In the retail world, if you make me happy, I’m a customer for life. If not, I’m gone. I realized recently how extreme my loyal consumer ways have gotten. For two months, my husband and I lived apart, to accomodate a relocation process. During that time, he bought his own stuff; toothpaste, hair stuff, cleaning supplies and the like. He bought different stuff than I buy, so now, back together, we have two tubes of toothpaste, two kinds of contact lens solution, etc.
I’m pretty strict with my brand loyalty. My toothpaste is Crest, my eye care comes from Bausch and Lomb and at our house, toilet paper must be Charmin. During a trip to Sam’s, my husband bought something like 100 rolls of Northern. I’m dying, here. Who thought getting back together would be this hard?
One item he had purchased that I do like, and will continue to buy, is the Clorox toilet cleaning wand. It completely eliminates the disgusting toilet brushes that never made sense in the first place.
Steal of the week
Get this — after fruitless searching for the perfect chair for our livingroom, we found a complete steal in this leather chair and ottoman ($500 on sale). We ordered it online (that’s right — never saw it in person, never sat in it, we’re wacky trusters of the Internet over here) Sunday evening and it arrived TODAY!
It’s roughly half the price of others we saw and the quality is fantastic. It came from North Carolina, so you know it’s good furniture, right?
Don’t get jealous, but this is the view from my home office.
When there were the first murmurings of moving away from St. Louis, we thought we’d move West, not Southeast. The East coast has trees like these (I’ve counted 26 within my office view), something I found sadly lacking in Colorado.
My husband had always wanted a little bit of land and maybe a pond or a lake out back. He wanted to be far enough from the city to see the stars at night.
I knew I could live just about anywhere as long as:
- There was high speed Internet access, preferably wireless
- There was a Target nearby (and a Lowe’s, a good grocery, and a coffeeshop — Starbucks welcome)
- There were good schools and good neighbors
We’ve found our home.
Sometimes I do get homesick. On a recent trip to St. Louis, West County Mall rose in the distance like a consumer oasis (our one-floor mall, while providing quick shopping, somewhat lacks in panache). I miss the anonymousness of the big city, the variety and selection, the seemingly endless options and the busy-ness of crowded highways and streets. I miss the history of the place.
Then, I’ll look up in the neighborhood sky and see millions of stars, or run to the store and bump into a new friend, or just look out my office window and feel at peace.
Last week, I traveled to St. Louis. My bag took a trip to Indianapolis. I arrived in STL at 7:30 pm sans bag and quickly realized my jeans, sweater and traveling clogs weren’t going to cut it for my day of meetings beginning early the next morning. The airline representative said, “just keep your receipts for anything you need to buy.”
I thought, “Plaza Frontenac ,here I come!”
Then I got a bit more realistic. I knew I needed toiletries, a suit and shoes and had about an hour to get it all purchased. I headed for Target.
My dad gives me a hard time every occasion I’ve written about Target. He accuses me of being on the payroll. I can’t help it if they’ve solved many of my shopping needs and I want the world to know. Target rocks; I’m just a fan.
In the space of an hour I found a great chocolate linen suit, chocolate slingbacks, a striped dress shirt and a complete assortment of needed toiletries (makeup, hairbrush, toothbrush, etc.). One of my co-workers impressed me the next day by figuring out within $10 how much I’ve spent when I rattled off the shopping list ($190, if you’re interested).
The whole experience was not bad because I knew I’d be suitably dressed the next day (and indeed, my bag was delivered to my office late the next morning) and I was able to get all I needed in one stop; a blessing after a long day of working and traveling 800 miles.
My daughter’s Girl Scout troop spent the better part of a weekend selling (addictive) cookies outside the Wal-Mart store. It was very cute, as the girls had made up a jingle about the cookies to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb. “Girl Scout cookies are the best” and so on with all the names of the cookies as part of the song. They were attracting quite a bit of attention.
Then my daugher stepped up, braids flipping, pink, fur trimmed coat puffed out, and did a total rap about the cookies. She was rhymin’ with arms flapping and hand signs flying, calling out the cookie names and flagging down customers.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” said one of my fellow G.S. moms.
“That’s right. We’re from St. Louis. Home of Nelly.” I never expected to identify my hometown that way.
Maybe my daughter, (street name Vanilla J.) will be the first white girl rapper in C’ville.
It’s snowing here, today. A good day for a hot cup of coffee and a good crockpot dinner. The other morning my daughter wanted to treat me, so she asked if I would like a cup of hot chocolate or a cup of coffee. I wanted coffee, of course, but wasn’t sure she could handle that.
“Do you know how to make coffee?” I asked.
“I’ve seen you do it,” she said.
“What would you do? Tell me how you make coffee.”
“First you get out the white paper thing.”
“The filter.”
“Yeah, the filter. Then you put in the coffee mix, then you pour in the water and turn it on.”
“OK. Give it a shot. Just don’t use too much coffee.”
She went on down to the kitchen and that morning I had the strongest cup of coffee I’ve ever had. She filled the pot only halfway and used about twice as much coffee as I would have.
I didn’t say it was bad. But I was wired until about 3pm.
I found these at the grocery store. Cool little invention and a fantastic time saver. I made soup using one and it was a five second cleanup.
Due to the snow, we’re staying in and will have a fire in the fireplace. I could use a cup of coffee.
