More Shopping

Dillards was the focus of my shopping.

As I mentioned, all of my favourites were near the mall entrance.   Cosmetics, shoes, lingerie, jewelry.  The four food groups, providing a balanced meal for girls and wannabes.   I started at cosmetics, but I didn't have my heart in it.  I spoke to woman from Chanel about eye shadow.  She was helpful but disinterested so I moved on.  I knew I could spend an hour and a bundle at a makeup counter.  I have graduated from wanting to be accepted to wanting to be enthusiastically accepted, so I passed and moved on.

I looked at shoes briefly.  I wasn't sure if I wasn't ready to have someone wait on me hand and (literally) foot or if I wasn't ready to waste someone's time just for my pleasure.  My bag was full, my closet was full.  Even though I generally wore the same two or three pairs of shoes, I'm not ready to get rid of some to make room for some more.  So shoes are on hold.

It's tough to pass on shoes.  When they have my size, I want to love them and buy them.  So I didn't get started, but I still want to know how much of the above was from the heart and how much was rationalising.

I looked at jewelry.  I ignored the cases and looked at the little rotating racks.  I was now in "something for Meg" mode, and she wanted to look at everything.  In the interest of time (and knowing that I'll be out again to look at other things), I focussed on earrings.  It's often hard to find the clip-ons without looking at every pair, so I have a shortcut.  Most stores have acrylic racks like the ones here.  Instead of looking at the little cards, I look through the rack.  I remove a pair if it's really crowded.  From the back, it's easy to see which earrings are clip and which are pierced.  Then I look at the earrings themselves to see if I like them.  Then I look at the price.  Then I notice there are seven clip pairs on the rack and I like five of them and I don't want to spend $150 on earrings that I'm not going to wear that much and I spend more time trying to decide which pairs to put back than I did picking them in the first place.

That night, I was a good girl.  I had decided that (a) I had been wearing the same earrings and necklace and bracelet the last few times I went out.  That was OK, because they were pretty and black and I've been wearing black shoes and black-and-white dresses.  That meant it was also an easy fashion match.  But tonight, (b) I had a new gold and diamond ~ real diamond! ~ pendant and I wanted different earrings.  I found a gold pair I liked and I took them with me.  I still had to get panties (remember?) and I stopped and picked up some socks on the way to lingerie.  It's been hard to find white print socks lately, and when I saw a variety I added them to my earrings and continued on.  I bought three pair.  They were labeled 3 for $18 (gold toe, which I like) but they rang up at $4.90 a pair.  Score!  Girl socks are softer and thinner and they wear out faster than men's socks.

After I paid for everything at the lingerie counter, I asked the cashier for the earrings.  I told her I wanted to put them on.  She said "what's wrong with the ones you're wearing?"  I guess that meant she liked my earrings or she might have said "good.  I was tired of looking at those monstrosities."  I said "I just bought this necklace and the earrings don't go with it.  I put the other earrings onto the now-empty card and asked her to take my picture.  Which is here, and you can see the earrings if you click-and-zoom.

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