Letters From Home

Vengeant mentioned a week or so ago that he needed more socks. For any mere mortal this would not be a particularly difficult request to fulfill, but since Veng wears size 15 shoes, locating the accompanying socks requires special skills on the part of the sock buyer. Mainly, the ability to find the one rack of extra large socks in amongst the regular size offerings, and the wisdom to know which stores have even the one rack of extra-larges, without charging the same prices for socks that they would otherwise apply to a brand new Mercedes.

For anyone else in a similar situation, the key is Penneys in the Galleria, the regular men’s sock-and-undies department, and plenty of patience. F’zer and I headed over there today. I thought I’d have to persuade F’zer to go along (and did actually mention the magic word “Rubio’s” as an enticement) but it turns out he needed some more socks, too. So while he easily located the bag of tube socks he wanted, I started poking through the racks of dark-colored dress socks. I only had to go through two racks before I found the extra-larges, but not in blue or black as Vengeant had requested. The only available color appeared to be an indescribable color somewhere between black and very dark green. However, they had a lot of them, in different thicknesses, and I reasoned that under dark colored pants nobody was going to notice what color the socks are. So I grabbed some.

We then went over to the Big & Tall department, where I occasionally have reasonable luck finding stuff for Veng. Penneys says BIG and tall and they mean it; most of the clothing there is sized for guys who are oh, about 6’5″ and 485 pounds. However, this time our luck held and we snagged one white shirt and two pairs of slacks in Veng’s sizes. Woohoo!

We then strolled down the mall to see what’s changed at the south end since the last time F’zer was in there, and it was his idea to go browse in Lane Bryant. I usually don’t shop there even though I like their clothing, because getting anyone to wait on you in there is a lost cause. That was no different today. I saw no sales clerks on the floor, although the cashier insisted (to someone seeking a sales clerk) that there were in fact two out there somewhere. F’zer picked me out a lovely skirt, and I got a t-shirt to go with it, and then (wow, what a terrible chore this was) had to pick out a second one in order to get the twofer sale price. I also picked out two pairs of earrings. Then I approached the checkout, and discovered that the woman behind the counter couldn’t make up her mind whether it was appropriate to focus her attention on the customers trying to pay for things. She kept darting back and forth between the cash register and a TV that was apparently supposed to be playing a video in the back. The woman in front of me had to stand and wait through four back-and-forth dashes behind the counter; each time the customer would take one more step in the credit-card approval process, the clerk would be over messing around with the TV. So the clerk would come back, press one button, go off to the TV again and the customer would be left in the lurch, waiting for the clerk to press another button to complete the next step in the transaction. I wouldn’t have put up with that for a minute, myself, and would have asked the clerk whether the customer or the TV was paying her salary and to choose the object of her attentions wisely thereby, but I wasn’t first in line at that point. She doesn’t know how lucky she was.

Having gotten my items paid for (the clerk apparently abandoned the TV to its own devices) F’zer and I headed off to Michaels and then Rubio’s. At Michaels I finally got the replacement cutter for my Fiskars paper trimmer, and a nice frame that I intend to use for pictures of my parents. On the way out, I saw some essential-oil warmers on clearance for $3, which I thought was an OK price. Unfortunately, it was only the two icky colors that were on sale. The color I wanted, wasn’t. Hmm. So I handed F’zer the one I wanted, and one of my two 50% off coupons and asked him to get in line in front of me. I used one coupon on my frame and F’zer used the other on the oil warmer and thus got it for less than the clearance price. Yay!

Then we rewarded ourselves for our shopping savvy by having lunch at Rubio’s, which has a couple new items on the menu and now offers flour tortillas instead of only corn. Rubio’s has without a doubt the best fire-roasted salsa in town, and I wish they sold it in jars. But it probably wouldn’t taste as good that way.

And then, having emptied our bank account and filled our tummies, we wended our happy way home. Leftovers from the party for dinner tonight, yay!

My brother Swifty is 50 today. Too bad I didn’t think to do some SWIFTY IS FIFTY shirts via CafePress or something. I did send him a shirt that says WORLD’S COOLEST UNCLE.

One thing about being the oldest is that you get to remember a time when there was just you, before those other guys came along and spoiled it all. I don’t remember the actual day Swifty came home from the hospital, but I do remember that he was a cheerful, good-natured kid.

Which he still is. I just wish his favorite recreation wasn’t going to the racetrack. Because the minute Swifty bets on a horse, the horse inevitably becomes convinced it’s pulling a milk wagon and it’s got all day. At least that gives Uncle Swifty a good long time to sit in the stands and tear up his tickets.

Hmm, guess mabe I shouldn’t have mentioned tickets in the same paragraph as Swifty………..