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Pre-birthday shopping with Dear Auntie yesterday!

 

First stop was Michael’s again, so that I could get some more stuff to accessorize my new doll.  It may have been Sunday, which around here means that you are not supposed to do anything that doesn’t involve church and spending time with your family, but for some reason the Relief Society Brigade—enormous, mouth-breathing women with a genius for craftrwork that comes out spectacularly made and so smarmy it’s vaguely creepy—were out in force. They are experts at blocking aisles with their wide bodies and their shopping carts, or creating barricades with fabric paint or stickers, so getting to the little wooden boxes or the Sculpey can make you feel like Indiana Jones.  But we got some good stuff, although I still lack a nice little ebony stick.

 

Then it was time to get me some clothes!  My schizophrenic fashion taste took me first to Dancing Cranes to get some hippie shirts, then to my old workplace to buy me a professional wardrobe.

 

And found that Rhonda was on shift there.

 

Rhonda, my old boss, is a sales wizard. She could sell Febreze to a crazy cat lady, or Twinkies to a fitness freak. She is dangerous, a force to be reckoned with. You go into her store thinking, “I could use a pair of jeans” and several hundred dollars later you come out with six shirts, three pairs of pants, a skirt, a belt, two necklaces, and a pair of shoes. What’s more, you are thinking, “It’s a good thing I stepped in there today, or I wouldn’t have found these great outfits that look so good on me, personally!”  You are never thinking, “Where did all the money I was saving for rent go? It’s not like I need these shoes!”  That is the power of Rhonda’s ninja selling skills.

 

She’s a natural partly because she really seems to like putting together outfits and seeing what looks good on you—and she will always be sincerely happy to see you, even if she’s having a rough day personally. I have seen her pull that enthusiasm on like a costume before heading out to the floor. So when we came in, she was naturally very happy to see us—especially when we announced that I needed a whole new wardrobe so’s I could look good and professional.

 

And it worked. I look so classy now y’all will think I’m an adman from the ’50s.

 

The only drawback to rampant consumption of clothing is that when you get home it’s time for the dreaded “fashion show,” when all the ladies in your family who didn’t get to go shopping with you demand that you wear the things you bought, and the ones who came are like “YES LET US SHOW THEM GO CHANGE.” For some reason, Dad becomes a somewhat confounded pawn in the game, too: “SHOW YOUR DAD YOUR BEAUTIFUL NEW DRESS.” I absolutely hate that. So I compromised and modeled two outfits, and showed the rest on hangers.

 

And, of course, there’s one other thing that shopping entails: hemming!  I am a short-legged little hobbit, but I cannot buy in petite stores because when people say “petite” they are picturing tiny-waisted pixies, not chunk-thighed hobbits. So I have to buy pants that pool around my feet and then hem the hell out of them. I will get to that today or tomorrow.

 

It will be worth it, because under all that fabric is a really cool pair of shoes that Rhonda said look good on me. I’m so glad I went into the store—I do, of course, really need a pair of purple pumps.

 

It’s a good thing I don’t pay rent.

Too Juicy To Pass Up

 “Do you know how I got these scars?  It was Halloween, and a couple of my buddies and I were out playing tricks.  We TP’d some houses and egged a few cars … and then we saw a little boy walking home alone with his bag full of candy. So I took out a knife and made him give me the bag, because I really wanted a Snickers.  I took the first one out of its wrapper and put the whole thing in my mouth—and it had a razor blade in it!  Now I see the funny side!”

 

…

 

Never let my sister and me near sordid stories.  We’ve been Law’n’Ordering* up the Sarah Palin rumors to make them truly sordid instead of just sort of odd—regardless of their truth—and our interest in CSI has gotten us into some bad conversations:

 

MOM: Did you know someone is writing quilting mysteries?

AUNT: Yes! Also scrapbooking!

AMELIA and妹: *snert*

AMELIA: The killer makes quilts out of the victims!

妹: And scrapbooks each kill!

AMELIA: And the cops figure out the profile of victims by the color scheme they’d make together!

MOM and AUNT: …

MOM: Actually, they use clues in quilts to solve the mysteries.

AMELIA: Oh.

妹: That’s no fun!

 

So, naturally, when you mention the one about the razor blades in Halloween candy around us, we are inevitably going to have a contribution for Movie!Joker’s multiple choice past within about fifteen seconds. What the hell did you expect?**

God, she's great.

 

 

*Law’n’Ordering is a favorite game of ours: Take a potentially scandalous headliner—true or, in this case, rumored.  Keep the basic story, but try to increase the sordidness factor with as many of the following as possible: incest (all types welcome), rape, pedophilia, mental illness, murder, betrayal, porn, prostitution, letting innocents take the fall, or that scourge of all that is pure and innocent, the internet. This has to be how the show gets most of their plots anyway.

 

A related game, CSIing, involves taking a sordid case and adding a gimmick, freak factor, or kink. Like, instead of a Law’n’Order “Her murderer is her father, who is also her baby’s father!”, you get “Her murderer is an insane ventriloquist obsessed with frozen yogurt who makes his victims into delicious protein-laden smoothies!” 

**I know, I know, the razors haven't done anyone serious injury. I can dream, can't I?