This weekend I got a new winter coat.

There are few things in this world that Sir Monkeypants dislikes more than my old winter coat. Like most of my wardrobe, it was purchased because a) I desperately needed a winter coat, having put off buying one for as long as possible, and b) it was the first one I saw. It was a big heavy wool coat — probably weighing in at around 100 pounds — and it was so incredibly unflattering, it’s hard to believe I wore it in public without being accosted by style mavens everywhere. It was huge and had no shape and I basically looked like a big cylinder in it, with a pea-sized head poking out of the top.

Despite its weight and many layers of batting in there, it never was a very warm coat and I usually had to put on a fleece underneath just to stay warm. If we were going to be doing anything outdoorsy I’d need several other layers underneath the fleece, plus a scarf and giant ear-flap hat on the outside (paints a really pretty picture, don’t you think?). Considering I live in Ottawa, where winter lasts six months of the year and temperatures in February routinely reach -25 degrees, this may be the first time that my extreme aversion to clothing shopping has actually threatened my life.

I’d had the coat for about seven years now, and in the past three years or so it had developed a permanent “wet wool” type smell, because I never seemed to remember to have it dry cleaned at the end of each season. It had many large holes in the sleeves. At the very end of last winter, I broke the zipper on it, so it couldn’t even be closed properly and I was kind of wrapping it around me like a shawl.

I know, I know, you’re thinking that any normal person would have bought a new coat at least five years ago. Even those that hate shopping would have caved, maybe three years ago. But my powers of clothing shopping resistance are superb! I am the master! It’s weird, because I have no problem shopping for, say, books or face cleaning products or wrapping paper, all of which I have enough of to fill a warehouse. It’s just this clothing thing.

Anyway, this weekend Sir Monkeypants saw that Mark’s Work Warehouse had some coats on sale so he dragged me and the kids out — on a Saturday, in the pre-Christmas shopping season, to a store that features neither Thomas The Tank Engine merchandise nor a giant trampoline — so I could get a new coat. God bless him.

I tried on five coats in about five minutes and picked this Mid-Length Street Jacket with T-MAX in chocolate brown. It has a nylon exterior, perfect for playing in the snow with the kids. It weighs no more than a quarter of my old monster. It actually fits me. It doesn’t smell, or have holes, and the zipper works.

Most amazing of all, I wore it yesterday in 0 degree weather to the grocery store, with nothing but a t-shirt underneath, and I was too hot. Incredible!

And did I mention we saved 20%? So I don’t even have to feel guilty about it? I blew the savings on a really cute pair of pink and brown mitts to match, seeing as how the only other pair of gloves I own…well, suffice to say they were a nice match, smell-wise and holes-wise and warmth-wise, for the old coat.

I thought for a minute that the extra weight of my old coat was possibly good for working off a few pounds — like, the struggle just to walk in the thing would cause magical weight loss — so maybe I should keep it.

Then two seconds later, sanity prevailed…BANG went the lid of the garbage can.