Seeing other people naked/The Holt Renfrew shirt

This blog, like my day, shall be scattered and all over the place. I may stop mid sentence to go for coffee or to randomly buy a piece of expensive electronic equipment. Maybe I'll do this thing chronologically, to help come to some sort of calm before I end my day. Sure, let's try that.
Went into work an hour late, looking like shit. Okay, maybe not looking like shit necessarily, but looking like I was coming down with a case of pink eye. The CFO's wife had baked a ridiculous amount of really great stuff so I was able to alleviate some of my overwhelming fatigue with an infusion of fat and sugar. Sadly, it did not help the pink eye or my overall feelings towards my ass. Fat ass.
For the majority of the day I did random, one-off tasks and couldn't concentrate on anything. Then I bought a 42" flat screen TV from Dell because that's how I buy all big ticket items (cars, mattresses, gigantic couches): with little or no thought. Yet, strangely, I hemmed and hawed about my $183 wool coat from the GAP, and I get ornery about constantly spending $2 for a latte downstairs. Got free service fees for a year from Bank of Montreal. Told my mom I needed blinking lights for my person so I don't get hit by a car when I run. Saw another rainbow (I saw one yesterday too, how cool is that?). Thought a lot about going away for a weekend. Had an odd conversation about the unexpectedness of a watermelon/mint flavoured gum. Backed slowly away from the office, put on my hat and ran out the door.
Had some more conversation about the possibility of the world coming to an end. I mused, "Why do I bother about the environment, since I won't be having children that will be around to suffer through it?". Rationalized the purchase of a Hummer, a coat made from dead baby seals and lots of makeup that was forced upon bunnies against their will. I will get a daily paper, regardless of how bad it is for the environment. I will stop recycling. I won't take my own cup when I go for my $2 lattes.
Turned down a job offer from an ex-boss and was subsequently invited to her New Year's party. I think that I might actually go. Random invites to parties where I know no one are awesome.
At Holt Renfrew, after wrapping a single shirt in paper and thrusting it into a bag of some heft and significance, they artfully arranged two more tufts of tissue paper to make it look good.
I don't want something that merely looks good: I want substance and functionality. I want dependability, consistency and durability. I don't want something that uses unnecessarily or takes more than its allotted share. A $150 shirt is throwing caution to the wind enough: that can be a proverbial Hummer, our sense of entitlement.
What am I trying to rationalize to myself? What am I trying to define?
I struggle with what I have, what I've earned, what has been given to me versus what other people don't have and what meagre things they need to get by. I find myself ceaselessly wrapped up in the past or eagerly anticipating the future and I forget "right now". I don't experience sitting on a leather couch, next to the ocean, having a glass of wine and something to eat after a scattered day at work. That had been what I had been looking forward to since Monday. And it is something that I now (already) look fondly back on. What about the two hours when I was actually there?
Those one hundred and twenty minutes were the $150 shirt, but I was distracted by the excess tissue paper.