I'm supposed to be this, like, champion for small businesses, right? The lady who *always* knows where the artisan soap is made, the one who buys her bread from that ridiculously expensive bakery down the street, the one who posts those Instagram stories with the perfect latte from the independent coffee shop. And I genuinely believe in it! I preach it to anyone who’ll listen, "Support local, invest in your community, keep the money circulating here!" But then 99% of my household supplies – everything from cleaning wipes to toilet paper to kids’ snacks – gets ordered from that massive, soulless, online behemoth that shall not be named. I type it into the search bar, click "add to cart" like a goddamn zombie, and it shows up two days later, a monument to my hypocrisy on my porch. And I hate myself for it. I really do. It's the exhaustion, man. The sheer, relentless, soul-crushing exhaustion of being a stay-at-home parent. I spend all day negotiating with tiny terrorists, wiping up spilled milk that looks suspiciously like a crime scene, making sure everyone is fed and clean and vaguely educated, and by the time my husband walks through the door, all I want to do is lie face-down on the floor and maybe not move again until 2028. The thought of getting everyone back into the car, driving to three different local shops that close at wildly inconvenient times, dealing with the inevitable "Mommy, I need a snack!" meltdown in aisle three of the organic grocery store — it just feels like climbing Mount Everest in flip-flops. It's too much. It's always too much. So I confess. I am a fraud. A walking, talking billboard for ideals I can't even uphold in my own damn house. Is this what becoming an adult is? Just slowly, subtly, selling off pieces of your integrity for the sweet, sweet convenience of not having to think anymore? Are we all just collections of good intentions and compromised realities? God, it's 2 AM and I'm staring at an empty cart full of dish soap and paper towels from a company that probably pays its workers minimum wage while I write this. The irony is not lost on me. I just… I don't know how to stop. Or maybe I don't *want* to stop enough to actually do something about it. What does that even say about me?