dear god

Shit.

On Saturday morning, I found myself, standing, blinking, in the middle of fucking Lighting Warehouse.

A couche-marre, if you will.

Shopping in ‘valu-marts’ and supermarkety places even on any other day of the week is on my list of Worst Possible Things Humans Do To Themselves. For one, people tend to shop on Saturday mornings with their entire families.

It’s an entire family outing on the outer echelons of town. Where most of these warehouse retailing facilities, seem to spawn in a plethora of depot-titaniumness, and entire families rock up in the family Avensis. Together, seeking, wholesale chlorine and/or velour lounge suites.

If you’re one of these people – please tell me why. Just why.

It’s bad enough going to a supermarket at lunchtime – queues and someone’s ALWAYS standing in front of the shelf you need to get to when you’re in a rush – but why the family outings to Weylandts and Checkers Home Store? It’s both fascinating and horrendous at the same time.

Entire families shopping for a vacuum cleaner and a set of pool noodles at Makro. I’ve seen it all too many times. Dad’s wearing two tone and pushing the trolley at 0.02 km/hour, and Mom’s blocking the aisle with her large backside, while the kids run around screaming, on too much sugar.

That’s not how Saturday mornings should be spent.

‘Cept, since I’ve been away, all my light bulbs blew. Well most of them. Can’t pee at night, because it’s too scary in the dark. There’s no more mood lighting in my bedroom. And need a torch to go through the cupboards in my kitchen.

I’m depressed, but not enough that I’m prepared to live without light.

So off to Fourways I go, with a bag of defunct light bulbs.

Seems my house is filled with weird lighting. I went through a stage of buying intricate standing lights for my house last year. The bulbs, evidentally, take one-of-a-kind- prototypical crazy-rare light bulbs. Didn't think it through at the time. On top of that, my landlady also fitted lights in the house that require you take apart 8 finicky bulbs while standing tip toe on a chair, whilst wielding imported light bulbs from Romania, or the likes.

So I can’t go to Woollies, no. I have to go to some dog’s end warehouse that specializes and stocks 2 000 000 types of lighting systems, replete with families and slow service.

I spent six hundred rand. On lighting. On a Saturday morning.

Fuck that for a bag of cashews.

Spent another hour or so fitting the new bulbs into the various teeny sockets that these lights behold – and now, and now – I can actually see shit in my house.

I gotta say: the menial meaningless of buying lights and shoving them into their respective sockets… felt pretty good.

Dear God.