Ellen has a problem. No Ellen is not addicted to drugs, nor is she 16 and pregnant, and her boyfriend didn’t cheat on her with a man. But…Ellen does have a problem.
Ellen is not defined by her problem, as a person. A graduate of the Honors Program at Umass Amherst, where she was an English major, Ellen is your typical North Shore girl…maybe just a little bit smarter (No one should take offense, I too am a North Shore girl). Turning 23 years old today, (Happy birthday, girl!), Ellen lives in Western Mass with her boyfriend, of three years, Chris, they are very happy. They are happy because, Ellen thinks Chris has a good sense of humor, and she finds him attractive, among other reasons.
Chris works in sales and Ellen is an assistant manager at a major retail store. It is fair to say that this couple find buying and selling an aphrodisiac. 
(If you are wondering how I spelled the word ‘aphrodisiac’ when I spoke with the English major in question about her problem she helped me spell it out.)
Now, back to the issue, “I am, by definition, an oniomaniac”, says Ellen in her month old blog Cold Turkey. For those of us who are not English majors, oniomaniac is a stupid/fancy way of saying shopaholic. Ellen’s problem is she constantly thinks about buying things, mostly clothes, accessories, shoes, etc. Ellen decided to start a 3 month long shopping cleanse and to deal with the ups and downs of this journey she is documenting the rehab through her blog, and we the people are loving it!
Cold Turkey begins with Ellen’s tale of how she turned to Oprah to deal with her problem…
Okay, that’s not true, but Ellen was inspired by a woman on Oprah who did a 6 month shopping cleanse, and catapulted Ellen into a world of receiving presents. Like the cleanse rules state, Ellen may not buy herself anything other than the essentials, such as food, tooth paste, wedding gifts, etc. Not being able to buy things has lead to situations like this:
(loosely quoted), “…almost bought new mail basket today, it was the perfect bamboo mail basket, obviously made just for mail, it was $1.99. A nice coworker stepped in so I wouldn’t ruin the cleanse and bought it for me”, Ellen is one month into this and she nearly broke it for a new mail basket. Ellen then admitted, after telling me about the basket, that she has some shoes on hold that another charming coworker may buy for her too. This is a great example of how Ellen really does have a problem.
Ellen hasn’t broken the cleanse yet, although her shopping habits have moved from clothes to food, Ellen bough 6 hummuses at the grocery store recently because they were on sale. She is worried that when the cleanse ends she will be forced to buy new clothes because he old clothes no longer fit.
I’ve known Ellen for around 8 years now and I was obsessed with her, even before she started this amazing blog! She is the best example of a combination beauty with brains and I highly encourage everyone to follow her story!
Go to shoppingcleanse.blogspot.com to follow Ellen’s Cold Turkey story. “It’s like Sex and the City, but I have a boyfriend, so I’m only sleeping with one person, but I’m shopping with EVERYONE!”
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 1:28 am and is filed under Two Cents and Pocket Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.