If I Like It, They Stop Making It

Is it only me?  Am I alone so inflexible that only specific items will do while others easily shift to an alternative?

It seems to me that as soon as I become enamored with a certain brand and model of running shoe, it is replaced by a newer version which just isn’t the same.  I can no longer find my favorite Adidas Women’s Super Nova Glide 3 shoes in stores or on line and I’m afraid to try the expensive Glide 4s because of negative reviews.  I even bought two pairs of a smaller size Glide 3s hoping I can wear them with thinner socks.   As soon as I include Original Vegan Boca Burgers in my daily menu, they disappear from the shelves in all local supermarkets for weeks.   As soon as I can’t live without Omni by Bulgari body lotion, the company stops making it.  I asked the receptionist in my optometrist’s office what fragrance she was wearing and tried for two weeks to find DKNY cologne anywhere before I gave up.  It has been replaced by multiple new generations of variations on the DKNY theme.  Her bottle, a gift, was a year old.

I spend hours/week searching the internet for discontinued items and buying large quantities of available items I depend on to store them in case of an emergency.  The other day I ordered half a dozen eye liner pencils from Canada because the manufacturer has stopped making them and there are none left in local stores.  I know because I went to three local CVS stores in one morning and did an online search of the website for the manufacturer. I recently decided I can’t live without it.   I have five half gallons of my favorite Breyer’s Fat Free Vanilla Ice Cream (it’s delicious!) in my freezer because Acme stopped carrying it and I would miss it terribly if I had to do without it. The replacements I’ve tried just don’t do it for me.  Just last week I had to go into Philadelphia to find Philadelphia Cream Cheese Cheesecake Pie Filling, after phone calls first to Kraft Foods and then to two local stores.  I had to consult Google Maps before leaving the house.  It has become a ritual to make a cheesecake pie for a monthly gathering I attend and the event would not be the same without it.

My insistence on having exactly what I’ve become attached to has led to some real comedies of error.  My most humiliating experience was excitedly ordering what I thought was a case of a dozen bottles of a particular discontinued self-tanner from E-Bay only to discover that I had paid $100 for only ONE bottle sold by an enterprising entrepreneur taking advantage of a particularly pitiful self-tanner addict.  He would not accept the item as a return, pointing out angrily that he had not misled me and I should have read his “no return” policy before I made the purchase.  I had made some unwarranted assumptions based on my knowledge of the previous usual single-item price and the absurdity of thinking one bottle could cost that much.  Who in the world would intentionally pay $100 for one bottle of self-tanner?  Not even me!  My revenge, should I choose to take advantage of the opportunity, is that after the purchase, I found my own forgotten stash of the item, 12 bottles in a carton. I, too, could sell each bottle separately for $100! 

If I could depend on my favorites being available as needed, half my living space would not be devoted to storage.  Stockpiling perishables is a special problem as the shelf life of most foods is limited and I have ended up with inedible food, in some cases several years old.  The other day I found a dozen jars of roasted sesame seeds that were two years old.  I’d lost track of them, purchased mail order from California when I could no longer find them locally, and then stopped eating them for awhile.  Sadly, they were inedible and had to be discarded.

That’s another, related problem:  An all-too-frequent occurrence is my deciding a new product is actually much better than the one on which I was relying and which I had stockpiled.  I’ll see an ad for a new product, try it on a whim, find myself pleasantly surprised, newly addicted, and no longer interested in the hair rinse, shampoo, razors lip balm, nail polish or cans of protein drink of which I now have dozens in storage. 

Or I’ll decide to eliminate a particular food from my usual menu because it no longer fits my current regimen.  For instance I finally decide to lose weight and decide to stop eating the impossibly expensive gourmet chocolate peanut butter candy sold by the Food Source which I have stockpiled because it from time to time was unavailable for months.  Anyone want a dozen once-upon-a-time irresistibly delicious candy bars which are over two years old?  Or a half-dozen two year-old bottles of my once-favorite fat free thousand island salad dressing?  Or 3 one-pound boxes of the raisins I no longer add to the oatmeal I no longer eat for breakfast?

You get my drift?

I’d love to hear from others with this problem!