Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Page 3, Sundance catalog

I received the Sundance catalog today, opened the cover, and there on page 3 is my new coat. It's called the 'Boulevard Peacoat', a retro 50's plaid with an urban vibe' and I love it. It's also $198.00 so I won't be buying it. But a girl can dream, can't she?
My sister and I, when we were much younger, would sit together with a catalog and pencil or marker and
'pick' something from each page that we really wanted. We were dreamers. We never went so far as to strategically place the catalog inside one of my Mom's magazines, a la Ralphie in A Christmas Story. Picking seemed to be enough to carry our dreams of ownership  until the next catalog came in the mail. We weren't particular about our catalogs. We would continue the routine with furniture catalogs, clothing, jewelry, toys, etc. There was nothing that we wouldn't dream for.
The funny thing is, we never longed for any of these items. We never coveted the insides of these glossy publications. I think it made us dreamers and thinkers. Possibly good shoppers; we could tell you the price of anything and how it compared to any retail store at the time.
Our dreams weren't big, but they were plentiful. We dreamed of someday having a house to put these things to good use. We dreamed of different floor plans for those houses. We dreamed about what we would wear and what would look better on me or her (geez, she's so much thinner, everything looked better on her!)
The new Sundance catalog brought back a lot of memories, not to mention my deep love of all things plaid!
Maybe I'll never get that coat (I live in the desert, not a chance of it getting below 90 degrees anyway), but I know it would fit me perfectly and would cool with a faded pair of jeans. The catalog I'll keep for a while. Maybe I'll forward it to my sister with a post-it: 'See page 3!'
BOULEVARD PEACOAT

And dream...

Monday, November 5, 2012

How do I say this...

I had a terrible week last week. You know the kind where everything goes wrong-and in three's! Car broke down, really bad work week and my birthday basically sucked. What I wanted to do was go back to bed and hide under the covers! Oh wait, I did do that. How mature of me. There were small footsteps coming into the room to see if Mom was 'okay'. DID I LOOK OKAY! There, now I'm the grown up. And then the inevitable happened. I had to go back to work. Nothing like being depressed and having to spend all your time smiling in front of people (retail beast). But you know, something happened that surprised a miserable synic like myself. After pulling myself out of bed by the bootstraps, believe me, no small feat, I decided that, or told myself to forget about everything that happened. I could take the bus to work ( I actually enjoy public transportation), the holidays are coming, and (hopefully) people will be happier when they shop, and my birthday's done. So what, right?
Let me tell you, so what. My car got fixed, yeah, I can drive around at lunch and not get stuck in the breakroom. The San Francisco Giants won the World Series! Yes, I'm still screaming. I won a raffle from a blog I follow. How cool is that! (and way more on that later when I devote an entire page to this lovely lady at Simply Kierste (what, right click not working?) And, I received a Fossil watch form the company I work for because of my customer service skills.
Good things happen in three's too!
All I had to do was relax, get out the bad mojo, and go on. This is proof that it all comes back to you. So simple. Appreciate the little things that happen to you. Do something nice for someone else. You think I'm gonna pay this forward? Oh, you betcha. I've already started. It's not because I want things to come to me )well, I do, but who doesn't?) It's because this world is so hard to live in all by itself without having to fight against stupid stuff in our lives. Yes, I will pass it on, and on, and on...Will stupid stuff happen to me again, probably. I'll be ready for it next time and realize that it's just stuff. There's always Plan B.
Here's hopinng you get the next nice thing!