This little piggy went to market

So, I needed some new shirts, see. I don't usually dress up for work: it's very casz (I suspect this is not the accepted spelling of this word, but what is? Please enlighten if you know) and, besides, my boss is a major clotheshorse (though I imagine he'd prefer "fashion-plate"), spending on clothes probably what amounts to as much as his rent, so why would I attempt to compete with that? However, there's this huge international conference coming up next week, and I have a full media-pass and will probably need to do a fair amount of schmoozing and pressing of flesh, you know, "face of the organization" and all that crap, so I figure, OK, Scrooge, you need to pony up for a few new shirts at least, this hopelessly outdated collection of Ross-specials won't cut it much longer. There was a time when I could get away with wearing just anything, whether I truly made it work or not, just with attitude. This attitude, I am discovering, had a best-by date and it is now starting to smell a little off. Time to upgrade the duds.

Thus, enlisting T on the promise that it would be a brief in-out sort of thing, we embarked for the mall. This was five hours ago. For further perspective, we only visited two stores. Two stores, five hours. Some more numbers: nine, being the number of shirts at one time or another under anguished consideration, each tried on at least nine times apiece, so maybe 81 is a more accurate number; two, being the number of shirts finally purchased; and fifty, being the amount I'd decided not to exceed for a single shirt, yet also being the price of each shirt I finally bought. A hundred dollars, you say, a bargain for two very nice shirts, which they are. Tell it to the purchase-guilt, my most finely-honed and frequently-used sense.

T was a complete doll, tolerating five gruelling hours in the armpit of the suburbs-invaded Eaton Centre, offering unflagging feedback to all my proposals, even declaring he would purchase them for me if money were my only obstacle (which it frequently was). And when the purchase-guilt kicked in (seconds away from checkout), he offered all sorts of encouraging reinforcement, including putting the tags in a safe place and assuring me that I can take them back at any time. The moment we walked in the door, however, he fell into a dead sleep, no doubt driven to the edge of his faculties.

The shirts? Oh, they're nice. One chocolate brown number with very thin eggshell pinstripes, the other one white (I think) with very pale pink, blue and yellow stripes. Both cotton, both nicely-tailored. Both from H&M, the IKEA of clothiers. That's all. Did I mention $100??!

My female readers (99% of my demographic, I suspect) are perhaps presently rolling eyes in mute exasperation. What constitutes the above-described guilt-worthy splurge must rate very low on the shop-o-meter. It is my endless struggle, however: the fear/guilt/loss of spending money on anything that I can't honestly do without. I need to work through this. I need tools to process purchases, I mean mental/emotional tools, to see value in things other than mere necessaries. Maybe I need a shopping therapist. Any referrals?