I love apple pie. Doesn�t everyone?
3:41 p.m.
I went to the mall where the largest concentration of ladies� dress shops is to be found in the Eastern Townships and went into every single one fingering material, critically eyeing cuts and colours and assessing suitability for short, middle-aged types like me. My taste is pretty conservative, guys, and I shouldn�t be hard to please. But everything was uhglee. I finally found one dress that I liked, a clingy number with a triangular hemline (symmetrical points in front and back), side slits not too far up the thighs, mock straps that actually sit off your shoulders, skinny shoulder straps, a V-back and a soft draping front. The fabric was a yellow georgette with big red roses cut on the bias. It was lovely. At the store I tried on a 5 in which I couldn�t breathe and could barely wriggle out of, and a 9 which hung off me like a scarecrow. They didn�t have a 7. I was desolate.
So I wore my serviceable dress to the wedding and was no worse the wear for it. After all, it is a very nice garment, if a bit dated. A couple of months later I was again at the mall and saw the desired dress hanging on a hanger in the same store I had seen it in before. Once more I crossed the threshold, made my way to the rack and pulled out a size 7! Joy and rapture! It fit and I bought it. It was even reasonably priced. Then I bought myself red, high-heeled, satin sandals and a red satin purse (both on sale) to wear to another wedding in August. I was truly babelicious! I�m going to wear this dress (and the shoes and the purse) to Hubby�s high school reunion this weekend coming, and I intend to make him the envy of all his old classmates.
But the reason I tell this story is that I hate shopping. I am often disappointed, it always takes longer than hoped or dreamed, more often than not I come away from the store emptyhanded, and I hate crowds, fluorescent lighting and musak. My mother gave me a shopping list of items to bring her when we stop by on Friday: a particular hand cream that she can�t get in a large container, a certain brand of contact-lens fluid unavailable in a store near her, and a cordless telephone.
First I went to Futureshop>> for the phone. My mother must be the last person in Toronto to have pulse only. She felt that Ma Bell was taking enough of her money and wouldn�t pay for the extra service, especially when she has a phone that switches from pulse to tone by pressing a button and she was able to carry out her telephone transactions using it. She also has a rotary phone, something that most kids these days have never seen outside of old movies. All the cordless phones I looked at today were tone only, except for two that had speaker-phone bases. They were pretty expensive and complicated looking. For my mom, simpler is better. The one phone that I thought would be perfect for her had big numbers, was simplicity itself, but was tone only.
So I did not buy a telephone today. Instead I spoke with my mother when I got home and told her my story. What we determined is that she would bite the bullet and pay Ma Bell the extra dollar or two a month for tone service, and I would get her the phone I had favoured. So tomorrow I hop back in the automobile, spend another buck in gas and get her that phone.
Next: I went to three pharmacies looking for her contact-lens solution. In the third one they had three boxes of it on the shelf and I bought all three. The hand cream was easier, since all three places had it. Little Princess was with me on this particular excursion (she bought a SD-card for her new MP3 player and had to renew her BP prescription) and I took her out for a fun lunch which we finished by having fancy coffees and splitting a piece of apple pie, labelled in the pastry case Tarte �Big Apple�. You just gotta love that Qu�becois sense of humour.
from ladybug-red :
What a relief! It is so refreshing to see that you and others here share my hatred of shopping. It is something I have never enjoyed and nearly all of my female friends think I am strange because of it.
from saucy99 :
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only female you hates shopping with a passion. My mom always makes comments insinuating I am less of a woman or something because I don't like to shop: "What kind of girl doesn't like shopping? I can think about a million things I'd rather do!
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