Free-Range Chicken Employee Shopper

Chalk it up to inertia. Call it force of habit. Sometimes it's hard to stop what you've been doing for a long time.

Shopping? No, I know nothing but this cage. I shall stay here!

After a particularly long day of work at Mirror Lake, we'd often find ourselves gathered together in the main room of the office. The clock would clearly read 6 p.m., perhaps even 7 p.m., and there we'd remain, haggard and confused employees unsure as to what to do after 12 or 13 hours of work.

It reminded me of Michael Pollan's free-range chickens. In his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, he exposes what he calls the pastoral story woven by big "organic" stores like Whole Foods.

He tells this story via a visit to a free-range chicken's coop, where the designation only means that the chicken has a door opened to a little lawn during the last 2 weeks of its life.

Unaccustomed to such freedom, such chickens rarely step out of the coop. The door remains open, unused.

"Hey, Rosie, what's that?" "Who knows. Let's just keep on pecking."

I remarked to my fellow employees that we were like the chickens. The door was open, but we were too accustomed to being productive in the office and didn't know how to leave.

Sigh. People very seldom find me as humorous as I think I am.

Well now I'm going to continue to beat this comparison. I can't bring myself to buy anything, but I should be having a freakin' shopping spree at this point. I'm the chicken in the coop with the open door.

Okay, okay, unfair. Unfair on many counts. First and foremost, unfair to subject you to my overused comparison. But this is my forum, so I'm only kinda sorry about that.

Unfair to compare my notbuyingness to being caged. I trust at this point you are familiar with my penchant for the melodramatic and know how to laugh with me. Or at.

Also unfair to say I can't bring myself to buy anything. I have, in fact, had no trouble pumping cash into the home furnishing economy of greater Austin. (I've also promised Brendon that I will let our poor little debit card recover from all the swiping I've done with it.) We now own a coffee table and a picnic table, so there are slightly less neanderthal-style meals taken in our home.

(A proper table civilizes the ceremony of a meal tremendously by taking the plate out of one's lap. The Clarks are a fancy family, folks. We put coasters under our beers now, too.)

I also have been privileged to visit Anthropologie and acquire a fabulous set of jammies, so unfair to say I have not bought any clothes at all. I used a gift card that was so very kindly mailed to me as a present to use on the 1st of January. Now I sit in very soft jammies when I write blog posts, and I am super thankful (thanks, Eric and Virginia!).

Actually having a conversation with myself in the dressing room. Yeah, that happens.

But the crazy shopping spree I envisioned for this month is just not coming to pass. I tried on the cutest Muffy/Spencer style sweater at Tommy Bahama, but I couldn't bring myself to take it home. Even though it would have been perfect for when we take sunset cruises on the yacht. In Monaco.

I even tried to pose like the lady in the dressing room picture frame.

"Spencer, dahling, I think I see another yacht on the horizon."

Tragic, I know. It gets worse:

I found a beautiful sweater dress at Marshalls. It was cute and such a steal and induced some crazy dressing-room-dancing.

But I just didn't...need it. The motivation to take it to the counter and make it mine totally eluded me.

You're so vain. Betcha think this blog is about you.

Same with the pants at Buffalo Exchange. Same with the shoes at Macy's.

I've lost my mojo, guys. The door's open, but I can't be bothered to go out.

I'm a freakin' chicken.