calling for dresses

Malls at Christmastime… Not my favorite place to be, but sometimes il est tres necessaire. (Aside: I don’t know why, for I am hardly fluent, but I often find myself thinking, writing and speaking in the French I do know. Strange because I don’t know anyone who speaks French, nor have I been to a French speaking region.)

As you all know, I spent the majority of Saturday shopping for my holiday party dress. I was so excited to find so many wonderful dresses and to read of y’all’s input, and when I read the paper Sunday evening and found that the special occasion dresses at Macy’s were 25% off and I had a 20% coupon, the little bargain-loving bug in my belly went hippy-skippy since 2 of the most voted on dresses were from Macy’s. I was so excited about my coupon, so pleased that I hadn’t purchased the day before and would now save 45% off my dress.

At work the next day, I proudly showed off my coupon and cautiously shared news of the sale with my colleagues after eliciting promises that they wouldn’t buy “my” dress. And as the day wore on, I looked at my phone, my 28 days old phone that I bought to replace my perfectly good Razr. I decided I didn’t like it. I decided that I wanted something else, as in BlackJack something else. So, I called the cell company store, had them set a couple aside for me and told them I would drop by later in the evening to change them out.

Steve arrived home that evening and we headed to the mall at 7:30 and decided to hit the S*ingular store first. We were pleased to see our friend working, the one who’d given us a splendid deal on the other phones.

As we waited to see him, we oohed and aahed over the BlackJack features, and sneared at our old phones, which had seemed perfectly lovely less than a month before, in disgust. After our guy was ready to see us, I began my little tapdance, because, you know, momma loves a bargain. It’s a $449.00 phone. Would I ever pay that much? Utter a collective “oh hail nah” please. So I asked our “friend” to work us up a deal.

He said, “Well, I can give you the phones for $300.00 with a $100 rebate.”

I looked at him for a moment, “Earlier a colleague told me I could get one for $200 and one for $300.”

He laughed, “Oh did he, now?”

“If I was lying,” I smiled coyly, “Wouldn’t I have said that he’d offered both the phones for $200 without the rebate?”

“Probably,” our helper said, and began taking my Sim out of the old phone and putting it in the pretty, new BlackJack.

“So, are we going to make a deal here? I’m going to be adding a lot of things to my account right now.”

I batted my eyelashes and made him laugh a lot and pretty soon I had the BlackJacks for $100 each, a 20% service discount placed on my account, and the assurance that from now on, if I come to him I can get whatever I want buy one get one free.

I know where I’m doing my Christmas shopping. And I think I now want a career in negotiation. Aaaah.

I got the deal I wanted and I saved a butt-load of money, but now it was 9:30 pm . That was two whole hours of standing in 4 inch stilettos that my feets just didn’t need. Thankful was I that I’d tried on dresses all ready, so I’d just have to run into Macy’s and buy THE ONE . I hobbled into the store, found tossed off my heels and padded barefoot to the dress section.

It was a sea of nothingness. All of the racks were dangling with sorry excuses for picked-over dresses. My heart sank. How had I ever deluded myself that at the end of the two-day sale there would be any left? I flipped through the nearly empty racks, I scoured the put-backs, but none of the dresses that I had tried at the other Macy's were there.

I begged Steve to drive to Bellevue Square , so we could go to that Bellevue Square , and he agreed. So we drove all the way across Lake Washington , and I scampered into Macy’s just after 10 PM , thank God for extended hours, I tell you. Thank God. I found the dress department and NOT. ONE . DRESS in any size in any style that I liked was gone, and not one size 2 was left in the ENTIRE FREAKING DEPARTMENT.

Skinny coupon using bitches stole my dresses. I grabbed a frazzled sales lady. "Any chance there are any more dresses in the back?"

She laughed and kept walking. Merry Christmas to you, too.

This story sucks. I'm done writing now. Goodnight.


P.S. Shout out to my brother, Red, proudly serving his country in the Navy. It's his 21st B-day today!