At 5 PM every day, you get an urge… to walk through the synthetic floral section of your local Michaels.

You’re living paycheck to paycheck but spend $300 on a sewing machine. You don’t know how to sew.

When friends and family begin to question your growing collection of fabric and thread, you say, “It really wasn’t that much. Everything was 40% off. I swear.”

You know something’s wrong and can feel people catching on. You try to talk yourself into returning the useless machine, but on your next trip, you buy the big sewing kit instead of the starter one. Now you have an additional 400 spools of colored thread that will never get used.

You cancel on friends. Lie to your family. You’re a total flake. When you blame it on your work schedule, you really mean you can’t drag yourself away from the framing bar at the back of your local Michaels. There are so many colors, and you have so much to frame. Brian, the Michaels framing specialist, knows your name. You don’t want to leave.

Your boyfriend asks you to go on a hike, to get out and get some “fresh air.” You decline with another work excuse and continue with your “work” of hot gluing popsicle sticks for a birdhouse kit you got on sale the week before.

While your boyfriend is out in a real forest, with real pinecones, you have somehow made your way back to your local Michaels, breathing in deep the scent of those cinnamon pinecones that have just arrived for the Fall collection.

At Halloween, do you buy a pumpkin from your local Trader Joe’s? No, you don’t; you buy multiple plastic hollowed-out pumpkins from your local Michaels. You spend two weeks gluing moss and making a small bed from crafting feathers for a “house” for a “little witch.”

Your sister says, “That’s a lot of pumpkins.” You reply, “This is a normal amount of pumpkins. Have you ever been to Europe? They have at least a pumpkin a day there, sometimes at lunch.” “What?” replies your sister, but then she lets it go.

You’re nearing the end. Almost ready to give in and get help. But, uh-oh, it’s November 1st, and your local Michaels has just received their Christmas shipment. You decide to have one final hurrah and buy their entire stock of snow globe kits. But that’s not all; you buy out the entire shelf of multi-colored mixed jewels to encrust individualized monograms on said snow globes for everyone you know.

You secretly get your ex-boyfriend to meet you in the parking lot to load up his truck, because 26 boxes will not fit in your Fiat. You make him promise not to tell anyone, that you’re actually really happy with your current boyfriend and that you swear this was only about using his truck.

At home, you get to work. Then, right out the gate, you hot glue yourself. You hot glue yourself real bad. You might need to go to the hospital, but the place is upside down. You can’t let anyone find out. Frantically, you empty all the jewels into your toilet, but it gets backed up. You try to throw away all the jars, but there are too many. The industrial-sized garbage bin at the back of your apartment complex is full to the brim. You’ve gone mad. You smash every last snow globe on your kitchen floor.

Finally, you stick your burned fingers in the freezer and try to breathe. You hear a ding from your phone in the other room. You know it’s a sign. You can feel it’s your boyfriend or your sister checking in on you. Maybe it’s your whole family on a group chat wanting to “see you soon.” And you’re ready. You’re ready to leave this all behind and see everyone soon.

You walk warily across the room filled with broken glass. You find your phone underneath some pile of discarded crafting feathers. You see a push notification from your Michaels app. “40% OFF ALL THANKSGIVING DÉCOR.”

You call Mikey (that’s your ex-boyfriend with the truck). You say, “Meet me at my place.”

And that place is your local Michaels.