on couponing and cheap needles

i usually work sunday mornings. this has some pretty cool advantages to it: first, i'm up early on a day i would otherwise sleep in, and while some people may look at that as an inconvenience, i think of it as good time management on a day i would have otherwise wasted. two, sunday crowds are usually pretty nice. lots of old people wanting their sunday papers. three, the saturday papers. see, one of my jobs on sunday morning before we open is to pull saturday's papers and set out sunday's, which means the poor unbought saturday papers head to the giant recycle box in back, unless of course their innards are rescued by me. then, during the slow spots, i can peruse the ads and clip coupons, should i find any worth having.

maybe i'm speaking from the ignorance of the uninitiated, but couponing hardly seems worth it. i see the tv shows where people have three carts of stuff and only pay some ridiculously small amount, like $8.73 or something, and i just don't get it. these people may very well qualify as hoarders. one couple had 53 bags of assorted chips in their garage stockpile. how can one eat that many before they go bad? these people have to have stockpiles to get the most out of their deals. i don't know about you, but i couldn't fathom having an entire shelf of gatorade in my house, or 35 bottles of maalox.

Of course, the rationale is twofold - buy only stuff that won't go bad (which is a blurry line for some people), and then if you run out when something's not on sale, you can just get it from your stockpile.

i repeat: 53 bags of chips, 35 bottles of maalox, entire shelf, stacked front to back, of gatorade.

i'll stick to the occasional clip.

as for the cheap needles thing? we're talking knitting needles. i bought a cheapy pair of circulars in my impatience (and stinginess) to complete a shawl, and they broke. in fact, the one side popped off so violently that the cable ricocheted in the other direction, leaving half my stitches stranded without a lifeline and a good half of those dropped down. 

this was after i started to rip it back, but as you can see if was turning out to be a fairly pretty little shawl. i'm still thinking about using some of my tax refund to put together little comfort shawl kits with yarn and needles and instructions and leaving them around town for people to find. i would love to think i changed someone's life by putting needles in their hands. maybe i'm being a bit altruistic. it would've made my day, at least.