My secret shame

Wow, I'm only five posts in and I'm already sharing my deepest secrets with you. How amazing is that? Remember this when it comes time to nominate me for the MTV VMA Blogger of the Year award.

So my secret shame is this: I am a moderate to severe extreme couponer. This is so shameful that spell-check doesn't even recognize couponer as a word. I'm not sure what the scale for extreme couponer is, but I fall somewhere between functioning member of society/former Victoria's Secret model and potential star on Doomsday Preppers. If all you needed to survive the end of civilization was toothpaste, pasta, feminine hygiene products, spaghetti sauce, and cereal- because damn there are a lot of coupons for that kind of stuff.

Couponing has become a recent obsession for me and I think it has come from two things going on in my life:
 1- Being a SAHM with no money of my own, married to a miser who won't even grant me the dignity of a $200 weekly allowance. I know. Unbelievable.

2- Crippling boredom during naptime/bedtime/preschooltime. Back when I was teaching, any 'down-time' was filled with grading papers, planning lessons, random paperwork, etc., but now... all I have is my scissors and the weekly inserts from the paper.

This past week was SUPER Triple Coupons at Schnucks, and for those with a life, that means coupons up to 75 cents are tripled. That's $2 whole dollars and 25 whole cents worth of savings! Imagine the possibilities! Half of a Grande Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks! The sleeve of a shirt from Target! A soda during lunch out with a friend! And much, much more!

I realized today that I had a problem when I got in the car after my fifth trip to Schnucks in a week, and not just any Schnucks- the worst Schnucks in the St. Louis area, aka the Schnucks in walking distance of my house. This Schnucks doesn't hire baggers, because they don't value you or your time. This Schnucks is letting the aisles go back to nature instead of spending the time cleaning it. This Schnucks doesn't believe in kids carts because it hates children. People have been killed in this Schnucks. This Schnucks doesn't give a damn about you and it wants you to know it. But I went there FIVE TIMES, once with my children (!!!!!!) all to save up to $2.25 on things like a 'Make-Your-Own-Bread Kit' that I would have never given a second look at before. And they make you take all these trips because they have a 15-coupon limit per trip/per family/per day. Do you see it? Do you see the dangerous web that extreme couponing weaves?

So if the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem, than consider this my first step. I am tired of hiding in the aisles when another shopper walks by out of fear that they will see my coupons and consider me crazy. I am tired of picking the line where it looks like no one else will pick so the people behind me won't give me dirty looks while the checker types the coupon that didn't clear into the register. But most of all, I am tired of buying shit I don't really need or want all for the satisfaction of saving $2.25. That sweet, sweet savings.

 I'm pretty sure the second step is drowning your sorrows at the Target Starbucks, so if you need me, I'll be there.