Life 2.1

For the first time ever in my 26 years of existence, I experienced Black Friday. To get up at 4am and go shopping on the day after Thanksgiving is quite possibly one of the worst ideas I have ever had. Ever. Why didn’t someone remind me that I hate crowds of people where I can’t move without bumping into someone? It’s the reason Mardi Gras on Bourbon scares me. But I woke up, put makeup on and drove to Wal-Mart to see about a new photo printer I had been keeping my eyes on. It was $10 cheaper than Best Buy and I thought I would see if it dropped even lower on Black Friday.

I arrived at Wal-Mart and didn’t have a problem finding a parking spot. I mean, I definitely parked in the South 40 but I did get a spot fairly fast. I walked in and there were already people in the express checkout lines, having gotten their deals. And what did they rush out to buy? Three flat screen TVs from some brand I have never heard of. Three. Is that really necessary people? Apparently so.

I weaved my way to electronics, which took a solid 15 minutes to make the 25 yard trek, and spied my photo printer. It went UP in price. Seriously?!?!

I turned around and walked out and was back asleep by 5:45 before going to work.

I haven’t had anything entertaining happen to me lately, other than the shopping trip Anne and I went on whilst in Houston. We went to the Galleria, which is ridiculously large (I have been to the devil’s playground that is the Mall of America and the Galleria might rival it, if only in the number of shops intended for fancy people’s wallets and not mine.) The entertaining part was when we went into Express and decided to not wander into the dressing room but try the sweaters on right over our clothes. Yep, we’re those people.

So we hooked our purses and bags to the end of the racks and tried them on. Sadly, there was a very lovely sweater but it didn’t fit me, so I had to put it back. We gathered our packages and as we proceeded to next section of the store, Anne situated her bags and noted that she had grabbed the sign that also hung on the end of the rack, touting the 30% off winter wear and had been carrying it around with her. Oops. We had a good giggle at that.

We moved on and headed for the next store and as I shifted bags in my hand in the middle of the mall (I had been terribly productive at Gap and Limited), I thought to myself, self, what kind of store bags their clothes in bags with wire handles that begin to cut off circulation after while? That is a horrible idea. Turns out, no store does that. They save the wire handles for their signs touting discounts, much like the one that Anne had accidentally picked up. I had picked up the one on the rack next to the one that she picked up. Oops.

Anyway, the actual purpose of this post was to alert everyone to my craziness, as the following will illustrate.

I haven’t been getting a ton of sleep lately and quite frankly, can’t remember the last time I slept in until my body naturally woke up. That makes me sad just re-reading that previous statement. Alas…

So I had every intention of getting to bed early last night, which of course didn’t happen because I needed to try and get my house in some sort of order. I currently have no dresser and in a dresser’s place, I have boxes with clean laundry stacked on them, so I attempted to hang everything up last night but you can’t really hang ankle socks, so a pile remains. Thus, I got to bed around 11:30 which was about an hour and a half past my goal time.

But I must have really been tired because here’s the dream that I had:

I was in New York, in that place where they film the Today Show (one might call it Rockefeller Plaza) but we were on the Plaza. They had the area roped off and fans were lined up against the railings and we were playing one of our baseball games. And our shortstop, who happens to be a stolen base leader, had just scored. Now, in real life, when our team scores, our fans break into a cheer. It’s not a fight song, perse, but it is tradition. But in the dream, after crossing the plate for the run, the fans started to chant “chicken in a biscuit” which happens to be the kickoff chant at NHS football games.

I think I’m losing it.

Tonight is Halloween, which (naturally) means that last night was spent looking for costume parts. I began my mission around 6:30, already feeling dejected and not at all enthused at the thought of having to take on the swarms of last-minute costume-shoppers like myself.

I didn’t have anyone to shop with and that bummed me out more. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s don’t go shopping for ridiculous costumes by yourself. You don’t have anyone to laugh at your ridiculosity yep, I just made up a word so you wind up just feeling dumb in a dressing room, instead of cracking up with someone at how hilarious it will be.

It’s the same feeling one might get when they decide to go to the movies alone but as you sit in the un-filled theater, you think to yourself self, the guy in that little room up there is having to play this movie JUST because of me. Then it’s not as fun as the $10.75 you just forked over would warrant.

It was especially sad when I couldn’t find a black pinstriped skirt to save my life. The kicker being that I just gave mine to the salvation army before I moved. I picked a fine time to be generous.

I had gone into every Charlotte-21 store imaginable and nothing. It sucked the wind right out of my sails.

Luckily for me, it was at this point in the evening that MTG decided to call and check in.

She stayed on the phone with me and it was just like having a shopping buddy! Suddenly, on the verylaststore in the stupid mall, I ventured in, whilst having girl talk with MTG. Then I saw it. Hanging on a rack. Not a pinstriped skirt but a bodice dress that I could either cut into a skirt or wear a blouse over. But let me re-state my find. A bodice dress. Like something that mimics lingerie. Yikes.

Now, if I were by myself, I would haven’t even entertained such a dress if you want to call it that. But I was “with” MTG so she told me to try it on. So I did. And I took pics of myself in the dressing room and texted them to her.

Then she gave me the thumbs up actually the words of approval were: booyah, which I appreciated so I proceeded to the counter to purchase the dress-turned-car-wash-rag-post-Halloween.

$15 later, I have the base of my costume and I’m no longer bummed about H’ween. I do, however, still miss my girls.