One of the small joys I have in life is perusing mail-order catalogs.  It’s a nice, leisurely way to spend a few moments getting my shopping fix without actually ever buying anything.  And it’s one of the reasons I so enjoy coming up to my in-laws home in Madison.

On a monthly basis, my mother-in-law receives enough catalogs to be personally responsible for the deforestation of a small Latin American country.  It’s not that she orders from the catalogs, or even orders from any but one or two of them on a semi-almost-regular basis.  Catalogs are like rabbits and wire clothes hangers.  Turn your back on two of them, and pretty soon you’ll have a flood.

In any case, we showed up at our in-laws home this evening to spend a quiet New Years Eve watching some movies and enjoying free baby-sitting the company of family.  As usual around the holiday season, the kitchen counter contained a stack of catalogs about a half a foot high that had arrived just today.  Tossing aside the ones that didn’t interest me, I settled in to explore the wonders of the modern consumer culture.   I especially enjoy looking at the Catalogs of Crap (Lillian Vernon, etc).  But occasionally I branch out to the more classy options.   Today I found a catalog for the Vermont Country Store.  I flipped through the pages to pre-qualify the magazine for reading.  Finding the promise of hand-crafted this and old-fashioned that, I added it to my stack.

Gradually I worked my way through the magazines until I returned to the Vermont Country Store for a second, more thorough, look.  Page after page showed my initial assessment to be correct.  This was a folksy, quality magazine filled with expensive versions of simple things that your great-great grandparents might haver purchased for a few pennies at the local Five and Dime.

And then I turned the page…and found myself reading some very sensible and practical descriptions of …adult entertainment devices.

No.  I’m not kidding.  I was somewhat taken aback

This is why I love reading catalogs.  You never know what you’ll find in even the most staid of catalogs.