Fun on Friday

I work this strange schedule. Monday through Thursday each week we work nine hours, then one Friday we work 8 hours, and the next Friday we have off. So, I have every other Friday off. Theoretically this gives you a day to make phone calls and appointments that need to be done during a weekday (except for things like your dentist and your veterinarian who also take Fridays off).

Sometimes I catch up on housecleaning that has fallen behind for the previous 13 days, and sometimes I do have appointments that I take care on my Friday off, but much of the time I really just goof off. I'm hard pressed to say what I really spend the time doing, and it is amazing how a day gets away from you and suddenly it is dinner time. I really like it when an off Friday comes along and I have no plans, nothing to do.

One thing I don't do much of on my off Fridays is shopping, because I am not a shopper. For me, you go shopping when you have a list of things you "need," and you make your stops and do your best to scratch things off your list. I am usually frustrated by the fact that I want something that seems fairly obvious and simple, and yet I can go to three different places and nobody has them right now. I also tend to buy things when I go shopping, which would make it a rather expensive pastime if I were to engage in it frequently. Going and looking at things and then not actually buying any of them seems like a recipe for frustration, unless you genuinely were not interested in anything, which would then seem like quite a waste of time.

I decided recently that perhaps it would be nice to have something new to wear for Easter. I have a two-piece light green suit (dress and coat) that I have been wearing every year for Easter now for about the last ten years. It is a lovely suit, except that the dress is above the knee, and as one reaches a certain age and one's thighs and rear end are showing the effects of too many Peeps over the years, one thinks that perhaps one is really getting too old to be wearing the style. Plus, it's been ten years.

So then one has to face the prospect of trying to go shopping for a nice, moderately dressy, spring-colored outfit. This is not quite as bad as going shopping for a bathing suit, but it's in the same league. So I decided I would not go to Kohl's and JCPenney (this is an entire blog post in itself), and I would not wander around the mall in futility, but rather I would go up to the new age shopping area and check out some real stores. (This is one of those pretend Main Street areas where you have to walk around in the cold instead of in the comfort of the mall.) Real stores with real price tags, where I would probably find lovely things and be unwilling to pay for them. I decided not to have any expectations--if I found something that would be great, but I was just going to enjoy the day and see what happened.

And all in all I did have a lovely day. I started off with the 8:30 Friday step aerobics class--my one visit to the gym every two weeks--after which I goofed off a little before getting ready to leave the house. I did have one appointment, a haircut. I told the stylist my plans, and she suggested I should try J Jill (which I had never heard of), which turned out to my favorite stop of the day. Then it was off to shop. Walking around is a little like seeing what another life would be like, because normally I would not be out shopping on a weekday, but there are plenty of other people doing it. It reminds me a little of a time I spent unemployed, when I got to live like a housewife--taking care of the house, doing the grocery shopping and cooking dinner, like living in a parallel universe.

The first few stops were a bust, but then my luck improved. One really nice thing about shopping in real stores, especially when there's a recession on and not too many shoppers, is that the employees come back to the dressing room to ask if they can get you a different size in anything. How sweet is that. I found several possibilities in Ann Taylor, which was having some sort of special on tops if you bought more than one. I thought I was checking the price tags before taking things to the dressing room, but discovered at the cash register that I had in fact selected two dressy shirts that were 40+ dollars (at least not as bad as the $89 blouse I tried on). There was a blue and white shirt that I eventually decided not to get that really pretty much demanded to be worn with white pants, even though I can't keep anything clean and white pants would be pretty much a complete head smack for me. But once I tried them on I liked them, and another Easterish green shirt went with them nicely. And a lovely plum-purple shirt that looked very nice in addition, because whatever the deal was it involved two shirts.

(I will throw in that twice today I resolved that I really need to start going to the gym more regularly. (I resolve this with some frequency, but so far it hasn't helped.) The first time was in my step class, as I was having trouble keeping up. The second time was having to look at myself in dressing room mirrors. Somehow the mirrors in my house are kinder. Perhaps just because I don't have to stand so close to them.)

So once I was done doing my patriotic duty to the country by spending money at Ann Taylor, I proceeded to J Jill where I found two more shirts and the absolutely most yummilicious pair of stretchy espresso tweedy pants you would never even imagine in your wildest dreams, all on sale. I'm wearing those this Sunday, oh yes. It was a good Friday.