Christ. People. So, I’m with my husband at Trader Joe’s today. We are pushing along the relatively tiny frozen food isle (me behind him, both of us gazing down at frozen green beans) when a clerk climbs down off her ladder and leans in to tell us something. Okay … here it comes some lame ass comment, and surprise she didn’t let me down. She says: “I saw you both over there and it looked like you had a tandem wheelchair!” My eye rolling begins. She goes on to add, “What a great idea!”. More eye rolling on my part and a little sad nod. Hubby lets out a tiny sigh and a sad laugh as we try to get back to shopping. Now, if you can believe it this is not the first time I’ve heard such a lame comment. The “tandem wheelchair” line has been uttered before. Wrap your heads around that for a moment.

Anyway, being the stereotypical “bitter disabled person” I get really pissed. I say to hubby “What the hell!? Can’t we just go grocery shopping!” I say this low enough not to make a scene, but loud enough for Trader Joe clerk to here us, and I hope she did. Then I start to feel really self conscious and really disabled. I just don’t get people sometimes.

To top off my Trader Joe’s shopping experience, the checker made the comment that I was buying a lot of snack products. And frankly, I was. The Super Bowl is this weekend and we are going to have company. So I bought a lot of chips, beer and microwavable yummies. I guess she disapproved of the lack of vegetables and “proper” meals. I shot back with it’s Super Bowl weekend! And she nodded. Not a nod of recognition, but a nod of ‘Yes, but you still should have a bag of carrots somewhere!’ Then she makes sure I can see the ATM card swiping thing, by saying “Are you sure you can read that?” Jesus! I had already swiped my card and she was printing out the receipt. Yeah, I think I can read the ATM card thing. Ahh!

So, I leave Trader Joe’s with lots of black bean & cheese Taquitos and the feeling of being really really disabled.

Sheep can kiss my ass.

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve noticed that clothing today has a lot more wool and other natural fibers in them then they did in the past.  Has cotton really become that scarce?  Or do clothing manufactures think we really like our skin to be inflamed all day?  Recently I was shopping at Banana Republic and noticed that even their even light weight sweater “t-shirt” type tops had wool in them.  They were soft, however, if a top can’t be thrown into the washing machine then it’s not going to thrown in my shopping basket.  Just try to find a sweater that doesn’t have some sort of wool in it.  I dare you.

Ug.  Wool, cashmere, merino … blah blah blah, all those natural fibers mean itchy, annoying and has to be dry cleaned.  Give me cotton any day.

Who knew that Santa’s Workshop is in Paso Robles? Let alone disguised as a Target and Ross?  You see, today was Christmas present buying day & I have to thank Target & Ross for saving my sanity. I didn’t even complain that I had to drive 40 minutes to Paso down the curvy 41, because I’ve gotten all my Christmas presents for my whole family (and that family would be my husband’s family, my family doesn’t really exchange gifts – yeah, we’re weird). Not only does hubby’s immediate family exchange gifts but his whole family does a secret Santa gift exchange. The pressure was on to find great gifts for everyone and I’m thrilled to say that I did. Now, the next task is to wrap and bag them all up for giving. Crap! I just realized I didn’t buy any scotch tape. I wonder if silver duct tape would look tacky. It is silver after all, and isn’t that kind of festive?

As far as big chain stores go, I’m against them. Wal-Mart? Forget about it! I’d rather pay a few bucks more and shop somewhere else. However, Target is my only exception. I used to shop there all the time. Need to pick up undies, some CD’s and a gallon of milk? Hooray for Target! You’ve got my back … thanks I appreciate it. It’s chic products that are made surprisingly well combined with an atmosphere a gazillion times better than Wal-Mart or the just depressing K-Mart, makes Target one of my favorite places to shop. So, you can understand why I miss Target. The closest Target is either 40 minutes away to the south or to the north. Do I either want to drive into hot annoying Santa Maria or do I want to drive into hot annoying Paso Robles? You see my delima.

So why isn’t there a Target closer? You see I live in a small community where big chain stores are protested against and voted upon. We finally got a Cosco and Home Depot a few years ago – those are even about 20 miles away (in San Luis Opisbo). Nothing will ever be built in Los Osos, not ever a sewer system! Target has been considered a possibility in the future for SLO. Good ‘ole measure ‘J’ passed, so eventually a Target might be built. Local officials are still debating an off ramp that will accommodate all the people like me dying to shop at Target.

Now, I realize this isn’t the prairie. I can shop at other stores for life’s quintessential items. However, this requires more driving and subsequently more aggravation. Who needs that? Not me.

Home Depot screwed us again. First it was the wrong color blinds with the wrong operating thingy in our house in Oceanside, now it’s taking down the wrong phone number.

To understand what I’m talking about, look below this post to figure it out. Around noon I was starting to get really ticked off, so I called my mom to ask it they had called her number instead of mine. No, they had not. She also said she left the paperwork at my house (considering I was going to be the one dealing with the floor guy). So, I looked at the paper work and they had misprinted our telephone number. Replacing a 3 with an 8 – those aren’t even close on the keyboard & don’t sound very similar … hmmm. Damn it. Hubby called Home Depot and got transferred to many people and was on hold for quite some time as well. Finally he talked to a person and they said the person we needed to actually talk to wasn’t there. UG! A message was left for this missing person (I hope), and hubby and I are now still waiting for something to happen in regards to the floor measurement. Good god!

Also, in terms of waiting … we’ve listed a bunch of stuff on Craig’s List. Thus, we’re having to sit around and wait for people to either call us or come ambling up to our front door.

So, basically this day has been waiting around for people who probably won’t call or show up.