If the Dress Fits Wear It

Warning..if you are a male chances are that this blog entry will be of no interest to you. Carry on with your scheduled, whatever it is guys do. Thank you.

I am not a shopper of clothes. I only enjoy shopping if it is for someone else, not for a gift mind you I hate that too, but if one of my female friends can't find anyone else to hang around with and I am on the short list because they need someone to chat with while they suffer the stores, then I'm there, in fact I do find it highly amusing. Yes, in this case I enjoy watching the suffering of others. I have always avoided the malls and shops (with exception of bookstores or record shops when I was younger) like they are vast, contaminated wastelands which as when I enter I could be struck down with a life ending disease . Growing up if there wasn't a special occasion, we only went shopping twice a year, once prior to the beginning of school and once in the spring. When I was a teenager I spent a lot of time hanging in the malls and to be honest I wasn't looking for clothes as much as I was looking for a potential boyfriend. I dislike trying on clothes and miss the days when my body never changed and I could walk in a store, grab my size of whatever I was shopping for off of the racks and check out. There was no standing around waiting for a fitting room, or wondering if anyone was video taping me as I clambered out of the apparel of the day and into my selection from the store.  There was customer service, the folks working in the stores where glad to have their jobs in retail and didn't act as though they where doing you the worlds biggest favor by finding a size that actually would fit in if indeed you where forced to try on something and they would ring you up with a smile and a have a nice day. All this said, this past weekend I begrudgingly took part in a 2 day shopping extravaganza trying to find a dress to wear to my niece's wedding.

It is not easy being the Aunt of the bride, add on the fact that I am very close to her, having taken care of her  when she was a baby, bringing her on dates with me, etc. We spent a lot of time together when she was growing up. She has also given me the responsibility and honor of having a role in the wedding, I am the helper. I have a list of things to oversee for the wedding including directing the ushers and groomsmen. The girl knows who to come to when something needs directing, we are kindred OCD spirits. So you see I needed a very special dress. My sister's dress (the mom of the bride) is a lilac color, so I wanted silver (out of style this year, sorry), grey, or lavender. We are wearing matching jewelry, so I thought those colors would go well with hers. I wanted a dress that had a little sparkle but not too much,  as it is a 7pm wedding, but fancier than just leaving the office (if I had a job). So with a theme and color scheme in mind it was time to plan the shopping trip.

If I was going to suffer, I wasn't doing it alone. My teenager who actually has a good style sense, ever since she stopped wearing all black and using enough black eyeliner to paint a Ford a couple of years ago was my first involuntary volunteer, it doesn't hurt that she LOVES to shop, and uses phrases like, "that looks slimming on you" and doesn't actually tell me I look fat in something, she just sort of does an "Elvis-lip" thing with her mouth and suggests a different selection or store. My kid, ever the diplomat. My second draftee was my hubby, who let's face it, as the only one bringing in a paycheck has the last word on the price we are willing to spend for anything. The problem with drafting him for this endeavor is the fact that he still remembers the good old days when you could buy a pair of slacks for $15.00 (and that was alot), so of course EVERYTHING is expensive now-a-days. Into the truck we piled on Friday evening and we headed across town to my favorite shop. I needed a dress for the wedding rehearsal dinner which I found quite easily there. But alas, there was no finding the dress of my desires there. So off we went, a couple of blocks away to the..the..gulp..mall. There are only 3 stores there that sell what I have in mind, and unfortunately, what I had in mind was not there, not even anything that I wanted to try on and so we returned home on Friday night, without the epic dress.

Saturday morning, a new day of dress possibilities arrived. I wrestled the teenager out of bed and pointed her in the direction of the shower and after several trips to her room with motivated pleading for her to hurry up, we where all out of the door again. My hubby, who is usually chipper with kidding banter when we set out on an adventure was strangely subdued. I got the feeling that he wasn't as hopeful as I was, and after visiting 3 stores on the same side of town that we had visited the night before, even my spirit was faltering. I then suggested the only alternatives we have in our town, the consignment shops, of which there are 3, or where. One is closed, as in gone away forever, the other sells primarily active wear, and the last one, well..I tried on no less than 15 dresses. We where there nearly 3 hours. My poor hubby, ever the trooper had to stand, holding my purse, because the store is so stuffed with ladies formal wear there is no room for a chair. I was then forced to a realization that I have been avoiding for a while now. I cannot just wear anything. I have reached an age where certain things make me look like an old lady trying to look young (you've seen them in Wal-Mart. wrinkled, over made up 75 year old red heads, wearing a halter top, leopard print stretch pants and orthopaedic combat boots), or a middle aged woman stuffed into her grandma's hand-me-downs. I wanted cry when we where done in there. I was tired, my feet hurt, and I had reached the point where this shopping excursion had sucked the care of what I wear right out of me. 

There was only one place left for us, twenty six miles away, in the big city, the mall that has everything, and that was where we had to go, and we did. I did find a dress here, after making 2 trips across the mall, fighting our way through the crowds of multi-color haired, pierced teenagers and foreign language speaking, stroller pushing women traveling in groups of 20 or more, that seem to descend upon on the place on a Saturday afternoon. The dress isn't sparkly, it isn't the color I wanted, but the price was reasonable, and finding it ended my suffering. I will look nice, like the Aunt of the Bride, a bit fancier than if I had just left my non-existent office, but in the back of my mind I will know that it wasn't my dream dress. 

And crap...now I have to go out and find shoes to match.

ME

A Letter From a Disgruntled Employee

This morning I had another first in my life, I sent out a letter to my employer, lamenting my dissatisfaction with the general operations of their company, and treatment of their employees. Not bad for working for them for only 2.5 hours since my hire date of February 1.

Back in October of last year, I began looking for a job, not because we where on the verge of downsizing from ground beef to dollar store cat food (no, we don't have a cat) but because I had 2 very good reasons to go back to work after 11 years of working for free. First of all, my husband went on salary, which translates into, if the phone rings in the middle of the night and he has to go into work, he's doing it for free. I simply wanted to try and take some of the stress off of him. The second reason is my teenager. Next year she will be a Senior in high school and it's time for her to get some wheels under her, and let mom's taxi retire.I would also like to spoil her a little bit too, perhaps get a prom dress that isn't on the sale rack. And Senior year isn't cheap, the price of her graduation photos is going to make my hubby's eye twitch, and let's not even get into college money. So I wrote and re-wrote my resume several times, actually we are up to the sixth edition, and started looking for work.

I live in a small town, which has it's perks, but there is a down side as well,  unless you want to work at a big box retail store or in the food service industry you have to commute to the big city to work, which means putting your paycheck into your car, by way of gasoline or upkeep. So, when I heard that a craft store chain was coming to our town I was excited, then when I heard that they where having a job fair I was thrilled. Because a) I needed a job and b) if there is anything I know about, it is crafting. I can sew, knit, crochet, cross stitch, make soy candles, scrapbook and a few other things. You would think that would make me an ideal candidate for a job in a craft store right? Yeah, well they did too. I walked into the job fair, handed the manager my application and resume (which I had customized for this type of job) and was hired on the spot, to be an Educational Coordinator. Personally, I would have been happy to be customer service, cashier, stock crew or anything else but to be able to teach was like icing on the cake to me. I was over the moon, and couldn't wait until Orientation, which would be a couple weeks from that day. And on February first I went to learn what they planned to teach me and was told that that was my start date and the store would officially open on March 7th, we will call you with your schedule next week. I was gainfully employed! Yeah..well..

The phone didn't ring. I didn't miss their call, I even took the phone with me into the bathroom when I went in to shower (bet that is real good for your smart phone huh?) I checked my messages several times a day, still none. I cried, I yelled, and I'm sure my hubby thought I was going over the edge, the entire month of February. I was heartbroken. So on the official opening day of the store I hopped into my mom mobile and drove across town to the store. I would not be put off. I walked up to the first available cashier and asked to talk to the manager, the lead cashier was a couple of registers down, and after I told the girl what my problem was she went and whispered in her ear, returning to tell me that she would be with me momentarily. In the mean time, a woman bearing pizza's, announcing herself as a neighbor in the strip mall bringing the welcome wagon in the form of cheesy goodness, came up to the register banks. Don't you know that the lead cashier, scooted around the counter, passing me and looking right into my eyes, and took Ms. Pizza 2013 by the elbow leading her towards the back of the store. My cashier yelled her name twice, and even left her register to run after her to remind her that I was standing right there, just in case she had failing eyesight or I had become suddenly the invisible woman, only to return and ask for my name and phone number, promising that someone would call me that day. Yeah..well.. it's been over a month and the phone hasn't rung. But, my paycheck for Orientation, a whopping $16 materialized 3 weeks later and guess what, there was nothing telling me to get lost with it. Therefore, I am assuming I am still employed by this company.

I have truly flip-flopped on what to do. I would give them mental deadlines to call me, and they would pass. I wanted the job, I was actually thrilled to be hired but you have to take into consideration the following facts. What company hires you and then can't get a cashier that is on break to at least call and tell you, "hey we haven't forgotten about you, but we don't need you yet", or send out a one line email saying the same. Then there is the matter that it took a over a month to send out my paltry little paycheck, that in all honesty wouldn't cover the cost of the yarn I would use for one project even with my employee discount. Hence, my irate letter to the company. This job came along, I still hit the seven different search engines every day to look for employment another job will come along. I'm just glad I wasn't counting on this one to feed my family, and I hope no one else was. Oh and by the way, my oldest daughter sucked it up and went into the store to shop, she said they where rude beyond belief, she got poor service, and she won't shop there again. Now if I had been on the register things would have been different.

ME