Feeling Good

These are fat quarters purchased at an estate sale a couple days for 25 cents each. Being a city person for a long time and now in "the real world" or "the other world" where there are garage sales, yard sales and estate sales, I have pleasures awaiting but only just beginning to be discovered.

The pleasure part of shopping and especially of finding bargains was the subject of an article I read in the paper a couple days ago. Somehow scientists who chose these weird little subjects to explore [they're the people whose articles appear in Psychology Today] have found certain pleasure producing brain cells turn on when we're shopping and axillary cells light up when we get a bargain. These happy brain cells also make us lose track of time so that half an hour in the mall [or bookstore for me] turns into three hours and we're late cooking dinner. Is that surprising? Hardly. They went on to a corollary that is not surprising either: the very same thing happens in the brain when people are working on crafts or arts -- same good feelings. Many crafts and art can be expensive but I'll vote for them ... but I'm not likely to totally give up shopping either.