Saturday was set aside to do some shopping, always a dismal prospect here.
The bottom line is that you just don't have many options here. There aren't that many stores and they tend to be Cliff Notes, abridged versions of the one you could find in the city. They carry a narrow range of merchandise, so odds are no matter what you're looking for, in clothes, or food, or housewares or anything, they won't have it and have never heard of it. And in the rare instance they actually carry what you're looking for, it will be out of stock. Everything here is perpetually out of stock.
"We should be getting some more in next Thursday" they say.
It's always Thursday, don't ask me why. Maybe giant cargo planes swoop in on Thursdays and do emergency airdrops out in the fields, like a Third World country. Which when you think about it, isn't that far off the mark.
"Yeah, you really need to go to LA for anything. Or shop online. If you shop here you're just going to cry" one lady friend advised me. Boy, was she right.
There's WalMart, of course. Six of 'em. Open 24/7. If you find yourself needing adult diapers or a new set of tires at 3am, it's your lucky day. There are a couple of Targets, and then down at the mall there's a Sears, a Pennys and a Macy's.
When we first moved here and exited the freeway near the mall, I said "Thank God, they at least have a Macy's." But they really don't. It's "Macy's Basement". It's where all the other Macy's from all over the country dump all the crap they were unable to sell, all the outdated fashions and what-were-they-thinking styles and slightly damaged goods. I went in the Men's department once and it was a sea of Ed Hardy bedazzled T-shirts. There may have also been some Member's Only jackets and parachute pants, I couldn't be sure. And it was all piled high on crowded tables like a garage sale.
Luckily for us, it hasn't really been an issue since we've been so destitute shopping for anything hasn't really been in the cards. But lately, things have improved and we finally found ourselves with a little disposable income and some desperate needs. Chief among them... sheets.
We moved here with probably half a dozen sets of sheets, but one by one our cheap appliances have been picking them off. Our sadistic washer beats them to a pulp, and then the nuclear dryer shrinks them to size of dish towels. We were down to one set and it was pretty threadbare. So the boyfriend set off around 10am to find us new sheets.
He came home three hours later, empty handed and near tears.
See, we made the executive decision when we bought our current mattress to go for a "Standard King", as opposed to the "California King" which is all the rage these days. The reason was simple: the dogs. Although they appear small, they have the remarkable ability to stretch to cover half the bed. We needed the extra real estate. We've never had any issue buying sheets for it before. It is, after all, called "standard" for a reason. But not here.
The boyfriend went to two Walmarts, a Target, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Sears, Pennys and Macy's. Nada. It wasn't that they didn't have anything he liked, it's that they had nothing.
I offered to treat him to lunch and see if we could find some other options. And as we were driving around, we came across something new... Homegoods. It a new housewares store from the fashionistas at TJMaxx. It was worth a shot.
So in we went. It's kind of like a swap meet. We saw all the bedding along the back wall and the boyfriend immediately headed back and started digging and within a few minutes... Voila! Standard size sheets! Three of them!
The electric neon green set we immediately discarded. Life is just too short to wake up to that every day. Which left us choosing between the two remaining sets.
"You don't HATE polka dots, do you?" the boyfriend asked.
Not anymore. Not if it was the best we were going to do.
At least it will be easier to spot the dogs. My little dog is the same color as our old sheets, and a couple of times I've flipped her into the air because I didn't see her when I was making the bed. I'm sure she'll be happy now.
That makes one of us.
