The Junk Drawer

I just experienced both the best and worst clothes shopping trip in the span of two hours.

The best experience was jeans shopping. You read that right. It is possible to shop for jeans and not cry the whole time.

I was delighted to find that because of my weight loss, I can now move down another size in my jeans. I know exactly the style to buy that fits my freak body. Lee “Relaxed Straight Leg – At the Waist” medium length jeans are made for me.

Ladies, if you carry more weight on your bottom than on the top, try those. And don’t let the “straight leg” worry you. In reality, they’re more a boot cut, which is a better style for women shaped like us. You won’t get the dreaded peg leg look.

So I’m sifting through the wall of Lee jeans looking for my size and I can’t find them. Why? Because every other woman where I live is my size, apparently.

I take the style I want in a different size to the counter and ask the saleswoman to order my size in that exact cut, length and wash.

She enters the information in the register and determines that she can’t order the wash I want, dark stone, because it’s not available.

Poo.

She tells me she’ll try several different search methods to find them, but I’m sensing I’ll be out of luck the longer this process continues.

But then. Then! She says “Wait right here. I have one last place to check.” She returns a couple minutes later with my exact size, cut, and wash that I want, telling me there was a single pair in the back room.

Thank you, JCPenney’s Clarissa! You made my day.

High from my successful jeans shopping excursion, I went on the hunt for some summer tops. And then my world crumbled around me.

I hate shopping for tops because I dislike my arms and need something to accentuate my smallish waist, so I tend to stick with one style that is structured enough to lay well on the hip, give me shape and form and cover most of my beastly arms.

I found one such top after looking through hundreds. Hundreds, I tell you.

I try it on and love it immediately. But I notice it’s had its price tag ripped off. Why? Why, God, must you let me find the one top I love that will give me trouble at the register?

And trouble I got.

The saleswoman sees it’s missing its price tag and she looks at the manufacturer’s label, thinking she can look it up at the register.

She cannot.

Why?

Because, she says, “This isn’t ours.”

“What?”

“This isn’t our merchandise. We don’t sell this brand.”

“But I found it on a rack in the store.”

“But it’s not ours. Where did you get it?”

“You mean out of the hundreds of tops I looked at? Uh. How ‘bout over there in Kansas. I have no idea where I got it.”

She checks with another saleswoman, who agrees they cannot sell it to me because it’s not theirs.

BUT I FOUND IT IN YOUR STORE!!!

I am flabbergasted. It takes me months to find clothing that I like and that flatters me and I’m standing there holding the perfect garment and yet I cannot buy it.

I consider for a moment asking if the three of us can make up a reasonable price and just call it a day.

But they are not budging. They will not sell me the top.

I was so tired and disgusted by then, all I could ask was “How do I get out of here?”

They pointed the way out of the store that sells clothes you can’t buy and left in a huff.

Without the pretty turquoise, structured top with the lovely neck line.

Tell me, Boscovs salesladies. What are you going to do with that? Throw it out? Because you probably could have charged me a made-up price of eighty bucks, pocketed it between yourselves and I wouldn’t have said a word.

For now, I’ll have to keep wearing the crappy clothes I hate and think about the top that could have been.

Honestly. Have you ever heard of something so stupid?

At least I won the jeans war. And I didn’t cry once.

This weekend I took my oversized comforter to the laundromat with washers and dryers that could accommodate it. When I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a guy who’d just taken several Hefty bags full of laundry out of his trunk.

Unbeknownst to him, one of the bags tipped its load and he was plopping his drawers and socks all over the lot, leaving laundry breadcrumbs every few feet behind him.

As soon as I could park my car and hop out, I alerted him to his wayward drawers. He thanked me and went back to collect his whitie tighties. When we met up inside the laundromat, he thanked me again and said “Well that was embarrassing.”

I wanted to hand him my blog business card and say “No it’s not. Just read this. I trump everything.”

For instance, today I took my car to a mechanic to have my muffler replaced. The shop is located at the intersection of one way streets, which for a directionally-challenged dolt such as myself, creates serious problems.

To make matters worse, one of the roads that would lead me directly out of there was blocked off for construction.

When I paid my bill and drove away from the shop, the mechanics waved me off and I went on my merry, lost way.

I couldn’t get left!

I could only go right, right, right and right again.

Which dumped me back in front of the mechanics, still standing there, now laughing at me, and waving me off for a second time.

Hi. Me again. I’m lost. Can you tell?

Dying.

The next attempt went better, but put me many blocks from my destination. I almost had to use my GPS to go two tenths of a mile.

I swear. I shouldn’t be allowed to drive a car, or frankly, mingle out and about with society in general.

It’s hard being me.

My husband Dave and I are attending the Tribal Blogs Conference in Minnesota next month.

We’ve been waiting for the best deals on airfare for a little while, but it ain’t lookin’ too good.

He just asked in all seriousness if I would be open to the idea of driving instead “to save money and see a little of the country.”

A thousand miles.

I’m pretty sure I signed a rider in my wedding vows that I was not to be stuck in a tin can with him for more than, say, a four hour stretch of time.

He loves to talk.

I love to shut up.

So what say you? Would you drive 1,000 miles anywhere with your spouse? Have you done it? If you have, what was it like? Give it to me straight. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Go!

My team was recently moved to new offices at the university where I work. We’re now housed behind rows and rows of stacks at one of the two campus libraries.

Taped to the door of our makeshift kitchenette is this “Carrel Policies” note, apparently written for library patrons in 1972, where I suspect it remains as a reminder of how far technology has come.

To wit:

Did you see it? At the bottom?

OK, here’s the part of the show where we find out who’s old enough to have lugged a typewriter to the library to work on a paper or other scholarly work.

Also, how far out of alignment is your back?

Ahhh, the good ‘ol days. No thanks!