Well, I thought I was really off to the races, typing in a title that seemed to make sense...but now I have to pause to sing the theme song to the show, reflect on Bonnie, Valerie and Mackenzie, laugh about the friend who called me Schneider at the height of my house cleaning career because I had so many keys on my chain, and absolutely none of that has any relevance to what I had planned to talk about. Quite honestly, what I am about to talk about also has no relevance to what I originally intended to come back here with. I know I've said before that coming back from a blogging hiatus is always difficult because I feel like the offering has to be especially poignant and/or amusing, perhaps even cathartic. It is not a matter of feeling like I owe all five of you an explanation for my absence, as I am confident that you've soldiered on adequately without me. Instead I typically just catapult around in a pinball machine, bouncing off every single thing that seemed like a great idea to discuss, while the bright lights and clanging sounds just distract me from conjuring complete sentences. Did I go bra shopping out of season? Yes, yes I did. And was it successful? No, in fact even less characteristically so than usual. Somewhere I am sure I took at least one photo of the event, but considering how sidetracked finding that could get me, we are just going to talk about something else...today.
Today had all of the makings for an ordinary day. I say that with a great deal of joy, as there is nothing wrong with ordinary. My friend and I headed out to the good bagel place, armed with both a paper and mental list of items we needed to pick up on our quest to avoid the heat as best we could. After eating our bagels with cream cheese in the car, because we are fancy, we headed to the mall to use some coupons. I will not tire of handing the people at the Bath and Body Works registers my "no purchase necessary" coupon and walking away with only whatever free item was listed. I worked some other coupon magic at DSW and got some new sneakers at 1990's pricing. My quest to find knee-high nylons was foiled several time over though, leaving me to wonder just how badly I am showing my age by looking for such an item. (I own a pair of exactly what I am looking for, but the problem is that after weeks of searching, I cannot find them in my house either.)
Once we were ready to accept that we really did not need anything else that the mall had to offer, we left for other places. We did not have anywhere to be, nor anyone to answer to or waiting for our return. We went to Marshall's (yup, right after deciding the mall had nothing else for us) and while waiting at the registers buying things we most certainly did need, saw a man shoplift a cart full of items simply by pushing his cart right on out the front door. One of the cashiers did call to him to let him know where the registers were, but maybe he didn't hear her. The crazy part is that this is the second time we've seen this event at that same store, yet there we were still waiting in line and paying for our merchandise.
We then made our way to Wegmans to get the apple peeler that was on my friend's list. I got some hummus just because going to the grocery store and leaving empty handed is nonsense. She had put a cooler in the car as she is a prepared kind of gal. I admit that I may have questioned her decision to just throw an ice cube tray in the cooler, as opposed to a blue ice, or bag of ice, but I understand that flying out the door feeling, so I threw my hummus in with her few refrigerated items next to the melted tray. We were approaching unstoppable. Those bagels keeping us fueled well beyond our usual lunch hour. We headed to Target to check for something my son wanted and talked about the lint roller I needed and where they lived at that store. There was no reason to pull out my list of FOUR items to see what the fourth thing actually was (her apple peeler was on my list and the elusive knee-highs and small garbage bags). My friend looked at her list for Walmart on her phone as we briefly debated whether those items should be purchased at Target or whether we should go across the street to Walmart. I admit that I am rarely looking for a reason to go to Walmart, but considering the store would be air conditioned, it met our prerequisites for the outing. (I also thought I stood a good chance of finding my nylons there and we were looking for some new seasonal Tootsie Roll item.)
Noticing that it was 2:45 in the afternoon, we started to give some serious consideration to our need for something that resembled lunch and what the options would be once we entered the store. As we opened our car doors in the Walmart parking lot, having had no time in the half mile ride from Target to actually cool the car off, we were blasted with a wall of heat that sent us back into the car to regroup. We knew we had our newly purchased hummus and cottage cheese; however, we were lacking in utensils even after a glove compartment search. She ripped the plastic film off the cottage cheese in half and thought we could each use a piece as a scooper. I let her go first to confirm that was a bad idea. Here we were, two women with no time constraints, nor other personnel to deal with, spending money in our wallets and a complete lack of recall as to how to fashion a day. We may have strayed too far from the days when we were ladies who lunched? Could we not figure out how to navigate two meals on the run? Did the heat just send us sideways? Make no mistake, we were enjoying ourselves, but perhaps falling slightly short of thriving. We had our extra good bagels (because you don't drive downtown to not get leftovers), so we ripped one in half and used pieces for cottage cheese scoopers. It was yummy for sure. Sadly, we had both drained our drinking water resources, aside from what was in the ice cube tray, but we were about to head into the third store in a row with grocery offerings.
We came up empty on our candy quest, despite seeing some new Reese's products. She got her flour and contact lens solution. I got the lint roller that I never looked for at Target, forgot to look for the knee-highs, did not get a drink and never thought about the garbage bags until I got home and took out my list. We may function better under pressure, or at least time constraints. This worked too though, as long as there is still time left in the week to get everything I forgot.
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