BATH AND BODY AND STRESS, OH MY!

   Why do sales have to be so complicated? I love Bath & Bodyworks’ products. I really do. I’m not even being paid to say that. I swear. There’s just something about their lotions and body sprays that put a smile on my face. But I have to admit they’re not cheap. That’s why most people like to shop there (stock up) during their sales. But be warned. Their big annual sale will boggle your mind for hours long after you’ve left the store.

   This is what happens. You go into the store because you’ve been informed through a very cheery, colorful e-mail announcement that there is a big sale going on at the store for a limited time. 50% to 75% off. You can’t ignore deals like that. You smile, you grin, you hurry to the store because they’ve brought back that favorite scent of yours from two summers ago that they never should’ve discontinued in the first place which ticked you off so much that you don’t even want to talk about it. Where were we? Oh yes, you’re hurrying to the store. You get there. There are all kinds of goodies inside big, colorful cardboard boxes or giant glass vases. 50% and 75% off signs are taped to these displays. You roll up your sleeves, ready to fill up the large tote bag that some kind, smiling store helper offered to you. You’re ready for the hunt because it is a hunt to try to find your favorite scents that always seem to sell out before you get there. (Do people camp out in front of the store? Sheesh!. How do the great scents get taken so fast?)

   Anyway, after a half hour of rummaging through every nook and cranny of the store, you somehow end up at the cash register with your not so full, but you tried tote bag. The cashier says, “That’ll be $55.94.”

   $55.94! What? How? That doesn’t sound like a sale total. That sounds like a regular day, there was no sale, what the heck is going on total. What happened? You only got a few minis (aka travel sized items), a small gift basket and a few regular size lotions that you decided you could tolerate. And you got some Sweet Pea products because they’re never discontinued and are a reliably good scent.

   The cashier explains how your purchases resulted in the not so fun $55.94 total. Apparently, the minis were on sale, but there were different sales. There was 75% off mini shower gels, 50% off mini body lotions and sprays. $3 large size body lotions and sprays for lotions and sprays that you don’t like and that were basically rejects the store can’t seem to get rid of. There was Buy 3, get one free sales and Buy 3 for $10 minis. Hey, wait. Weren’t minis 50% to 75% off? No, only certain minis were on sale, and the rest (or best options) were 3 for $10 and $5 each if purchased separately. Then there were the select gift sets  for 20% off. Wait. What’s that “select” business about? Select means some are on sale, and some are not. See a store helper to find out which ones aren’t on sale. There were new fragrances that all seemed to smell like air freshener or fruit salad in mini sizes for $1 each. Fragrances and items leftover from Christmas somehow managed to sneak into the display boxes and vases. Yet they were only 50% off. Shouldn’t they be 75% off to encourage customers to finally buy that crap...uh, special, seasonal items that somehow didn’t get sold in December? It’s summer. Who wants Santa socks in July?

   When the cashier is finishes explaining all of this to you, you’re head begins to hurt. Sales are supposed to be fun. They’re supposed to give you a thrill to know that you got quality stuff for less than retail prices. You were going to go around all week telling people what a great bargain shopper you are. But that didn’t happen. You end up picking out all of the minis you wanted which comes to five items. You say “I’ll just take these.” The cashier looks at you with a pleasant smile, secretly thinking you’re cheap, puts your baby-sized items in a cutsie paper shopping bag and says, “Have a nice day.”

   You walk out of the store in a daze. You’re head still hurts, but you feel a little special since you’re now one of the many people walking around the city carrying a Bath & Bodyworks’ shopping bag. It’s like you’re a part of a special club. But that sale was so disappointing. Why so many sales within sales being offered at once? Why did it have to be so confusing? Maybe you just won’t go to another one of their sales if they’re going to be like that. Why did you hurry to the store just to end up with five tiny bottles of stuff that you...” Wait. Hold on. You examine the contents of your bag and discover that there’s a coupon next to your receipt. Oh yeah! You smile to yourself, realizing that you’re gonna be back in five days when the annual sale is over, and your coupon coincidently begins to be valid. 

    

LOST MY MIND IN 95 DEGREE HEAT

   It was hot. How hot? It was air doesn’t feel like it’s moving, clothes sticking to your body in an intrusive way, don’t bother to comb your hair because it’s just going to frizz up, walked two steps and already perspiring like a pig type hot.

   It was almost a hundred degrees outside. Some girl walked by me wearing butt cheek exposing shorts. Yes, it’s hot. Is it okay to expose your butt cheeks in public hot? I’m going to say no to that. Don’t want to see your butt cheeks, lady. I went into the nearest subway station. Maybe I’d see a homeless person urinating in a corner. Butt cheeks and public urination...ah, the sights of the city are so varied, so entertaining. So gross, but I didn’t care anymore. It was too hot to care. I saw my train just waiting in the station as if waiting just for me. I was too hot to utter yay, but there were all kinds of yay feelings going on inside me. I wouldn’t have to wait in stifling heat on the subway platform for my train to come because it was there already. Yay! Right there in front of me. Yay!

   I noticed instantly that the train car I was about to step into was mostly empty. I did a quick study of how the few people on the train looked. I knew if they looked bothered and fanned themselves with their hands, newspapers, anything available, then that meant that there was no air-conditioning on the train. If they were all bunched up in one area, heads down or heads shaking in disgust, that meant that a homeless person was or had been on the train and filled the whole thing up with his or her body odor.

   It was too hot to continue my observances. I had to get on the train before it took off. I got on and was instantly greeted with a coolness that could only be described as pure heaven. I breathed in clean, non-B O tainted air. The few people around me were sitting quietly, enjoying the coolness, enjoying the non-smelliness, enjoying seats to themselves because everyone could sit separately without having a stranger’s sweaty body nudged up against theirs. I sat and smiled to myself. I settled into my seat and took out a book to read. It was amazing to be able to think coherently without feeling like my brain was sweating.

   The perspiration that had beaded along my skin dried instantly so that my blouse no longer clung to me. I read, smiled, mentally zoned out a couple of times as I was lulled into the comfortable bliss by one properly air-conditioned train ride.

   Several minutes later, the train stopped. I looked out the window and saw an 8th Street sign. 8th Street? I had been on 23rd Street with the intention of heading uptown. If I was on 8th Street, then that meant...what? What? I was going downtown? Seriously? I was on the wrong train? NOOOO! Say it wasn’t so, subway fates. Please say I did not get onto the wrong train that felt so right. But I did. Somehow in my overheated state of delusion, I did just that. I’d have to get off.

   But I didn’t want to get off. I couldn’t take the air-conditioning with me if I got off. It was hot beyond the train car doors. Too hot. How hot? It was dog tongues hanging out, ice cream melts in a cone in five seconds, everybody and their grandmother is at the pool,  want to slap everyone who goes around exposing their butt cheeks in public type hot. I didn’t want to see anymore butt cheeks!

   It was a mad world out there with temperatures that made a sane person downright snippy. Oh yes, I was in full snip mode. I didn’t want to see butt cheeks! I was on the wrong train! CRAP!!!

   But it was such a nice wrong train. I settled back in my seat. Who did I know in Brooklyn?

BEAR IN BED

Don't you hate it when Mother Nature calls just when you're all tucked in?

THE LADY AND THE BOY

THE LADY AND THE BOY

(comic & art)

by

Patricia G.

 

BOY: I can run fast like the wind.

LADY: I can vote.

                                                       BOY: I don't have to pay taxes.
                                                       LADY: I don't have to do homework.

                                       BOY: Because of my kid metabolism, I can eat anything I want and stay in shape without hardly any effort at all.

LADY: That was low.

                                                 

AM I THE ONLY ONE? Random Thoughts

1- (For all of you who know who T.I. is)

   Whenever I see T.I, I think chocolate Elvis, chocolate Elvis. Am I the only one? Come on. Think back to young, young Elvis Presley. “Viva Las Vegas” Elvis. Now visualize that baby face Elvis with a really good tan. What do you get when you do that? T.I.! Yes, you do. I can’t be the only one who thinks this.

 2- Every time I want to say Law and Order: SVU, I always have to think Special Victims Unit so that I don’t say SUV instead. Law and Order: SUV? Uh, yeah, that’s a special show about the terrible things that happen to SUVs on the mean streets of New York. Sure. :) 

3- How many of you have gone into a TD Bank just to get one of their free pens? Is that wrong? You have to admit the ink quality in them is quite good.

THREE SHEETS, WIND AND SODA?

“Three sheets to the wind- means drunk. Three sheets to (or in) the wind is a nautical expression. If three sheets, which are the ropes holding the sails rather than the sails themselves, are loose and blowing about then the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor. Dickens uses it in  Dombey and Son.”

   First, I got the above information online a long time ago, but I don’t remember the name of the site that offered the info. Second, I’ve never read the above mentioned Dombey and Son by Dickens. So please don’t ask me about Dombey and Son. You can ask me about Sanford and Son though. That was a funny show? I wonder if Dombey liked his son more than Sanford like his. Anyway, I digress.

   With that said, I can also now admit that I’ve never been three sheets to any wind. I’ve never even been two pillow cases to the moon. I’ve never even been slightly buzzed. I’m an enigma really. I’m a well over twenty-one year old ginger ale gal. Next to ginger ale, the strongest thing I’ve ever drunk has been Pepsi. Ice cold Pepsi can burn the lining of your throat and offer you one of those mini brain freezes if you’re not careful. Other than those kind of side effects, I’ve never experienced the hangover delight after so-called drunken enjoyment that most people have experienced.

   Oh, my friends have tried to tempt me. I attend their parties and find myself being wary of cherry flavored squares of gellatin because I’m forewarned that they are jello shots. Who ever heard of spiking jello? Is nothing sacred?

   Actually, I have great friends who are more than understanding of their always sober friend. If they’re serving cocktails, there are always virgin alternatives for me and always without fail a nice liter of ginger ale on ice in my honor.

   They allow me to be the designated spectator of interesting games like Beer Pong. Beer Pong is a game in which people play against each other by throwing little plastic balls into cups half filled with beer that are positioned on opposite sides of a long table. (Yes, this is a real game. I did not make this up.) If you get your ball into one of your opponent’s cups, your opponent must, according to the laws of the intoxicated, drink the beer from that cup. This is truly a game of skill. Not everyone has good throwing ability you understand. The little, plastic balls often miss their targets and end up on the floor, in bushes or doggie bowls. It’s all right. It’s all part of the game.

  What’s a little doogie bowl contact amongst friends, right? You can always rinse off the balls in a bowl of water that is usually kept nearby. However, once you’re fully into the game, you may forget to change the bowl water, but who cares about germs or a little dirt in the beer, right? Right. Because it’s Miller time, baby, and you have to just go with the flow.

   So why don’t I ever roll with that flow? What’s my problem with alcohol? Nothing really. Okay, maybe the whole loss of inhibitions doesn’t really appeal to me. I have to admit I like being in control of my actions, thoughts and bodily functions. And to be totally honest, I don’t really need a stimulant to loosen up and enjoy myself. I’m often surprised by how many people do seem to need such stimulants.

   Why do they need them? Well, it just seems easier to unwind, act a fool if necessary or work up the nerve to socialize if you know that in the end, you can blame anything you do on alcohol. Think about it. If you ever wanted to cut loose and dance on someone’s coffee table in your underwear while sober, you would be called an idiot. Try that after a few drinks, and you become the funny, life of the party.

   As long as you don’t go overboard, it’s all good fun. But us non-sheets to the winders have our own incentive, too. It’s a little known fact, but there is a sense of interesting power that can be attained from sobriety.

   Only the sober will recall the tributes to the 80s or 90s Gumby dance that tries to come back into fashion after a couple of margaritas have been sampled. Only the non-inebriated will remember the Demi Moore striptease attempts from a former wall flower after some shots of jagermeister.

   Therefore, let’s cheer for the dear soda gals. Hurray, for a soda gal, for she will always drive you home no matter how much you puke in her car. And she will also hold your hair back without a word as you pay homage to the grand toilet bowl god once you get to said home just as long as you keep the ginger ale chilled and quit spiking her jello!   

Letters? Really?

   It’s 2012. People can text, Twitter, share their lives on Facebook and You Tube, and I have a pen pal. Pen pal. Yes, really. I have a person who I write letters to. Letters, you know those long notes written on paper that start off with salutations like Dear so-and-so and end with Sincerely, Me so-and-so. It must seem like an ancient practice to write letters instead of typing on a computer and then hitting the Send button. I write with an actual pen on paper, stick the paper into an envelope, put a stamp on the envelope and mail the sucker out into a blue thingy called a mailbox.

   Maybe it’s the writer in me, but everything just seems more interesting in a letter. You have the reader’s complete attention. There are no pesky scrolling advertisements or Chatroom reminders popping up to serve as distractions. In a letter, I can express with reckless abandon just how it felt to walk to the laundromat, pass by trees along the way, step on a crack without breaking my mother’s back, put my clothes into a washing machine and walk away from the machine instead of stare at the swirling action inside it for 30 minutes until the clothes are clean.

   (Why do people stare at washing machines? Whenever I go to the laundromat, I always see people staring blankly at washing machines. It’s not TV. It’s not a stimulating display activated to serve as entertainment. The swirling action won’t ever change its direction. It’s going to swirl in a clockwise motion until it’s done. I swear. If you look away, it’s not going to suddenly spin all counter-clockwise on you. Trust me. So kindly stop staring at washing machines! I’m serious. I hate it when I see people doing that. It creeps me out. It looks like they’re obsessed or something. They’re in some sort of trance and while they’re in this weird state, something odd happens that causes socks all around to come out as singles instead of in pairs the way they originally went in.)

   But I digress. Back to letter writing. I write letters to fill pages with sincere hellos, this is what I did, this is the real me in print (or script or cursive, however you like to say it) for you to read about and no one else. (Unless you decide to show the letter to someone else which I’m sure is in direct violation of pen pal etiquette. Or not. I don’t know.) I do know that when I tried to upgrade the form of correspondence with my pen pal to texting, it came out like this............

“Hi. How r u? I’m ok. ttyl”

  Somehow that didn’t feel as eloquent as the four page letter it replaced.