Starting over

By Juli

I’m sitting here faced with a sad choice. Begin again, or give up.

Sometime over the holidays, I lost my orange coupon book. YES, I said “coupon book.” I do financial writing, for chrissake; it would be unconscionable for me to not take advantage of slashing the family bill with strategic coupon usage (combined with in-store sales, coupons can help get you free stuff!).

Anyway, months of Sunday papers and sorting through receipts to weed out the coupons, searching Target for the perfect coupon holder, labeling the little tabs, sorting them all by grocery store department, LOVING it. NEEDING it. Using it with glee!! (maniacal laughter)

I’d only been Zen with it for a few weeks. There was a long slow build up to making it part of my shopping experience, but we’d made it. We’d finally made it!

Somewhere in the shuffle of fifteen different stores in the two weeks leading up to Christmas, it disappeared. Gone. Vanished. I looked everywhere. Under my seats in the car, in my workbag, in the old diaper bag I haven’t used in nine months (the one that still freeloads in my cargo area and will be useful only if my kids suddenly shrink two sizes and need a change of clothes).

Nothing. Not in the hallway drawers, my office, the junk drawer (as if!). No, the kids didn’t scurry away with it; it didn’t get thrown away. Where in the hell? Where is that effing coupon book??

I called Target lost and found (not kidding). Stop and Shop. Market Basket. Macy’s. Old Navy. I even called the emergency room where my son got the six stitches under his chin (I have no shame). Each time I carefully described the coupon book and its contents. They all think I’m insane. But really, there’s a lot of money to be saved in that garish bungee corded thingymabob! And (omigod I just remembered), I even had a couple $10 LL BEAN gift cards in it. ShIT!

It’s been long enough now that I know it’s just plain gone. Even if it’s tucked somewhere in this house, day after day a coupon or two expires. Never to be used. Another month or so, most will have passed to the other side. In six, nothing will be left.

So here I sit, new coupons appearing in various piles in my office, and I ask myself "Do I have the strength to rally them all together and try to start again?"