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Home > Last shopping, relatives, job offers, God/church musings

Last shopping, relatives, job offers, God/church musings

December 31st, 2005 at 05:05 pm

Dad and I dropped off my Aunt Ni and Grandma at their hotel by the airport on Thursday night, so they could catch their plane back to CA on Friday morning (via shuttle.) Before leaving, my Aunt Ni gave me two $10 Foley Gift cards. There isn't a Foley's in CA, so she wouldn't have been able to use them. Both cards expired on January 1, so they had to be used quickly, or the value lost. She was very excited to hear what kind of deals I got with them, leaving me little choice but to actually use them. Smile

So, yesterday (Friday) Dad and I carpooled to Fort Worth (the closest Foley's.) We stopped first at a place to get his electric shaver fixed. Then at a place to replace his shaver's battery. Then we went to Sam's club - presumably *just* for water - of course ended up with a bunch more things, but still got out of there for under $50. Finally, we made it to Foley's. First, I thought I would see if I could get a replacement chain for a necklace (the chain had broken three times and been repaired twice) but there was only one sales lady presiding over three counter sections, so after waiting 10 minutes, we moved on. I thought I might get 3 or 4 pairs of new undies, so we started looking for the lingere section. My dad, gotta love him, notices this lady pulling some kind of low level cart and walks up to her and booms "Say! Do you work here?!!" She looks slightly frightened, but doesn't run away. Then he booms again, "We're looking for the ladies lingere department!" She tells us it's upstairs. NOW, you'll need to picture this - in close proximity to where all this is taking place, are two *very* cute guys, along with a handful of other ladies. I had to just keep reminding myself that there was very little chance of my ever seeing any of those people again. Sometimes I really wish he didn't have to make a production everywhere he goes.
Anyway, back to my story. We head on up stairs. I get distracted by the pots and pans section. He decides to go use the restroom. While he's gone I ask a cashier if the two cards can be used towards one purchase - she thankfully says that they can! (You see, I was having visions in my head of dad making yet another scene complaining about how unhelpful it was to have to make two separate purchases -- or actually going through with his idea of making said two separate purchases, returning them for store credit, then buying something else!!) I found a number of items which I was interested in, but nothing that really grabbed me. So, when he came back from the restroom, I decided to go ahead and head towards the ladies undies section.
On the way there, we happened to be near the bath section. It dawned on me that just the other day, I had been thinking about how nice it would be to have a towel that completely, and totally surrounded my whole large body. So, we started looking at the towels. The largest ones I could find were the 32 by 50 ones, which weren't quite long enough. So, I asked one of the cashiers. She pointed us to some towels we hadn't seen yet - which fit the bill just perfectly. One towel was $16 -- the other towel was $39.95. I was going to go for the first towel, but dad had come up the cash register just as the lady told me the price (because of course the price weren't easily visible) and tells me to go ahead and take the $40 towel, that he'll make up the difference. I hadn't even had a chance to test out the $16 towel, so I didn't know how much difference there really was between them. But, I knew he was getting hungry (read: tired of shopping and crabby) and if he was willing to pay the extra $20, then I guess I'd just let him! So, I now have a $40 Lennox brand towel - it's HUGE Smile, it's SOOO soft. It also gave me a good story to tell my Aunt Ni. I would have never even considered a towel that expensive if it hadn't been for the $20 in gift cards I had -- shoot, I wouldn't even have been out shopping AGAIN if my Aunt hadn't given me those cards.

I am SO tired of shopping after this past week! It felt like that was all we did the whole entire week! My brand of shopping is normally Walmart, Goodwill, and maybe JC Penny's. My Aunt's brand of shopping is Dillards, Nordtstorm's and Foley's. I might go shopping (for clothes) once or twice every couple of months, sometimes longer. She was extremely happy to shop for 4 - 6 hours four days in a row! I will say though, that I made out like a bandit this week. Smile Between her and my grandma, they bought me One Professional quality suit, one pair dress pants, two Professional quality tops, a sleeveless vest (professional quality), a professional style jacket, a pair of sweatpants and a matching top, plus an artificial plant arrangement (that my cat can't chew up.). All in all, they probably spent close to $350 on me. I desperately needed some professional level clothing that fit, and wasn't sure how I was going to come up with any. So I very much appreciate all that they did. It just felt really funny having them buy all those clothes for me - a 30 year old adult - especially when I didn't get them anything (because I couldn't afford anything that they would actually like - Ni didn't even flinch at clothing with $60 price tags - even bought a sweater set for over $200 without breaking a sweat!)

Anyway, even though I didn't exactly spend this past week the way *I* would have enjoyed spending it, I am in the end glad that they came - and that they are now gone. Smile

Job offers - I called the employment agency to check and see if anything had come up. There were two possibilities, both of them with banks. One was a 40 hr/$9/hr job requiring nearly perfect credit (not for me unfortunately) -- the second one was a 30 hr/$10/hr job with no credit requirement - unfortunately though, it would have required me to work past sunset on Fridays, so I couldn't take that either.

In case you're wondering. I am a Seventh-day Adventist - one of our core beliefs is the Sabbath - starting Friday sunset and ending Saturday sunset. Although I have not gone to church more than 10 times in the past year, and haven't really kept the Sabbath in that same time period, my last hold out I guess you could say, is not working during Sabbath hours. I feel a lot of bitterness towards the leadership in my church - mainly for how they have treated my parents - both long time church workers (former workers actually). I also feel very disillusioned by how so many people have abandoned my dad, even though what he did was very very stupid. Church is supposed to be a place for sinners. God doesn't rank sins from least to greatest - sin is sin is sin(except of course for the unpardonable sin -but that's not really a visible/public sin!!) !! Also by all these people abandoning my dad, they have in essence also abandoned my whole family.

This whole thing with the church is one of the things that makes my looking for someone to share my life with that much harder. I need to figure out if I'm going to stay a Seventh-day Adventist or not. If I am, then I need to look for a fellow SDA man. Of course, my bitterness and disillusionment and lack of church attendance in the past year, will probably make it difficult to say the least. My other option would be to find someone from another faith. But the problem with that is that I have looked at other churches/faiths and I just haven't found any that I feel I could embrace as my own. I've really tried looking at the Sabbath/Sunday issue and just haven't found any arguments for Sunday that are convincing enough for me to change - and believe me, I tried!

Sorry guys for this long winded diatribe. Everything that's happened the past couple years just seems to reach out and kick me once in awhile.

I was supposed to be going to a New Year's Eve party tonight. But the person who invited me (who is the sister of my exbf Todd's exwife) sent an evite. As of yesterday, only 5 people had said they were coming (besides her own family). One of them was Todd's exwife (and their two girls). If I had met his exwife before, I might feel differently. If there was going to be a crowd of 20 or more people to blend in with, I might feel differently. But, with the party mainly consisting of her family members - I do not feel comfortable at all going. So, tonight I'm going to watch movies, and when the ball drops at midnight I'm going to open my bottle of Sparkling Cider that I picked up at Walmart yesterday, and toast the New Year. Just me and my cat.

Spending Log this whole past week:
Walmart: $12 - junkfood, sparkling cider, etc
Gas: $9 ($2.06/ga -- filled up just before it went up in price)
Weight Watchers online: $65 (3 month subscription - wanted to put it on this years budget, otherwise would have waited till Sunday.) I've lost weight on the points plan before, so am going to get back on plan with my exercise and start on my eating habits as well.

Keeping It Frugal in Texas,
Laura

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