Gimme More

I am currently in an absolute frenzy of imaginary shopping. Rather than being 'wishful thinking' shopping, this is shopping which I am going to do in the near future, but which requires careful and meticulous planning. I have not done a stitch of work all day. Instead, I have been sitting here making lists and e-mailing frantically back and forth with the female members of my family to determine what presents I will be buying everybody when we go back home for a two and a half week holiday end of January.

Shopping is my first and foremost love. It's better than exercise (not that that's actually any good in the first place), better than getting a promotion, better than eating that ginormous chocolate eclair when you're pmsing hard enough to commit mass extermination, almost but not quite better than sex - basically, it's the most fun a woman can have on her own or in a group of other woman (unless you're a lesbian, I assume, but as I'm not I can't comment on that). There's nothing better than the smell of a sale (it has a musty, metallic smell, like money raining down in buckets), the feeling of euphoria as you grab the last dress in your size, the taste of victory on your tongue as the cashier rings up your purchases.

The third best shopping experience, following closely behind 1) being out in the field, dressed in full battle gear (slip-on stilettos, skirt and a top with no ties or buttons, for adept stripping and reclothing) and 2) the stomach knotting tension of bidding on ebay, is the shopping projection. Here you plot future shopping trips with military precision. While this has none of the immediate tangible rewards, it leaves you quivering in anticipation of the big day ahead. It contains its own form of adrenaline rush, which is mainly linked to the gene that senses you are going to be spending a lot of money soon, and releases endorphins into your bloodstream in sheer anticipation.

From my extremely productive projections today, I have the following list:

Flea (Shoes' 9 year old niece): MotoX gear, including but not restricted to boots, breastplate, knee/elbow guards and pants (she recently received an off road motorbike for her birthday)

K (Shoes' 14 year old sister): Ipod

BlackVelvet (Shoes' sister) and OtherHalf (we have not yet met OtherHalf, so he will receive a proper name once I can channel his personality into one that fits him): A big bag of sweets and chocs from London, plus ???

Mama Shoes: ???

Daddy Lopz: Diabetic chocs for Daddy Lopz (SA does not cater for diabetics in terms of chocolate, perhaps because they're not supposed to eat it? Just a thought), plus ???

Mama Lopz: ???

G (Mini-Me's boyfriend): Sports autobiographies, cookbooks (totally gay, but Mini-Me is making me do it)

Mini-Me: an entirely new wardrobe of clothes, a couple of bottles of perfume, a few books from the bestseller list, disney soft toys, cold hard cash (give an inch and she takes a mile)

I still have a lot of work to do.