At the Mall

Any­one who knows me well knows that I regard both vis­it­ing any mall and shop­ping for clothes as only slightly higher than mam­mo­grams and colono­scopies on the List Of Fun Things To Do.? How­ever, some local group was offer­ing free prostate can­cer screen­ings at The Evil Mall today, and DH thought it wise to take advan­tage.? So off to The Evil Mall we went after lunch.

What should have been a half-​hour or so of strolling turned into a nearly three-​hour marathon wait, as it turned out.? So there I was, wan­der­ing aim­lessly from one end to the other for two of those hours (the third one I grabbed the car and ran over to JoAnn’s).? First stop, Victoria’s Secret, where there was not a sin­gle bra in my size to be found in the sale bins (I guess that’s her secret).? Not a good omen, I thought.

(Now keep in mind that my Phi­los­o­phy of Clothes Shop­ping is that if you are actu­ally try­ing to find some­thing spe­cific when you set out, you WILL NOT find it.? In fact, the like­li­hood of you find­ing some­thing suit­able is inversely pro­por­tional to your des­per­a­tion to find it!)

My next stop was the Walk­ing Com­pany, the only store I was actu­ally inter­ested in brows­ing.? There, I found my favorite Mer­rill Primo Chill Slide shoes, in brown and in black, marked down.? Did I really need another pair of them to go with my green ones and my blue ones?? Well, if they have my size, I must need them…and they had the brown ones. ? Score.

More wan­der­ing the length of the mall led into Sears, where I strolled past the Land’s End Shop and did a dou­ble­take — SALE.? Two very nice tai­lored flan­nel shirts in My Col­ors pro­ceeded to jump into my shop­ping bag for less than the orig­i­nal price of one.? Score two.

Mean­der­ing some more, I found myself in Belk’s idly glanc­ing at pock­et­books on the way to their ladies’ room.? There, on a sale shelf, was a Kathy van Zee­land bag that I’d con­tem­plated order­ing from Zappo’s sev­eral times.? Not only was it marked down, the sign above the shelf said “take 40% off the sale price.”? Well, THERE’S a no-​brainer, dear — IN the shop­ping bag you go.? Score three.

$265 full retail price total.? $145.50 on sale.? That’s a 45% sav­ings, not too shabby for stuff I liked at full price! If I needed to kill time at The Evil Mall, at least it was pro­duc­tive for once…though I didn’t push my luck with the acid test of clothes shop­ping — TRYING ON PANTS!