Cross and tired and want to go to bed with a cosy book. Yesterday was (mostly) quite good; today was, predominately, not nearly so much.
We spent quite a lot of yesterday out shopping, because I have been desperately in need of some respectable-looking jeans for a very long time and pay-day had just happened for people who are not me and are still in charge of my pants. There was some Goodwillage, at which, exactly as I predicted, I found nothing -- trousers are the only things I have never had any really good luck with at thrift shops. Ever. I have never found that serendipitiously perfect pair, and certainly not the ones which fit me like a (pleasantly corduroy) dream. All of their jeans are what I would call "grunge jeans" -- very blue lighter washes, and the only ones that ever look as though one could dress them up with a nice blouse and a pair of heels are, inevitably, about a size .5. I did find a very nice warm nightgown, however, which was another thing I am in some need of.
I haven't mentioned my old jeans, have I? They've gotten to be quite the disaster. Finding trousers that fit me attractively is so accursedly difficult that we only undergo the process about once a year, especially as we are nearly always forced to buy them new. These are, of course, last year's pair -- and they have somehow grown since December -- grown quite a lot. I am sure I can't have lost nearly that much weight. They are always in danger of falling off, they are scuffed and drab and limp-looking, the bottoms are terribly frayed, a hole's started on the side of one leg, and, strangest of all, they smell peculiar. It isn't exactly a bad smell -- not a body-sweat smell, nor a these-pants-haven't-been-washed-for-months smell, but -- strange. Sort of like detergent, like trousers you wash in the machine and then leave them to dry on their own. Except musty. I would keep washing them and washing them, trying to get the scent out, but it wouldn't come out. And anyway they had stopped looking respectable long ago, traitorous things.
Anyway, we went to Ross Dress For Less, which has lots of very nice new quality clothing for less mind-boggling prices. I bypassed the regular trouser section and went straight for the clearance rack and managed to pull off about six pair of trousers to try on. Heh. Look, I haven't had a good pair in a while.
So, the first thing I discovered: skinny jeans? Kind of look fabulous on me. Who knew? Certainly not me. I sort of liked the idea of them -- I have a lot of very -- fluffy is the wrong word -- blouses, babydoll tops and peasant tops and the like, which would certainly benefit from a narrower jean, but I am naturally quite pear shaped, and I thought a narrower jean would only make me look ridiculously more so. But hey, contrary to popular belief I do look out for trends if they are pleasing to my aesthetics. I can't help it. I'm very silly. So I tried on a pair and discovered that they are bizarrely slimming and besides which compliment flats very nicely. So I have a lovely new pair of skinny jeans -- I think the official colour term is charcoal, but they have the tiniest hint of purple to them, which pleases me -- and another pair of regular dark wash jeans (which came to about twenty dollars, total). It is the first time in several years that I have had two pairs of presentable trousers to alternate between.
Also, Claire's was having a sale with quite a lot of fabulous items, including button earrings, apple jewellery, and turquoise lace not-gloves, for a dollar apiece. My new paycheck was very happy to accomodate.
Then we ran into a friend of Mum's and ended up talking for a very long time. And then I ran to the library, absurdly admiring my jean-clad reflection in the shop windows along the way, and returned and collected books in the seven minutes before it closed.
Today, around two-thirty, I called my job to find out my hours: I had realised that I didn't have any on record for this week and didn't really know who to ask. It was the beginning of the week, you know? So it ought to be a good time. I ended up being on hold (I don't even know; I think the manager was out and they had to go find her?) for -- ten minutes, at least? -- and finally a woman came onto the other end and said, "Um, actually, you're working today, and you were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago."
Says I: "ULP."
(Truly, Reader, I was mortified.)
Mum rushed me over, and I was very cross and unhappy, because I wanted a ruddy nap so very badly, after having got to bed very late previously, and I want to impress my new employers, not make stupid embarrassing mistakes that force a lot of people to shuffle things around and accomodate me. (Mum and Jonathan tried to console me a bit -- I was, thankfully, not in the hysterics I likely would have had a year ago -- and it did make me feel a bit calmer, but still. I am still quite ashamed. Certainly, no-one told me anything about how I was to find out my hours, although I should have asked, and certainly should have asked Saturday, or even Friday night, leaving.) So my shift was only about two hours this time, and I made exactly two sales (drat you people! come on, let me use the cash register with its wonderful clicks and dings and whooshes!), and then I got to learn how to close up again -- I do enjoy putting up the curtains, with their hooks and zippers and padlocks on the zippers, and counting out the money is horrible in a mathematical way, but nice in a texture way, although when one realises exactly how much cash one is casually flipping through it can sometimes be faintly overwhelming.
However: Person In Charge who was showing me yet again how to close up was exactly the sort of person who puts me most on edge -- one of those perpetually negative, abrasive people who makes you feel that no matter what it is that you are doing, you are most certainly doing it wrong. And I know that's just how her personality displays itself, and she doesn't really think I am the scum of the earth -- she even admitted some of her own mistakes on things like counting out the cash and such, presumably to make me feel more confident -- but I still felt -- squashed, and insignificant, and very very young, and after such a ridiculously collossal mistake, too. And of course when I am nervous I make still more mistakes. At least I didn't knock anything over, but by the time I was picked up I just wanted to curl up and go to sleep. Only we went to BiLo instead, so Jonathan (who never ended up getting dropped off -- he rides with us to church and usually stays the afternoon -- and instead went with my mother to Wal-Mart?) could fetch milk, and Mum tortillas and parmesan and (at my begging) chocolate mint ice cream; and then there was a Goodwill sale, and then we came home and I holed up and read a book and it was marvellous. (I am, by the way, madly in love with Eva Ibbotson. Why has no-one ever forced me to read her before? A Countess Below Stairs was one of those marvellous, good-hearted books, with such fantastic writing and characterisation and Britishness -- the sort of warm, bright book you wrap around yourself as a shawl. I started reading it over again right away -- it was exactly the sort of book I needed after feeling so desperately out of sorts.)
And then I wrote a thousand words. And now I want very much to go to bed.
We spent quite a lot of yesterday out shopping, because I have been desperately in need of some respectable-looking jeans for a very long time and pay-day had just happened for people who are not me and are still in charge of my pants. There was some Goodwillage, at which, exactly as I predicted, I found nothing -- trousers are the only things I have never had any really good luck with at thrift shops. Ever. I have never found that serendipitiously perfect pair, and certainly not the ones which fit me like a (pleasantly corduroy) dream. All of their jeans are what I would call "grunge jeans" -- very blue lighter washes, and the only ones that ever look as though one could dress them up with a nice blouse and a pair of heels are, inevitably, about a size .5. I did find a very nice warm nightgown, however, which was another thing I am in some need of.
I haven't mentioned my old jeans, have I? They've gotten to be quite the disaster. Finding trousers that fit me attractively is so accursedly difficult that we only undergo the process about once a year, especially as we are nearly always forced to buy them new. These are, of course, last year's pair -- and they have somehow grown since December -- grown quite a lot. I am sure I can't have lost nearly that much weight. They are always in danger of falling off, they are scuffed and drab and limp-looking, the bottoms are terribly frayed, a hole's started on the side of one leg, and, strangest of all, they smell peculiar. It isn't exactly a bad smell -- not a body-sweat smell, nor a these-pants-haven't-been-washed-for-months smell, but -- strange. Sort of like detergent, like trousers you wash in the machine and then leave them to dry on their own. Except musty. I would keep washing them and washing them, trying to get the scent out, but it wouldn't come out. And anyway they had stopped looking respectable long ago, traitorous things.
Anyway, we went to Ross Dress For Less, which has lots of very nice new quality clothing for less mind-boggling prices. I bypassed the regular trouser section and went straight for the clearance rack and managed to pull off about six pair of trousers to try on. Heh. Look, I haven't had a good pair in a while.
So, the first thing I discovered: skinny jeans? Kind of look fabulous on me. Who knew? Certainly not me. I sort of liked the idea of them -- I have a lot of very -- fluffy is the wrong word -- blouses, babydoll tops and peasant tops and the like, which would certainly benefit from a narrower jean, but I am naturally quite pear shaped, and I thought a narrower jean would only make me look ridiculously more so. But hey, contrary to popular belief I do look out for trends if they are pleasing to my aesthetics. I can't help it. I'm very silly. So I tried on a pair and discovered that they are bizarrely slimming and besides which compliment flats very nicely. So I have a lovely new pair of skinny jeans -- I think the official colour term is charcoal, but they have the tiniest hint of purple to them, which pleases me -- and another pair of regular dark wash jeans (which came to about twenty dollars, total). It is the first time in several years that I have had two pairs of presentable trousers to alternate between.
Also, Claire's was having a sale with quite a lot of fabulous items, including button earrings, apple jewellery, and turquoise lace not-gloves, for a dollar apiece. My new paycheck was very happy to accomodate.
Then we ran into a friend of Mum's and ended up talking for a very long time. And then I ran to the library, absurdly admiring my jean-clad reflection in the shop windows along the way, and returned and collected books in the seven minutes before it closed.
Today, around two-thirty, I called my job to find out my hours: I had realised that I didn't have any on record for this week and didn't really know who to ask. It was the beginning of the week, you know? So it ought to be a good time. I ended up being on hold (I don't even know; I think the manager was out and they had to go find her?) for -- ten minutes, at least? -- and finally a woman came onto the other end and said, "Um, actually, you're working today, and you were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago."
Says I: "ULP."
(Truly, Reader, I was mortified.)
Mum rushed me over, and I was very cross and unhappy, because I wanted a ruddy nap so very badly, after having got to bed very late previously, and I want to impress my new employers, not make stupid embarrassing mistakes that force a lot of people to shuffle things around and accomodate me. (Mum and Jonathan tried to console me a bit -- I was, thankfully, not in the hysterics I likely would have had a year ago -- and it did make me feel a bit calmer, but still. I am still quite ashamed. Certainly, no-one told me anything about how I was to find out my hours, although I should have asked, and certainly should have asked Saturday, or even Friday night, leaving.) So my shift was only about two hours this time, and I made exactly two sales (drat you people! come on, let me use the cash register with its wonderful clicks and dings and whooshes!), and then I got to learn how to close up again -- I do enjoy putting up the curtains, with their hooks and zippers and padlocks on the zippers, and counting out the money is horrible in a mathematical way, but nice in a texture way, although when one realises exactly how much cash one is casually flipping through it can sometimes be faintly overwhelming.
However: Person In Charge who was showing me yet again how to close up was exactly the sort of person who puts me most on edge -- one of those perpetually negative, abrasive people who makes you feel that no matter what it is that you are doing, you are most certainly doing it wrong. And I know that's just how her personality displays itself, and she doesn't really think I am the scum of the earth -- she even admitted some of her own mistakes on things like counting out the cash and such, presumably to make me feel more confident -- but I still felt -- squashed, and insignificant, and very very young, and after such a ridiculously collossal mistake, too. And of course when I am nervous I make still more mistakes. At least I didn't knock anything over, but by the time I was picked up I just wanted to curl up and go to sleep. Only we went to BiLo instead, so Jonathan (who never ended up getting dropped off -- he rides with us to church and usually stays the afternoon -- and instead went with my mother to Wal-Mart?) could fetch milk, and Mum tortillas and parmesan and (at my begging) chocolate mint ice cream; and then there was a Goodwill sale, and then we came home and I holed up and read a book and it was marvellous. (I am, by the way, madly in love with Eva Ibbotson. Why has no-one ever forced me to read her before? A Countess Below Stairs was one of those marvellous, good-hearted books, with such fantastic writing and characterisation and Britishness -- the sort of warm, bright book you wrap around yourself as a shawl. I started reading it over again right away -- it was exactly the sort of book I needed after feeling so desperately out of sorts.)
And then I wrote a thousand words. And now I want very much to go to bed.