Thursday, October 2, 2008

Crazy Coupon Nightmares - Part 1

Hi - Beleaguered coupon husband Russ here with a cautionary tale for any guys out there with coupon crazed spouses!


Over the past few months I have grown to accept the fact that I am now sharing my wife with a filing cabinet full of coupons, a freezer full of hot dog sausages and enough Powerade to hydrate the Sahara. It has been an interesting time - the highs of the now famous Target 'Poptart deals', the lows of endless fights with Walmart cashiers and the 'somewhere in-betweens' of having to carry literally dozens of sacks full of Vitamin Water in from the trunk of the car. Trips to the supermarket or shopping malls are no longer recreational activities but precisely planned coupon harvesting events. We are no longer a couple who are shopping, we are a highly trained coupon snatch squad, trained to spot blinkies at a range of 100 yards. I never thought I would see the day where I was boasting of my wife's shampoo stockpile to my co-workers or stacking hundreds of packs of toilet paper into aesthetically pleasing structures for a blog picture.

Now as a mildly OCD individual I can understand my wife's new hobby - although I hope never to need them I can identify with the pleasure of fifty packs of Prep H medicated wipes beautifully arranged on a shelf. Nothing warms the soul quite like a tower of Coca Cola twelve packs stacked by Product Expiry dates. We have saved huge amounts of money in a very short space of time and there is no better form of marital bonding than standing side by side with your wife during a heated 'debate' with Kroger cashiers over the validity of a Cottonelle coupon.

I am however starting to receive signs from my subconscious that the whole couponing thing is starting to take over our lives. This week alone I have had two very alarming 'coupon related' dreams. We are not talking about 'pleasant sort of remember it in the morning' dreams but full on colour and sound dreams that have caused me to wake in a panic and keep Diane awake all night as a result of my talking in my sleep. What do they mean? I am too scared to Google them for the specifics but I have summarised the details below..

Dream 1
Diane and I have just finished shopping in Kroger. Diane is complaining that she has coupons left over and is determined to use them. She is feeding coupons into the Coke machine outside the store and groceries are dropping into the tray at the bottom of the machine. She is putting the groceries into a plastic sack and cursing the store for not having the items she needs. At the end she is standing there like the crazy cat woman in The Simpsons hurling bags of groceries at passing cars and screaming at security guards while I am trying to calm her down.

Dream 2
For some reason I am co-ordinating a marketing campaign that involves giving away free grey colored Porsche cars to people. With each car I am giving away a weird looking computer console that has been customised with three bottles of red Powerade Zero on the top. (No love for the Grape or Berry flavors for some reason!) The bottles rotate like a carousel. People around me are all complaining that it is hopelessly impractical as the motion of the cars causes the bottles to fall off the top of the computer. I am standing there arguing that they look great and they are a fantastic idea...


To be honest...I am worried!

0 comments: