Keeping Pace

My archnemesis, my mortal enemy, my daily battle, is against cardboard.

We seem to drown in it.

We are internet shoppers. With the price of gas, and the extra time necessary to travel to shop, the cost of having something delivered seems to make more and more sense everyday.

And with every delivery comes more cardboard. It seems to build at incredible rates. All the cardboard must be sliced down to required size and boxed for collection. It's quite a process. And quite a challenge to keep up.

I have declared war against cardboard. At present, the battle could go either way.

But we'll continue to shop on the internet. Keeping me out of stores in general makes for a kinder planet. I don't know what it is about people in stores. They seem to forget that any other human exists on the planet but themselves, parking carts across aisles, commandering sections of stores at a time, lost in a far-away gaze at the products around them, hypnotized in another world.

It's like the first time I went to an all you can eat seafood buffet at the shore. It sounded like an awesome idea . . . until we got there. The buffet was a war zone with people diving into crab legs and clearing them all as soon as they hit the warmer, elbowing, jockeying for position. Ugh.

One of my priorities wherever I go is to be conscious of others, to not have any negative effects on anyone else around me, no matter how simple. It's just me. I want to stay out of the way.

Yes. There are some things that you just need to go out to shop for. And I know a couple gals that enjoy the "hunt," and graciously leave sourpusses like myself at home.

I've never been able to complete my Christmas shopping without having to go out to a local store. But, maybe, just maybe, this year will be the first all-internet Christmas shopping event. And through December I'll continue to slice and to rip and to fold and to pack, and I'll continue my personal battle to keep our lives free of excessive cardboard in our basement.