View from the North 40: I'm not a big fan of it at all

Now, when it’s too late to back out of this course of action, I really understand that there is no way that one can build a home without having to shop for things — like, a lot of things.

I admit that it seems patently obvious that one must shop for structural materials, fixtures, finish materials and a whole host of stuff that creates and fills a home. Really, you might ask, how else did I expect to get this project done without the funds to hire a personal shopper? That’s a fair question, no doubt.

Buying and shopping are not the same thing.

I know I’ve written about this before, so I should just learn to let it go, be the better person, grow up a little, shop like a competent adult, but I just cannot emphasize enough how much I dislike the act of shopping. I think my innate aversion to shopping is so strong that I somehow deluded myself into thinking I simply would be buying stuff rather than participating in the long, all-consuming process of shopping for it.

Buying stuff is a completely different animal from shopping. Buying stuff is just walking into a store and telling a helper-person you need an item and then handing a teller some form of legal tender, like cash, credit card or check, and then leaving with your brand new stuff.

I imagined buying windows would be like: “Hi, I need a bedroom window.” And the clerk would be like: “Small, medium or large?” And I’d be all: “Medium. Here’s my credit card — I get cash back on that, y’know.” And the clerk would be all: “My you are a smart shopper. Here’s your card.”

If buying stuff were an animal it would be a cute puppy. Who doesn’t like a cute puppy? Who can’t handle dealing with a cute puppy?

Shopping, though — shopping, by comparison, is a cute bear cub.

The cub seems not so different from the puppy in fuzzy, four-legged cuteness. Surely, the difference is only superficial, you think. Then you try to pick it up and it bites the bejeepous out of your hand and claws its way up your body like you are a common pine tree. It ends up perched on your head, growling in some demonic squall, and every time you try to remove it, it just digs into your cranium a little deeper until your head is shredded and you are shrieking for help.

I know what I’m talking about. I have raised bear cubs (for real) and now I have shopped in that maddeningly thorough, second-guessing your eyes, mind blown by choices, kind of all-caps SHOPPING. (It doesn’t get any realer than all caps.)

I have shopped for ceiling fans.

I have looked at more than a thousand fans in person and online. I didn't know that many ceiling fan styles existed in the universe.

This is so far beyond buying that it’s like the bear cub bit me in the backside on its climb to my head, then crawled inside my skull and mauled my brain. I figured out flooring options for my entire home easier than this.

I can now match CFM, or cubic feet per minute, to room size. I can do the math to calculate airflow efficiency and know that the EPA has standards on what is acceptable. I know what, besides speed of blade, pushes more air. And not only do I know that a sone is a measure of sound, I also know that the lower the number the better. I can define my preferred style of ceiling fan design and, as a bonus, I know manufacturers want way too much money for quiet bathroom fans, even though bathroom accoutrement was not part of my original shopping quest.

I will, after an all-consuming week of shopping, be ordering a ceiling fan this weekend. I find no satisfaction in this. I just want to put it behind me but can’t shake the nervous tick about the next shopping demand I have to meet.

I would rather tangle with a hungry, feral bear cub. Those wounds heal. Shopping? That post-traumatic stress will stick with me for a lifetime.

(CFM at high speed divided by watts used in operation equals airflow efficiency, and I’ll never be the same carefree me I was a few short months ago at [email protected].)