Shopping

Does it seem to you that even MORE retail stores are going out of business than ever before?

Of course, there’s all the mall closings, which we know about: Sears, Penney’s, Macy’s going down like dinosaurs in a meteor crash. But now the trend seems to be reaching smaller specialty stores.

Drove over to the Tuesday Morning store about two miles from here and discovered, LO! An empty space where the shop used to be.

That’s too bad, because it was a cool little store. I think they consign things that don’t sell in a timely manner at larger retailers, so there’s a lot of nifty housewares in there, bedding, and even nice area rugs. Well….there was a lot.

I’d gone over there to try to buy a wall clock and a couple of pillows. My faithful old battery-run clock, the one that’s run for a good 20 years or more, fell off the garage wall and broke. Meanwhile, two very cheap pillows were needed for a little DIY project that’s under way.

The recent junket to the vet’s office through 110-degree heat reminded me that the damn Venza was NOT designed for dogs. Holy sh!t, what was I thinking when I bought that thing?

You can fold the back row of seats down, all right. Though they don’t lie flat(!), it’s good enough for government work. I guess. BUT…the result is a big gap behind the front seat, where the stupid back seats don’t fold flush against the front seats. The back seats do not scoot forward, so you can’t adjust them to close up the space. If I have to stop short with a dog in the back, the dog is going to fly forward and tumble into one of those holes. If the car is going very fast, the dog is going to get hurt; even below freeway speeds, enough momentum will break legs and sprain backs and break teeth.

With the seat backs up, the only remotely safe way to carry the dogs without wrestling them into cages, there’s no freaking air conditioning in the space the dogs have to occupy. Can you believe it? There’s only one tiny AC vent for back passengers!

How could I not have noticed that when I was test-driving it? How? Because I imagined Toyota’s designers have common sense. That seems to be something they took leave of sometime after they built the 2000 Sienna, which had four back AC vents. Stupidly, I imagined they would run AC vents at ceiling level for the Venza’s backseat passengers. WTF?

So the dogs cook when I have to drive them someplace in the summertime. The only way to protect them from the risk of overheating is to expose them to the risk of broken bones. Or worse.

M’hijito came up with an idea: Stuff pillows down into the hole. Excellent!

Conveniently, the two cheap pillows I’d bought at Tuesday Morning were wretchedly uncomfortable to sleep on, so I’d stashed them away. In that stash, too, were three very old and grungy pillows that could also be sacrificed for this project.

These worked to fill the space between the back and front seats, but they still left enough of a drop that a dog might get hurt or stuck if she fell in there. So I needed two more cheap uncomfortable pillows. Where better to get them than Tuesday Morning, source of the original cheap uncomfortable pillows?

So I was kinda shocked and annoyed to find the place GONE. Only alternatives — a Bed Bath & Beyond at the Colonnade and a Target way to hell and gone down by the Costco — are further away than I feel like driving in today’s heat. So what does that leave?

Yeah. Amazon.

For a brief shining moment, it looked very much like the winner of for Most Expensive Grocery Store in Town Prize was…not AJ’s (gourmet central). Not Safeway (two-for-one sale, wherein the first item’s price is inflated). Not Albertson’s. Not Costco (Home of the Impulse Buy). Not Trader Joe’s. Nay, not even Whole Foods!

Where could you buy a pound of apples for $7.++ per pound? Walmart!

I stood there staring at those Pink Ladies and thought…they must have mixed platinum powder into the fertilizer.

But no. Below the sign and hidden on the lip of the apple bin was a sticker claiming their price worked out 12.8 cents an ounce. There being 16 ounces in a pound: $.128 x 16 = $2.05 a pound.

That’s pretty cheap compared to the four bucks or so requested at AJ’s for premium apples. Oh, well. AJ’s had some exotic apple variety I’d never heard of, something called Koru. So we traded two $2.00 Pink Ladies (an excellent choice) for a $4 Koru.

Unfortunately, the Walmart didn’t have any of the dog food that I went up there to buy, hoping to avoid a lengthy trip to a more upscale store that carries the ridiculously expensive product that is the only thing I’ll feed the corgis when I don’t feel up for making their food.

So, I was going to have to traipse way to hell and gone down to AJ’s anyway, which sells the dog food for about $13 a roll, a buck more than Walmart charges, when Walmart has the stuff.

However… AJ’s has the advantage that it sells a very fine ready-made beef lasagne. Happening to be half-starved, I bought one helping, enough for two meals here at the Funny Farm. And naturally, a bottle of côtes du Rhone, on sale in the Summer Special.

Image: DepositPhotos, © korovin

So once again I ran amok at our favorite clothiery, the Cottage Garden in Glendale. Three of us wymmen have taken to meeting there, going crazy, and then running around the corner to a sweet little restaurant called The Spicery and eating ourselves stupid.

As always, I was in the market for shirts to go with my uniform, Costco blue jeans. And I found, ON SALE(!), a handsome black tunicky sort  of shirt, very nice looking. Some shirts, because of their architecture or their coloring or their pattern, hide the Boobless Wonder effect, and this is one that does so handsomely. It also, amazingly enough, hides the present pot belly created by my having mooned around for the past three months. Somehow, miraculously, it manages to make the flat top look unnoticeable and the belly look flat. 😀

Tomorrow SDXB is coming over for dinner and swimming.

Ahem. The problem is… When I go in the pool, I skinny-dip. I do not own anything that can be used to swim in the company of anything other than wild birds and tame dogs.  The old swim suits sitting in the drawer (why? Why have these not been tossed out?) have built-in bras and so a) are ridiculous and b) would not fit even if they were not ridiculous.

The relationship with SDXB is past the skinny-dipping phase, so I wanted to find something I could wear with a black (non-see through) cami to jump into the water. She — the proprietor —  had some lovely, cloud-soft knee-length tights. So naturally I had to buy those.

But probably, on reflection, I’ll just use the bottom of a two-piece swimsuit, since these sexy little pantaloons are way too nice to dip into chlorine water.

She — Mme. Proprietor — also had two of THE most gorgeous lace cover thingies, one in ivory cut much like a shirt, and one in black with wrist-length sleeves that looks, hevvin help us, very much like a Spanish mantilla. The latter is long enough to cover one’s tush, and so I believe it will look mighty amazing with black tights and a black cami or tank top.

$$$$$

But of course I could not stop there, eh? Ohhh nooooooo….

Whilst prowling around the store, what should I come upon but the niftiest little leather-looking handbags, with a wrist thingie to hang it from your paw or, alternatively, a long strap that you can hook on to sling it across your chest. It looks like leather (good) but it’s not leather (not so good). But more to the point, in addition to being compact and versatile, it is designed exactly as one would like to have such a baglet designed, if one had any say in the matter. It has two fairly generous sections AND six credit-card slots, each big enough to to hold more than one card.

My favorite and currently most used sandals are blue. Lo! they had one in exactly the color. But greed being the better part of valor, I realized I’d better grab one in black, so I’ll have something that will go with everything. Well. Almost everything.

Of late I’ve been trying to get away without carrying a purse at all. This can be done only if one wears something with pockets: to wit, jeans. But I’m getting mightily tired of Glorias, after all these years of wearing almost nothing else.

Most women’s clothes are short on pocket space. So these small, easily portable, minimalist bags will be just the thing. These things will allow me to wear stretchy tights, and they’ll be easy to hide in the car. It’s a nice compromise between no purse/full pockets and a hauling around a big old Coach bag.

Naturally I had to buy a pair of hand-crafted earrings. And a silver wire-wrap ring by the same guy.

So…ahem. I’m now bankrupt.

But money isn’t everything, eh?