Saving the best for last

I'm a person who saves the best for last.

If I'm eating a meal and there's something that I particular like, I'll probably eat everything else first, then eat my favorite. If I have a bowl of some kind of snack--nuts, chips, whatever--I'll eat the broken ones first, then the whole ones. If I have M&M's, I don't eat them in order of color, but I do eat any broken ones first.

When I check my email, I delete all the spam first, then look at the business/corporate stuff, saving the stuff that I really want to read, i.e., emails from frirends, for last. When I open up Bloglines, which I use to read all of the sites that I used to keep bookmarked, and that I now subscribe to via rss feed, I read them in order of interest.

Or, it's also sometimes in order of length -- I'll read the ones that I know will be really short first, and save the ones that I know will be lengthy (and juicy) for last.

I'm not sure what, if anything, this says about me.

Bob and I went to the grocery store tonight so he could get a treat. He wanted something from the bakery section, and while he was deciding, I wandered around to see if there was anything I wanted. If they had had a chocolate croissant, I would have gotten one, but they didn't, so I didn't get anything.

They had some fudge that looked good, but it was a larger quantity than I wanted, and I wouldn't have been able to decide on a flavor, either. Both just plain chocolate and peanut butter looked good. It made me think about another idiosyncracy I have -- I'm much more likely to buy something if it's an assortment. If they had had a package that had a couple of pieces of several kinds of fudge, I probably would have bought it. Almost anything is more appealing to me if there's a range of flavors, or some kind of a sample pack with more than one variety. Like a package of instant hot chocolate packets, with one or two packets of each of several different flavors.

Or instant oatmeal -- I remember that they used to have boxes with several different flavors (they may still, I just don't buy it anymore), and I would almost always buy that rather than a box of all the same flavors. I'm not sure why, exactly. I guess I just like to try a lot of different things. Or maybe I'm afraid I'll get bored before I eat six bowls of oatmeal . . .

What else? Tea. If Celestial Seasonings or some company like that has a sample box with a bunch of different teabags in it, I'll buy it. Like, for instance, a holiday assortment. Rather than buy a whole box of one flavor, I will definitely always choose the assortment.

Especially a holiday assortment. I love holiday stuff. I don't really like herbal tea, but it's almost more than I can stand not to buy all of the Celestial Seasonings holiday teas. I resist, because I know I would like them, but it's still a huge temptation. Bob and I were at Target last night to pick up a couple of things, and I saw Christmas goldfish crackers, and while I didn't buy any, I was really pulled in that direction.

I love this time of year because I can buy paper towels and paper napkins with Christmas prints, and Christmas post-it notes, and peppermint ice cream, and pine-scented candles . . . Put some kind of Christmas theme on anything and I'll be much more likely to buy it than the regular version. Target's "Dollar Spot" has a bunch of Christmas toiletry items now, and they're all really cheap and cheesy, but it was all I could do not to buy one of everything--red and green striped sleep masks and manicure sets with candy-striped toe separators (for holding your toes apart while putting on nail polish), bubble baths and incense.

I love it when Bath & Body Works comes out with their holiday scents. This year they have a wonderful peppermint scented body wash; I need to go buy a few of those. I'm always seduced by candycane striped ballpoint pens near the checkout lines at stores, and I almost always go through the cheap cosmetics aisle at the drugstore and buy a couple of bottles of glittery nail polish, even though I seldom wear it.

Hm. I think the Christmas thing deserves its own post.

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