File That Under...

...what was I thinking?

A little background: I'm a very stubborn person. Once I get an idea fixed in my head, I'm gonna go through with it come Hell or high water. This morning's idea? Finish my Christmas shopping, which involved driving 30 minutes down to the big, new, as-yet-unspoiled Target.

The problem? Snow. The forecast called for an inch or so to fall overnight, but what greeted us this morning was more like 2-3". *sigh* But I wasn't going to let the white stuff stop me - no way, no how! So I bundled myself up and set out.

The roads were *awful.* At 7:30 AM, nothing was plowed yet, or if it was, it was a half-assed job. I clutched the wheel in a white-knuckled grip, thinking, "What the hell am I doing out here?", but kept going. That damn stubbornness of mine, again. I drove well under the speed limit to stay safe, but now and again some jackass in a pickup or SUV had to play quien es mas macho and either ride my bumper or blow past me like I was standing still. Whatever. See you in the nearest ditch, asshole.

It took me a while to make it down to Target, but I arrived safely, parked, and went inside...to be greeted by a huge crowd of parents with kids, along with an equally large number of uniformed sheriff's department officers.

Oh, crap.

Yep, for two years in a row, I've managed to hit the store right at their "Shop with the Sheriff" celebration. The local sheriff's department takes donations for underprivileged families, then invites the kids of said families to go shopping for Christmas presents; each kid/family gets an equal amount of money, and one of the deputies accompanies them around the store, helping them shop for gifts for their family. And Santa's there, of course. A neat idea, but one that made for a totally PACKED store! I hastened past the assembled throng, smiled at the nice officers, grabbed a cart, and desperately hoped I could finish before the masses hit the checkout lanes.

The gods of karma must have been smiling down on me, because twenty minutes later I'd managed to find everything on my list (mostly stocking stuffers, plus a couple of things for me) and got out before things got totally crazy. Then I loaded up the car and headed home. By this time the roads were decently plowed and salted, so travel was wet and sloppy, but not slippery, thank goodness.

Dang. Glad that's over. A successful trip, one that marked the official end of my Christmas shopping, but why in the heck did I have to go *this* morning? Any sane individual would have taken one look at the weather, said "Maybe tomorrow," and gone back to bed. But no, not me.

What was I thinking? That I'm a stubborn idiot, that's what. :-)

Pet Peeve: Don't argue with me when you're trying to sell me something

Let me preface this by saying that I'm a girly-girl. I like perfume, nail polish, and high heels. And when the seasons change, I tend to get a hankerin' for new versions of all of the above. So this past weekend, when my husband and I went shopping at a mall close to his place of work, I thought it would be a great opportunity to sniff out some of the new olfactory offerings at the perfume counter.

Oh, how wrong I was.

I was immediately accosted by a pantsuited, makeup-applied-with-a-trowel, 50-something sales associate. "Oh, have you tried this new fragrance?" she cooed. Yes, I had, and it went straight to powder on me. Disbelieving pout from Trowel Face, followed by, "Oh, it shouldn't have done that!" Trust me, lady. I know my own body chemistry, and how it reacts to certain fragrance notes. Trowel Face then stuck her wrist in my face and said, "This is the new Notorious. Isn't it fabulous?" I said, no, that is the new Notorious on you. I've tried it and it doesn't do a thing for me; peony in any form blasts away anything else it's paired with until peony is all I smell. Again, I got the pout. "Well, it shouldn't do that! It's got cocoa and vanilla and--"

I gave her a tight smile and asked her why she was arguing with me. She looked stunned, followed by immediate CBF (Cat Butt Face - the pursed, annoyed look women get that reminds you of the south end of a northbound cat). "I'm just saying," she started to protest.

And I'm just saying that if you want to sell me something, don't argue with me. I've been in sales; I know that you don't like to take "no" for an answer. Well, I don't like being patronized and argued with. I told her she'd just cost herself a sale, thanked her tersely and stalked off, leaving her more than likely annoyed and wondering what the heck was wrong with me.

So much for my foray. But that's OK. I'll just order samples off eBay. It's much quicker, less painful, and I get what I want without argument. What could be better than that?