Mending: My New Favorite Hobby

Way, way back in the day the ladies of the house used to sit around in the evening fixing the family's clothes by the fireside. Picture rocking chairs and a warm glow. Maybe some pipe smoke, and I'd like to think tomorrow's bread.

Today I don't have that wonderfully nostalgic scene to mend in. Usually I am stuck either on my knees next to an ottoman or my bed squinting at holes and thread. Mending is not a blind person's job, yet I toil on. Why, you ask? Well, because somehow the thighs of all of my workout pants decided to disintegrate at the same time. All of my cardigans have what appear to be moth holes but are probably just pulls at the same time. My hems have all fallen out at the same time. My skirts need taken in and my straps need taken up, all at the same time.

I should see a professional. Should but can't. Somehow the summer time is the time that I find myself most broke. I don't get it, other than my car insurance being due it isn't that much different than any other season. Not only am I the most broke during the summer, I've discovered that I don't have complete outfits for the summer, I have summer skirts, a dress or two but no tops. All of my shirts are summer inappropriate. My shoes less so but they're still lacking and I only own one acceptable pair of shorts, and their white, and I'm messy.

So my broke, summer-clothesless self is mending the thigh holes in hopes that, instead of buying new versions of clothes I already have, I can buy new things to spice up the entire wardrobe... Ann Taylor has some wide leg jeans, I'd like to try, only $98.

You're like a Pro!

Pro as in professional not pro as in prostitute but then again prostitute may be more flattering than suit fit pro. Now you may not understand the upset this causes but it makes me seem like a lifer. I don't want to be a lifer I find it so offensive and sad that that is the best that people can see in me, or worse that it's the best that I can do. I don't want to go to that dark place again but its looking like the next best thing to a happy place.

I may have four, count them four, pants fit certifications and for that I should hang myself. I know a little melodramatic, but kind of true. And I've taken it upon myself to train the new people at work since no one else has. I mean these girls can fold clothes and create holds for the fitting rooms but thats about it and with the DM looming no one is going to train them.

Wait! Why would I do that, I only make $8.10 an hour (that's right Ann Taylor, I just published you're hourly wage. Suck the big one.). I do this so that I'm not bored. What does that say about my work ethic? Why can't I get hired?

From now on I'm going to wear glasses to my interviews. Maybe tighter skirts or something. I thought looking cute was enough, professional cute. But here I am working two jobs, some days 12 hours (two days this week) and not making enough to pay my bills on time.

Tell me again that the economy is taking a turn for the better. Then take a look at my finances. Tell me that I've got everything to look forward to, I'm young and I'm unattached then spend a week-no a month- in my shoes and keep smiling.

So here's to Ann Taylor sucking the life out of me and killing me for being a good employee. Thank you for your financial support and care Ann. If you were a real person I'd consider arson or murder. But instead I challenge the top dogs, the cooperate honchos to live with the decisions they make me live with. Give up the savings and the cooperate perks, live with the wage and smile through your teeth as a third of the people you are forced to help treat you like dirt because they married men with bachelor's degrees who make an excess of $100,000 a year. If only I had obtained some type of degree, then I could go somewhere with my life.

Oh, wait I have one.

Diving

There is something to be said about having a good bar to drink in. I think we should all be so lucky to be like the folks on the tele who walk downstairs from their fancy apartments and land in cozy pub type bars where everything in their lives unfolds into a nice mapped out something or other and the drama is cleared up in 24 or 48 minutes depending.  I happen to live in a place where no such bar exists.

The bars in the nearest town (because I don't actually live in a town) are either way too pricey from my two-job, seven(ish)-day-a-week salary or leaving me wondering if I should have rewashed the glass before having someone fix me a drink. And while I complain about these places they're not that bad, a coked up waiter might be the worst of it, that, or the possibility that I will be stuck for forever in the parking lot because it is so full people stopped parking in parking spaces.

All the bars in this little place are always filled to the brim with people who are willing to drink in any and all of these establishments. Though I'm not entirely sure that it's the dive bar thing that they are looking for, plenty of people with plenty of money land in the cheapest holes.

Last night as I observed one of these places I realized that maybe it's not the money. It's more likely the acceptance of whatever that attracts people to these places. They are the only place where it is acceptable for an NFL player and his ex-cheerleader/playboy posing wife to hang out with a possible she-male and his/her pantie-lined male companion.  It's also a place where adult women can get their spouse plastered and while sitting on his lap be petting another man's pants. Your pants don't have to reach your shoes, your hair doesn't have to be real or tidy and who cares if your camo doesn't quite match, we can't see you anyways.

These places also have the highest under 45 crowd which is probably the second reason we go to them. You might see someone you know, in the high school reunion sense and they won't be your friends from preschools parents (or will they?).

I look forward to the day when I can go to a bar I like. Where the air isn't so heavy that everyone who returns from the bathroom must sniff loudly and rub their noses as the reenter the bar.

Missing the UK

So today as I complained about the cold, damp cloudy weather I realized that last year this was my heaven.

O London, I miss you so.



This may be a bit forward of me but...can you send me the $Money$? I need to get back.