Tuesday 22 September 2015

Shipping Shopping

In our household most of us have very low incomes. We have enough to buy lovely things, but only if we shop with great care. One of our ruses is staying away from the high street – so we don’t get to see the things we live without perfectly happily until our gaze falls upon them in a shop and suddenly we know – gasp – life has been incomplete!!

Also, we want very particular things. Materials for safely hygenic earth closeting. Pure beeswax candles made with particular attention to the welfare of the bees. Live and unpasteurized sauerkraut. Body lotion with the medically active oleo-resins of frankincense in it, not just the essential oil. Modest dresses hand made in 100% natural fabric by people who work in their own homes not sweat shops. Shawls made from nettles. Ladies shoes in US size 12. That kind of thing. These, you do not find on the high street.

Hence, we do almost all our shopping online.

Also, some of us in our household work from home all the time and all of us some of the time. So there’s usually someone in. As we shop online, this is important because five of us live here, which means most days the postie brings us interesting parcels. It’s like Christmas all the time here – in fact more so than Christmas is because we don’t give Christmas present. All the delivery men and the posties know us and greet us like old friends. Some of our family work in office jobs, so get their parcels delivered to us because there’s always someone home here. We hardly ever go away (and never all of us at once) because who would feed the foxes and the crows if we weren’t here? Or the cats? So the delivery men bring the parcels for neighbours who are out to us, as well. “Do you mind if I – ” “No, go on – leave it in our porch.”

Something I love about this is when a parcel has a tracking facility. I love watching the thing I’m waiting for cross the world.

I’m waiting patiently right now for a dress from Kari Thorne. The last parcel I had from her, I looked up her address on the aerial satellite. Where she lives is all green  - trees and fields and a quiet road that stops at a small rectangle under the trees with Kari and her sewing machine in it. In Wisconsin.

I watched each day as the parcel went to Athens (Wisconsin), then left Athens for Oshkosh and went from there to Chicago, then left Chicago for Detroit, then – getting nearer now – to London.

That dress left London two days ago. London is two hours from where I live by train. I have visions of posties in the sorting office all trying on a modest dress …

Where? Where is it now? Soon …

Online shopping is fun.



10 comments:

Suze said...

I have discovered the fun of online shopping. I am now waiting for a parcel that left the USA on September 9th. The agony of it all.

I hope your parcel arrives soon and fulfills the dreams you have dreamed while you wait in anticipation.

Pen Wilcock said...

Ooh - that's an interesting idea. it just shows you the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. *My* anticipation has been filled, not with dreams about the dress's wonderfulness (though I know from experience, Kari's work is first-rate) but with anxiety - in case I am too fat for the dress, or look hideous in it even though it is pretty, or have to pay a huge customs surcharge …

Thank you for showing me another way of being!

xx

Amy said...

That is really the only way I shop...exception being for groceries. For quite some time I have been pining for a pair of blown glass drop earrings I had seen on etsy. They were quite pricey so I have bided my time. So this month for my bday my husband treated me to those exquisite ear baubles. I too love to track the whereabouts of my packages so it was with extreme anticipation which turned rapidly to extreme angst as I watched them make their treck not to Augusta, Kentucky(home to George Clooney... his parents and his aunt Rosemary) but to Augusta New Hampshire!! Eek! All's well that ends well and after 2 or 3 phone calls to USPS they arrived safely:-) But it was rough sailing for awhile:-) xo

Pen Wilcock said...

Gee, what exciting lives we lead!!

xx ;0)

Amy Smith said...

Do please share about the medically active lotion you mentioned. ~Amy xo

Pen Wilcock said...

https://www.etsy.com/listing/179650230/frankincense-rejuvenative-creme-with

http://apothecarysgarden.com

:0) xx

Suzan said...

Pen I hope this makes you smile. We were so broke when my chidlren were little. I wore denim skirts and tees. One day I dressed differently and my youngest piped up, "Mummy you are not wearing your uniform."

I understand the angst. I am much larger than I should be or want to be. Buying clothings is horrible.

Pen Wilcock said...

:0D

See yourself as others see you!!

xx

Anonymous said...

I too love shopping online. I sometimes wonder how we managed before t'internet.

Pen Wilcock said...

Hi Daisy - got this comment so deleted the other. xx