  Also as is usual in fall - no rain. The weather forecasts call for showers and we get an occasional twelve drops. The fire danger is still there but with no lightning to set a fire, it is much lower. 

The flies know it is fall and have moved into the house in abundance, along with wasps. After having used spray for years and hating it, I found the perfect answer - a Dustbuster! I happily suck them up and then empty them outdoors - who knows with their dogged persistence I may even be recycling them! 

I have been busy with fall chores and insulating every nook and cranny I can find where cold air might enter when winter comes. My best friend is Rope Caulk these days; you can tear off long strips and place along the windows and other places then peel it off come spring leaving no residue to clean up. 

Along with fall come the catalogs - a full two inches of them on Mondays - and I am doing my Christmas consumer research :)   Here is a piece that I wrote about ten years ago.

Catalogs

Everyday the mail can hold untold pleasures for me. I love the letters, hate the bills, but I adore catalogs!  I savor them, divide them into groups for reading at different times of day, and dedicate special time to what I humorously refer to as my  “Consumer Research”!  My husband is fascinated that a person can read so many catalogs, not once, but several times over. He even e-mails me at work as to the number of catalogs that arrived in the mail that day!

I jokingly refer to myself to friends at work as the “Catalog Queen”, and we laugh.  The funny thing is, I know many women who also love catalogs, but they keep it a hidden secret.  Like hiding and eating their Twinkies and Little Debbies, they stash their catalogs in the bathroom or laundry where they can indulge in fantasies of wild clothing, expensive household gadgets, or gourmet foods, unobserved by others.  I say to these women, “Stand up to the secret majority in your mind that you think might label you dumb, or that would judge you as an airhead because of this past-time! Consumer research has it’s place in the world. The Direct-Mail Industry needs us!”

                                                                                               

Reading catalogs has a dark, downside however. In November I receive a pile in the mail each day fully two inches or more in thickness.  All the delights of Christmas consumerism descend to cheer the gloom of November days. But then in January when the days are short and the cold reaches into your bones, add to this dreariness a lack of consumer reading materials. Catalog withdrawal sets in!

At mail time my hopes are dashed. I am lucky to get even one in the day’s mail.  After that one is read, I wander hopelessly around the house like a lost soul.  At first I utter cries of, “I’m bored”, and get no response from my husband who looks at me wearily from his newspaper, having been through this before at the beginning of each year.

At night I pick up books to read, only to set them on one side because they don’t fill the emptiness, and I have an overpowering sense of loss. Eventually I adjust, read books and magazines that I set aside through the Pre-Christmas months, I even write!!  January is my most productive month as a writer. But then along comes February and the White Sales! Oh there is nothing like the Bloomingdale’s White Sale catalog, or the Williams Sonoma Winter Sale centerfold, and after these the new spring clothing catalogs for L.L. Bean and Lands End.  The winter blues melt away as I get into the recliner, put up my feet, and settle down to a mind bending, chills-in-the-spine, all-engrossing session of Spring Consumer Research!