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Wednesday, May 06, 2009
SHOPPING HELL AUGGHH.
I had to report for jury duty today (well, technically, yesterday. Tuesday.), and on Monday I suddenly realized that I had NOTHING TO WEAR. I panicked, looked over my stuff, and decided that actually I'd do OK if I got some new boots. See, I used to have these black boots (from Payless, of course) that I would wear on occasions where jeans were OK but oldish no-longer-quite-white athletic shoes were not. (In other words, these were my church shoes and no I'm not joking. The flats only come out when I wear a skirt and tights which is probably less than three times a year.)
Anyway. Those boots died a sad death thanks to a crack across the sole. (For $15 at Payless and several years of hard use I'm not complaining.) So I simply needed to replace them except that SHOCK AND TRAGEDY Payless doesn't carry them anymore. Apparently even Payless must occasionally bend to the pressure of changing fashions, which is exerted by an industry with shall we say a really heavily vested interest in women's felt need to reinvent their wardrobes every year in unison. (I am not a fan. Can you tell?)
I didn't find any other shoes that would be just right, because I'm not a loafer person and can you wear loafers with jeans, anyway, and if you do what do you do for socks? None of my skirts would be quite appropriate except for one that needs light-colored sandals to go with it, and my sandals are black because my otherwise-identical light pair wore out, and of course THOSE aren't available anymore either. So then I was stuck, and I decided to buy a skirt that would go with my flats, except I couldn't find just the right skirt either, and it was all simultaneously utterly miserable and utterly typical of my usual shopping experience. I hate shopping*, and I especially hate shopping when I have to find something by tomorrow OR ELSE, and I really especially hate shopping when I have only about an hour to go looking for clothes I don't want to buy anyway in three different stores before I have to dash to a class.
*for clothes. I like shopping for groceries just fine.
In fact, here's a list, in order of ascending horrificness, of things I would rather do than go clothes shopping.
- Take an algebra test, even a really difficult one with a million tiny error-prone steps to each problem and for which my studying had been slightly inadequate.
- Drink a giant cup of grape soda.
- Take a big load of trash to the dump.
- Have the measles.
- For three weeks.
- Over Christmas.
- For three weeks.
- Visit the gynecologist.
- Read a bad 1970's Harlequin novel.
- Out loud.
- During a visit to the gynecologist.
- Out loud.
- Ride the Tilt-A-Whirl four times in a row.
- and proceed to throw up on a stranger.
- Who turns out to be my gynecologist.
- and proceed to throw up on a stranger.
- Write a history paper.
- About Bodie.
- Pluck a chicken.
- Weigh myself in front of a gymnasium full of my worst enemies from all thirteen years of public education.
- Have a root canal.
- Have unnecessary major surgery.
- Have unnecessary major surgery during which the doctor accidentally leaves a pair of scissors inside me.
- Pass a kidney stone.
- Pass the pair of accidentally-abandoned scissors.
- Participate in a 24-hour adults-only Candyland marathon.
- Stab my own eyes out with dull, dirty forks.
OK, I confess that somewhere along in there I started exaggerating. But not very early on, and NOT BY MUCH.
End result: I did not find either shoes or a new outfit and decided to just show up in jeans and the old tennis shoes, which appears to be some kind of jury uniform actually, so that was good but it also meant that my misery ended up being ALL FOR NOTHING. Sob.
*************************
Edited to add: Oh PS After a fascinating morning of watching the justice process at work -- specifically, sitting through voir dire, which is pretty much just like it is in John Grisham novels -- I did not get selected for jury duty, but not because I was excused for any reason. It was just because they had a whole bunch of extra people and didn't get to me before they'd filled the panel. But I'm "on call" for four more weeks, which means every Friday through the month of May I have to check in and see if they want me to come in and go through the whole process again. Fun times!
Comments
Wow Rachel! You really hate shopping for clothes about as much as I do. I had to find some new clothes since we are now attending a new church where my outfit of jeans and sneakers/sandals just won't cut it. It was awful........I tend to feel panicked when I enter a clothing store and look around and think what am I looking for and nothing is going to fit me anyway (5'11"). So I empathize but glad you didn't have to sit on the jury anyway!
Posted by: Maureen at May 6, 2009 08:43 AM
Oh I was laughing so hard at your list! Sorry you didn't find anything out in clothes-land. Nothing ever fits right or they don't have the right color or it isn't on sale...I usually just try picking up a shirt or two at Costco when I'm doing my regular shopping. Which I am not so fond of anymore either, ha!
Posted by: Sherry at June 2, 2009 03:22 PM
Judging from comments to your blog, you obviously know another Sherry besides myself (whom you do not know, but I digress...), but I chanced across your blog at the tail end of a string of dominoes (read: links to a Beth Moore quote I was trying to find) and couldn't stop reading. In the interest of full disclosure I hereby inform you that thanks to the above list I am now wiping nasally-projected lukewarm coffee off my computer screen. Thanks for the laugh -- just what I needed today!
God bless,
Sherry
Posted by: Sherry at June 13, 2009 04:16 PM
