Magazine Overload

I am a woman of many interests and if you look at the stack of magazines on my ottoman that shows.  I currently have subscriptions to Wired, Country Living, Vanity Fair, Fitness, Sunset, National Geographic Traveler, Coastal Living, Martha Stewart Living and three, THREE, car magazines due to the fact I plan on buying a car later this year.  I am a compulsive researcher just so ya know.  Obviously, none of my friends need to suscribe since I pass all of these on so they can also feel bad on how far behind they are on their reading.  All of these varied periodicals serve a purpose to me.  Wired makes me feel witty and smart (and just as easily, old school, obsolete and at a loss).  Country Living has pretty pictures and great gift ideas.  Vanity Fair is all about well-written smut, pictures about people I could care less about but judge anyway and staggeringly good world stories.  Really just a lot of humanity packed into that mag.  Fitness is to keep me out of the fridge and on my toes.  Sunset is my response to a need for seasons.  They do a fabulous job of giving me a recipe for a rubarb galette when I NEED that recipe on the first day of summer.  Need an idea for a fall planting?  Oh, why, thank you, Sunset, it's like you read my mind.  Where should we go for a long weekend in the snow come wintertime?  Ahh, look at the gorgeous pictures of the rental cabin that somebody else plows out the sidewalk come morning.  Thank you again, Sunset! Martha Stewart Living is pure habit.  I moved out of my parents home at 18 just when Martha was hitting her stride.  Her face was everywhere, couldn't avoid the woman if you tried.  Somehow I ended up with a subscription to her magazine and the next thing I knew, I was decorating my college apartment with a flourish that those Pic N Save items never would have seen with someone else.  Someone who hadn't been touched with Madame Martha's feather wand.  So I still subscribe and I still learn and I am still amazed that no one has jumped off a bridge and blamed Martha for making them feel unworthy.
My darling husband glares at my stacks of literature and puts his Popular Mechanics on top but he wouldn't have a Super Wife that kicks ass in plenty of departments if she didn't flip through those glossy pages of mental stimulus.


Photo by James Wojick