Friday, April 9, 2010

The Empress of Thrift Suffers Dive Bends on Splash-Down in the Retail World

       Did it fly by for you? In the Goodwill Six-Month Challenge, the Empress undertook to buy only non-profit-benefitting thrift items from Oct. 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010.  As usual, the Empress had a mixed motive: (1) to show her subjects how she could spend less and be fashionable (which means "looking better than a hot mess") and (2) to promote her relentless and annoying quest to be "holier than thou" (a quality she had hoped to give up for Lent.) If you do not moonlight as an astronaut, you might not know that re-entry into earth's atmosphere is not pretty: the gases in the lungs and GI tract expand, the moisture in  the mouth and eyes quickly boils away, there is severe sunburn, and  some parts of the body swell to twice their usual size. 

A NASA vacuum chamberA NASA altitude chamber     When the Empress opened the rubber sealed glass door at the indoor mall, she thought she could live with most of those effects: she'd need the expanded gases to breathe deeply, the boiled away mosture meant she could skip bathroom breaks, and the mall was a hermetically sealed chamber so sunburn would be minimal. But SWELLING TO TWICE HER SIZE? How would she buy those True Religion white, stretch jeans with the iPad in their pocket? It was so unfair -- she hadn't even been to Hot Dog on a Stick and she was lurching through the perfume counters like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man.
   She had to get out, and fast. She gallumphed past the  salesclerks, the kiosk barkers, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, Forever 21 (that was especially painful) and drove to Goodwill, where she found this New-With-Tags Rodarte' dress for her lovely offspring.

     To gain back her buying moxie,  she needed consumer confidence.


*The Empress realized that she needed to summon her patron saint of shopping, St. Elda Erickson, who taught her to thrift, sew, darn, and goshdarnit, look up words she didn't know before using them aloud to embarrass herself. Thank you, Mom.

4 comments:

  1. I LOVE YOUR BLOG. Now that you have met your challenge, don't give up your blog or finding fab bargains at Goodwill, et al. I especially love the pics of St. Elda! Libby

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Duchess of MendocinoApril 9, 2010 at 7:46 PM

    Oh, this is rare indeed, Empress! Here in the boondocks, where the "mall" is 1-1/2 hrs. away, St. Elda watches over us (but as I privately complain to her, "MUST I sew??").

    ReplyDelete
  3. THE MALL - How could you?
    Did you really buy a Hot Dog?
    Are you still standing?
    Goodwill it is....
    JGo

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Six-Month Challenge is over, but it never really ends. It's a game I can't stop. It would cost more to sew my own clothes -- sorry, Elda. JaneGo - 1)I did not go to the MALL, that would be too pedestrian for the Empress. I went to San Francisco Centre -- it is so stuck up it refuses to call itself a mall, it is a "Centre" like Oxford is a Centre of Learning; 2) I don't eat meat and I don't believe there is meat in hot dogs, so it's safe on a stick, but I had See's Meal in a Box instead; 3) I am not standing, I am refininshing furniture I bought at Goodwill -- it didn't look great before, it may look worse now that I've gold-leafed and tarnished it. That's a whole 'nother blog.

    ReplyDelete

I welcome your comments, posts, horoscopes and Freudian analyses. Photos are welcome. Also, sign up as a follower (it's easy -- look to your left.) oxox Jeri