This past Christmas I did a lot of online shopping. For the most part it was a very pleasant shipping experience. I found some great deals and some unusual items from the comfort of my living room. Only one item out of many failed to arrive on time.

As I said, for the most part it was a pleasant shopping experience. However, I suspect that most, if not all of the online sites I dealt with sold my name to other companies. They must have a “We’ve Got A Live One” hot list that they peddle as soon as the payment clears the bank.

I’m sure if I didn’t have a great Spam filter my e-mail would be full of online ads. That’s not a problem, but my mailbox is overflowing with catalogs that arrive on a daily basis. Catalogs from companies that I’ve never heard of and a lot of products that I would never buy.

A good number of the catalogs I have received are for women’s clothing, which surprises me because I didn’t buy any women’s clothing online.

I do enjoy browsing through those catalogs because I do need to think about improving my shabby wardrobe a bit.

Most of the women’s clothing catalogs I have received are for full-figured women, and I am definitely a full-figured woman. But, how on earth do these companies know that? I didn’t tell them.

The online sites where I did most of my shopping didn’t ask if I was fat. In fact, I bought mostly toys for my grandchildren, so how did my name end up with plus-size clothing companies? That’s a real mystery to me.

Another mystery to me is why catalogs dealing with women’s clothing sizes 14W to 26W are using size 4 models. The clothing they’re modeling may come in large sizes, but what they are wearing in the pictures are sized appropriately to their tiny bodies. They would swim in any of the sizes that are being sold.

I just don’t understand why these little women are being used for this purpose. If you’re going to sell plus-size clothing use plus-size models. I know the sellers want to show the clothing as being stunning, but I can tell you that what looks stunning on a 21-year-old in a size 4 is for darn sure not going to look very stunning on my 60-year-old rotund body.

I decided to throw the catalogs away and went to watch some television, and the first thing I saw was a commercial for a diet pill. A voluptuous young woman in a white bathing suit was walking along the beach touting the merits of this wonderful diet pill.

Let me tell you, that voluptuous young woman has never had an excess pound on her bone-thin body in her life. For that matter, neither have the hard-bodied women or men advertising the home gym systems.

I suspect that those people started working out at the age of 5 and were pretty buffed by the age of 10. But, they would have us believe that those of us with weight and sag can look just like them by using the home gym system for only 30 minutes a day.

Why don’t they show what someone like me would look like after 30 days of using the system for just 30 minutes a day? I’ll tell you why, because someone like me would end up dropping from cardiac arrest after the first 30-minute workout. After 30 days I’d be looking a little green around the gills.

I don’t think I’m going to buy any clothes from a catalog that doesn’t have the courage or honesty to show what the clothes will really look like on someone my size.

I know I’m not going to take a diet pill that the model touting them has never taken in her life and the FDA will probably take off the market as unsafe anyway.

I’m definitely not going to buy a home gym that could do me more harm than good and would just end up with clothing hanging from it.

What I should do is start a sensible diet and get some moderate exercise. Who knows, the way I see it, in time I just might be able to fit one of my legs into one of those cute size 4 outfits without having to resort to dangerous diet pills or a home gym system.