BUYING HAPPINESS
As Simple As Q-V-C
BY:MARC L.
One of my wife’s favorite activities is shopping. It doesn’t really matter what’s to be bought, as long as going from store to store and looking at all that’s available is involved. It’s not the buying that makes her so happy as it is the process of examining jewelry or clothes or handbags or shoes.
But when Lynne came down in her young fifties with scleroderma that affected her lungs with pulmonary arterial hypertension, it made breathing difficult—and shopping became difficult as well. Getting out of the house independently became a challenge for her, since driving while connected to an oxygen tank is not highly recommended. And although my willingness to drive Lynne to the mall never abated, and I’ve taken her shopping in the wheelchair the disease’s progression required, time constraints from work, handling household chores and tending to Lynne’s health needs and raising our daughter make such excursions rare.
Lynne, however, is not one to be easily stopped. She found a 24-hour alternative to the mall that allowed me to work her shopping into my routine. It’s QVC, the 24/7 televised shopping center with everything from computer equipment to fashion to home supplies to gift ideas for both kids and adults. With a little help from the postal service—as far as both deliveries and returns are concerned—Lynne’s ability to enjoy the shopping experience is minimally hampered, and it even helps me by allowing her to purchase goods like bedding or birthday gifts without my having to bundle her up, help her into the car and be her legs during a mall-traversing afternoon. And since she never really trusted my ability to choose home-décor items and gifts, I can thank QVC for preventing some marital spats.
Sure, there’s a level of sensory deprivation involved in this type of shopping, and that’s why Lynne convinced me it’s okay to order things, check them out and then make full use of the network’s return policy. It’s that policy that got me on a first-name basis with the guys at the post office, since every Saturday I find myself with a stack of packages making their way back to West Chester, Pennsylvania. Filling out the postal insurance forms for the more expensive items might take more time than I’d like, but it’s not that big an inconvenience.
The only problem that derived from this experience is one that’s typical of a healthy household: Who is in charge of the remote? Time in front of the TV has become—other than dinnertime—the only “couple time” Lynne and I get to share. But when there’s a choice of “Diamonique Sales Days” and, let’s say, the World Series, a rather healthy debate over what to watch can ensue. It’s at times like this that one learns the importance of a TiVo or VCR. The stuff on QVC, as I’ve been known to point out, usually can be ordered after the specific show is over. “So,” I’ve been known to say, “watch a recorded version of the QVC stuff and order what you want after I watch my ballgame live.” A winning argument if ever I heard one! Unless, of course, she’s just told me to watch a taped version of the game after she’s fallen asleep—and be sure not watch the late-night news so I won’t know the score. “Grrrrr!” is the only appropriately manly response to her comment.
QVC’s also brought a whole new group of friends into our home. Often is the time when I return home from work to learn of a pregnancy or engagement or some other life-altering event, only to discover it is happening to a QVC salesperson who’s willingly shared the news with her adoring public, including Lynne.
It’s when these people started entering my bedroom that I started to have a problem. As I lie in bed next to my wife, trying to fall asleep, Lynne is reluctant to turn off the TV. I ask that she do so, but she simply lowers the volume. The disease—and multiple naps each day that result from it—changed her sleep habits. And, she says, who better to bore her to sleep than the people talking about nothing that interests her on late-night QVC? I know it’s always worked on me.