I hate shopping.

Here’s a list of things I’d rather do than shop.

1) Capture a porcupine with my teeth.

2) Build an igloo and live in it.

3) Perform kidney surgery on myself.

When I even think about shopping I feel somewhat faint.  Sickly – like, as if I’ve swallowed a sea urchin. Fortunately, I don’t need to shop much.

Why? Because I am a writer. Me and my graphic, cartwheeling, crayon-colored imagination do not need to look hot because I am alone. A lot. Plus I’ve been married a long time.

I have gangs of characters in my head who screech, cry, throw cherry pie, paint whimsical chairs, lie, fall in love, name concrete pigs, sneak peanut oil into condoms, sit naked on their decks, and declare that men are pricks.  I have entire families going back generations in my head and they never, ever shut up. Sometimes the characters leave their books without my permission and mix in with characters from other books and that is never good.

So I slop around in jeans and sweatshirts, write away, and try not to argue or talk out loud to my characters when others are near me. (It scares them).  During the last weeks before a deadline I’m often in pajamas until my kids troop home from school because I work ten to sixteen hours a day.  My pajamas ones with the reindeers are my favorite. Who needs fashion for this?

But recently I have been forced to admit that I have crossed the line from sloppy, liberal thinking writer-style into abject frumpiness. This happened because of back to back deadlines. It also happened because I have grown so darn fat nothing fits. My urge to get at least something decent was also stoked by a saleswoman’s snarky comment about “those things,” when referring to my jeans.

So for advice on what to buy, and to see what is currently in style, I bought a fashion magazine. I have not bought a fashion magazine since the moon was blue with gold stripes, in other words: I can’t remember.

Here’s what I saw in the magazine to help me shop.

Apparently, silver, shimmery dresses from Uranus wrapped in metal bars and ball bearings are all the rage. It’s Space Martian meets hardware store.  Also, it is fashionable to dress like a leprechaun. I know this because I see a model in green frills and ruffles holding live doves. I don’t know if a live dove would stay on my finger, but I could give it a try.

Dead animals attached to purses must also be cool because there is a dead animal attached to this girl’s purse. I am from Oregon and we like wearing dead animals about as much as we like shoving umbrellas down our throats while warbling, so I will have to pass on that.

I am startled by two models wearing short dresses barely covering their privates made from leather in geometric shapes in red, black, and orange. Their expressions say, “I think we’re being chased by stampeding rhinos. We should run!”

One model is wearing a swirly painting. She is standing on her head. It is unlikely I would ever wear a painting and I will never promenade around on my head so I feel a wee depressed.  Another outfit has a kaleidoscope of colors that makes me wonder if the designer was on drugs when he made the dress. It appears there is a robot, a goose head, a sad dog, and an old lady with a Cyclops eye on the material. Why would a Cyclops eye be fashionable? I am now depressed and baffled.

Finally I come to a model who is wearing a tie dyed skirt and part of a Scottish kilt on the top. Her cleavage is out and she has black tattoos up and down her legs that look like American Indian totem poles. She is carrying bamboo and is so thin I know she is thinking of eating the bamboo.

In fact, all the models are about the size of cotton swabs with heads, their legs longer than my ladder. Honestly, they look ravenously hungry and could do with more hearty soups and chocolate in their lives. I am hungry looking at them.

After studying the fashion magazine, I am exhausted. If I were a drinker, I would drink. I would swim in kahlua, in fact, spurting it like whales do from my mouth.

I decide not to go shopping. Too confusing. Too expensive. I don’t know where to get a live dove. I don’t know where to find a wearable painting or a robot. I can’t walk on my head.

I wonder: What is wrong with my reindeer pajamas anyhow?

Nothing, I tell myself, with quiet pride. Nothin’.

Besides I have another deadline and have no time to shop.