Cleanliness is next to what?

We got home from vacation last Thursday and I am ashamed to admit that both of our suitcases are sitting on the bed in the spare bedroom open with clothes half unpacked and strewn about the room. I find that the spare bed has become more of another place for me to stash overflow clothes rather than a place for guests to sleep and in fact, the only time the bed gets cleared off is approximately one hour before we have a guest over.

I have a. lot. of. clothes. It is ridiculous. Plus it is that time of year when I need to put the winter clothes away and get the rest of the summer stuff out. If I try to keep everything out all year, there isn’t enough room in my closet and bedroom furniture for everything. There is also an enormous amount of clutter in my nightstand drawers (books I read over a year ago, pictures, magazines, etc….), which if cleared, could provide an extra amount of space. But do you think I have jumped on that bandwagon yet? No, of course not. Because every night when I drag my sorry self home from this shit hole I call an office, the last thing I want to do is start organizing and trying to make the decision as to what I should get rid of. Maybe I need to watch an episode of Hoarders to inspire me.

The other problem (I am full of excuses) is that I made a very very poor purchase of bedroom furniture when I was about 22. After I got out of college and moved back home to my parents house (not the best decision I ever made) I found myself unable to tolerate my childhood bedroom set which happened to be off-white with shiny brass trim that I once found beautiful and irresistible. So I got the bright idea that I would purchase a nice new bedroom set which I purchased interest free from a local furniture store and also happened to be solid oak and to call it huge would be an understatement. It was the floor model set so I got a really good deal and it included a headboard, footboard, dresser with tri-fold mirror, a nightstand and the biggest chest of drawers you have ever seen. It is three drawers across and about 7 or 8 rows high and it holds a lot of shit.

The problem is that, with the exception of the bedroom at my parents house, I have never been able to fit the damn thing in any bedroom. It wouldn’t fit at my condo and when we bought our house, it sure wouldn’t fit in our bedroom. I hate it and I want to take a chainsaw and hack it up into little pieces and burn them one by one. It sat in my parent’s garage for years until, when we were moving into our current house, my dad seized the opportunity to force me to take delivery of it. Did I mention that it does fit in Sam’s room? Since he has no real bedroom set and only a twin bed, we were able to wedge it in there and now he has lots of space to store all his clothes and other little odds and ends. Did I mention the thing is solid oak and weighs about 700 lbs (that might be a slight exaggeration, but it is f'ing heavy!) even with the drawers all pulled out of it?

I tried to sell the whole set a few years ago and Sam had a fit. Apparently he has bonded with the damn thing and now he refuses to part with it. So that leaves me a piece short in my bedroom and since I have to split the drawers in the dresser with Dave, I have a lot of overflow when it comes to clothes storage. Since I am avoidant when it comes to difficult decisions (like getting rid of clothes), I tend to just pile things up in the spare bedroom and shut the door.

Okay, I’m getting depressed typing this. I had repressed the trauma of the giant dresser and actually was not thinking of it when I started this post. I thought I had made peace with the situation, but it turns out I haven’t. It’s a catch-22. If I don’t sell the existing set, I can’t afford to buy a new set. My husband doesn’t care if our room is an unfinished hodge podge and every time I bring up buying a new set, he poo-poos it.

I wonder if he’ll will show me how to use the chainsaw this weekend……

Dish Therapy

I'm in a rut and I desperately need to pull myself out. I spend too much time at work and not enough time at home and the time I do spend at home feels very unproductive (and now that I mention it, the time at work also feels unproductive). It seems like I'm always just "calling it in." I feel run down and I don't have a lot of energy. I'm not exercising at all, have all but totally abandoned yoga, we've been eating out way too much and my sugar intake has spiked again. I feel like I spend every week just trying to get to the weekend and then every weekend trying to catch up to start another week (which I never do get caught up). For the most part, I stay on top of the laundry, no one can complain that they ever run out of underwear. I hired someone to clean the house about a year ago which was one of the best decisions I ever made, so the house stays pretty clean, but I still have to straighten. However, I never get to much else beyond the basics. Meaning, the drawers and closets never get cleaned out. So the house looks relatively tidy on the surface, but if you look in the closets, under the beds, etc., it is a cluttery mess. I know if I force myself to attend a couple yoga classes and watch what I eat for a couple days, that will help tremendously. I just need to find the will to do it.

But enough of my depressing doom and gloom. Let's talk about dishes.

Yes. Dishes.

I have spoken before of my love of bowls and platters and the like. The dishes I registered for when I got married were the exact same dishes I had in my condo when I was single, just in a different color. Fiestaware. From God. I went from cobalt blue and some sort of maroon (I can't remember the name now) to scarlet red. I love red, it is so bright and cheery and so versatile. There are a thousand different shades of red.

About a year ago, I decided we needed cereal bowls because the bowls that come in the 5 piece fiestaware setting are too shallow and we always spill milk from them. I wanted some nice deep bowls for cereal. So, one day, while fooling myself into thinking that I am frugal, I purchased some cheap red bowls from Kohl's for a couple bucks a piece. They were almost exactly the same color as my fiestaware so I told myself they would do. It turns out when chipped, these bowls are white underneath. A white chip really stands out on a bright red bowl. I don't know if the fiestaware is white underneath too because none of them have ever chipped. The kids are hard on my dishes and these cheap bowls are getting more and more chipped as the days go by.

A couple weekends ago I found myself back at Kohl's and what do you know, Fiestaware is on sale. 40% off Yes! Just the excuse I need to rid myself forever from my cheap chipped bowls. I loaded up the cart with 6 beautiful deep scarlet red 24oz Fiestawarebowls and I bought them.

And I started to think, of course this was after my credit card swiped through the machine. Why am I buying all red? Fiestaware comes in a rainbow of gorgeous and bright colors. Why just stick with scarlet red? So I left the bowls in my car and last weekend I went back to Kohl's and exchanged some of the red ones for other colors. Yellow, blue, teal and red. I have a rainbow in my kitchen and they make me feel happier every time I open my cupboard and see them in there.

Now I'm thinking how that yellow in a dinner plate would look like the sun just sitting there on my table........

Smart Shopper Tip

Costco.

Mezzacorona Pinot Grigio

The BIG bottle.

$9.99

You do not need a membership to buy alcohol at Costco. I have never see these big bottles of this wine for less than $15.00 anywhere else and this is the best white wine I have ever had.

Seriously.

It was a rough afternoon at our house.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Victoria's Secret is Stalking Me

I bought two things from their catalogue and now I get 1-2 catalogues in the mail every day and at least 3 e-mails from them every day.

Even Dave is getting sick of looking at the catalogues.

What kind of marketing plan is that?

So I was in Victoria's Secret the day after Christmas (I was buying a pair of sweatpants if you can believe it. Dave got me a pair for Christmas and they were so comfy I decided to brave the after Christmas crowd(which there ended up being none) and get another pair. Why do I feel the need to explain why I was at Victoria's Secret? I don't know)

Anyway, I was in Victoria's Secret waiting in line to pay for the sweatpants I was buying and the woman in front of me was taking forever to get her money out like she was thinking about it really hard. And she finally she mumbles something to the cashier about being ticked because she can't use a coupon she has and how stupid it is that she can't use said coupon on sale items. (I'm unclear what happened prior to that because I was spacing out standing there in line)

Now let me interject here that I have a friend who used to work at Victoria's Secret and I can tell you that they don't pay well. I mean the girls working in this store are probably making whatever minimum wage is now, and not a penny more. And they are all about 16 or 17. Not a lot of worldly experience. Or communication skills.

The cashier looks at the customer with her sweet, angelic, blue glittered and 16 year old face and says, quite innocently I thought, "Well if you want I can ring it up full price."

And like quicksilver, the customer put her money right back in her wallet and said, "Well you can just void the whole order. I don't need to deal with that kind of attitude." And poor glitter girl is just looking at her with a look that says, "What? What'd I do?"

The customer continued bitching, "Why would I want to pay full price, is that going to save me money?"

Glitter girl says, with doe-like eyes, "I don't know. I'm just trying to make you happy."

Customer says, "F**k you." and walks out of the store.

So I'm curious, have you ever told a customer service rep to f off? I mean, I'm a big fan of the f word, but I have never dropped that bomb on a customer service rep.

Okay, once I used the f word about 17 times when I was yelling at one of my electrical contractors, but that was construction Melanie, not every day shopping at the mall Melanie. Does that really seem appropriate to you?

Customer Service Overload

Okay, so I know in the past I have complained about the lack of customer service in restaurants and stores, but today I had the worst shopping experience of my life because of a sales person who was trying too hard to be helpful.

I stopped by the Black and White store on my way home from work tonight in the hopes that I might find something nice to wear to a show we are going to at the DSO on Saturday night. All I was looking for was maybe a dressy pair of black pants and a nice top. Or one or the other.

The minute I walked in the door, the sales associate (one of four in the store) was on me in a flash and the minute I picked up a pair of pants to try on and she knew what size I was, went crazy. Y'all, by the time I got to the fitting room, there were, I'm not kidding, 7 pairs of pants, 6 sweaters, two camisoles, four blouses, two jackets and a skirt in that tiny room. Not to mention I told her that I don't wear skirts or pants that zip up the side (there were three pairs of those.)

Okay, I wasn't really up for a Pretty Woman'esqe try on session, but I figured I'd give it a go. But let me mention that I am feeling a little "puffy" right now being that I haven't seemed to be able to get my appetite back to normal human proportions since our vacation. So I expected things might be a little snug, but as soon as I started trying on the pants I remembered why I don't own any pants from the Black and White store. They just don't fit me right. So the more I tried on, the hotter I get, my cell phone has wrung 3 times and every 2 minutes a sales associate was knocking on the door asking me if I need anything.

On top of that, a couple of the tops required me to remove my bra. So I'm standing there in a pair of pants with a muffin top hanging over, bare chested and the sales associate barges into the room to give me a pair of heels so I can see how they look with the pants.

I was getting really irritable. Coupled with the fact that I'm getting psycho about not having anything to wear Saturday night, I had a minor meltdown in the dressing room, put my clothes back on and ran for the hills.

It was just too much. Do you think I'm just being a cranky old lady?

I'll get back to the stuff I'm thankful for tomorrow!