Human Squirrels

My usual Sunday morning ritual starts with me getting up at seven, and walking the dogs. On my way into the house I pick up Mark's Sunday Paper, and bring it in to him, usually tossing the twenty pounds of newsprint onto the bed. It's the best way to wake him up. I then go make breakfast while Mark goes through the paper, separating the different ads, and spreading them out on the bed (You didn't think he got the paper for the news did you?). It all seems harmless enough. After all, Mark does all the grocery shopping and pays for it, so I would expect him to look for bargains.

Yesterday I walked into the bedroom, and I was horrified. Mark was watching a television show called 'Extreme Couponing', a show about folks who clip coupons and use them. They don't just clip one or two coupons, but hundreds of them, and then go shopping and bring mountains of crap home. The part that horrified me so much was when they showed one of the homes of an extreme couponer. The woman had enough toilet paper to last until 2049, and enough tweezers to tweeze the eyebrows of the entire country of Greece. Another person had bottles of water she had purchased with coupons squirreled away in her house. If she drank one bottle of water a day, she would be able to slake her thirst for sixty seven years. As cluttered as our home is I shuddered at the thought of Mark getting into this. As it is, our kitchen is already bursting at the seams, and I have no idea where we would store all that crap. Luckily, while I stood there with my mouth hanging open staring at the television, I heard Mark from behind me say, "These people are crazy. I just don't understand why you would buy all that stuff and keep it in your house."
Thank goodness, Mark has sense, and would not be turning into an extreme couponer. The only thing that bothered me about that is when I turned around, Mark was sitting there clipping coupons.