Mark Fisher was an invested kind of guy. When he was in he was ALL in, so when Donald Trump surprisingly got elected to president he’d plop himself in front of the tv every night after work and watch hours of cable news. He’d yell back and give the finger to some of the interviewed guests and generally go nuts about the state of the country. I was right there along with him, but I’d get side-tracked and scroll on my phone, put things in my shopping cart, google anti-aging creams that popped up in my Facebook feed, and comment on posts with haha or heart emojis. After months and months of those news filled nights, I decided I’d watch an hour each day and then go upstairs and watch something else or read. Mark would come up later and often said the same thing, “They’re getting close, Kath, won’t be long and he’ll be out of there.” He said this so often to me that I finally told him, “Just come and get me when it’s a sure thing and I’ll pop the cork on some champagne.”
Since Mark died it is hard for me to watch the news at all. Being outraged isn’t as entertaining without him and I don’t need anything else to make me depressed, so I read a lot of news sites but watch far less than before. My attention span has been greatly affected by grief so I don’t get involved in anything more than very mindless stuff, often HGTV and the DIY Channel.
It was during the cold and dreary nights of early spring when I climbed into bed and stumbled upon the magic of QVC. There’s no plot line or need to pay close attention, and with a purchase on easy pay you’ve got yourself life-changing products for twenty bucks a month times infinity. This is way cheaper than therapy, and so I settled in for shopping via television. As someone who has sold a lot of useless crap in my life, I found it fascinating that the host and seller could talk about a tshirt for thirty solid minutes.
When I was watching one night last week the featured item was floral jeans. A vertical cascade of flowers went down the side of one leg and after the host went on and on about the stretch and comfort of these jeans she said, “It’s like wearing an oil painting.” Wearing an oil painting? I looked at the cat and asked, “Who actually wears an oil painting other than for a Halloween costume?” The cat didn’t seem to want to get involved in this and jumped off the bed and disappeared as a customer was calling in – Betty from Pittsburgh. As a novice QVCer, I thought taking customer calls would be an absolute crapshoot. In the art of the retail deal, you don’t want customers chatting it up to the masses about a product unless you are absolutely sure what they are going to say. I needn’t have worried. Betty proudly stated, “I can’t say enough good things about these jeans. I have 75 pairs.” 75 PAIRS?? What kind of person buys 75 pairs of jeans that are a walking da Vinci? I had to turn it off. Not only did I feel sorry for Betty from Pittsburgh with her 75 pantsy oil paintings, I wondered what kind of person I was becoming by watching this kind of stuff for entertainment.
A few days went by and I climbed into bed and again turned on QVC. That night’s guest designer was Isaac Mizrahi who puts the E in entertaining. I had a feeling the old ladies at home sipping their chardonnay can’t get enough of this guy. The host said that for the first time in YEARS, Isaac’s line was featuring a cardigan. Years? A fashion designer of mass produced clothing has not featured a cardigan in years? I called fake news on Isaac. The sweaters were floral and came in six different colorways. Shawn, the host, said it sure was hard to pick a favorite and Isaac, who was dressed in head-to-toe black, said spring is for color and how could you ever decide with such an array of beauty. After twenty minutes of describing the scalloped neck and functional buttons, Nan from Florida called in. “Hi, darling Nan, tell me which one is your favorite,” Isaac asked and Nan said they all were. She bought four yesterday and was getting the other two tonight. Isaac said, “Oh my, you can’t go wrong with that,” and I thought that both Nan and Isaac could use a lesson in fashion overkill.
I imagined Nan was laying in bed with her phone and shaking the hair of ten cats off her Visa card, racking up her bill with too many of one thing and her nightly pretend friends. This started to hit too close to home so I turned the tv off and picked up my book on grief where it said that after the death of a loved one a person could have difficulty in concentration that may last months or years. Seeing as how that is the current state of my life, I closed my eyes and hit the rewind button on my memories when my husband was here, outraged, and joyfully dancing to the news of indictments. If only he were the Value-Of-The-Day I’d add him to my cart and easy pay him to the front porch, and those long and quiet nights of watching shopping would be something the brokenhearted did and not me.
