A New Year’s Eve Quest

Happy New Year, everyone!  Yeah, I realize I’m a day late, but I just couldn’t pull it together to write a post yesterday.  The laziness was courtesy of a late night with friends and Red Bull with vodka.  It did not give me wings.  It did give me a hangover.

Last minute, we decided to go to a New Year’s party downtown at the Mayo Hotel.  New Year’s parties are like prom for adult women.  Therefore, I made a last minute shopping trip the evening before.  I had exactly an hour and a half to get to the mall, buy a new dress, shoes, and a matching purse.  Guys, if you’re questioning this logic, just trust me.  It had to be done.  New year, new dress.  And you can’t wear old shoes into the new year because it’s bad luck.  It’s true.  I wrote a chain e-mail about it just now and if you don't forward it to 10 of your friends you'll get gonorrhea of the foot.

One hour in and I found a dress.  Disappointingly, I could not find one in gold (the theme of the party) in my required munchkin size, but I did find one with sequins.  Now I had half an hour to find shoes and a purse.  I strategically planned out my attack on Dillard’s.  First pair, not available in my size.  Then I found the perfect sparkly shoe, which just screamed happy new year.  These shoes were destined to be one with my feet.  If I could find a sales person that is.  After several minutes, I finally saw one, who was quickly snagged by a lady with about twenty pairs of shoes scattered around her.

“I like these but I just don’t know about the arch support.  I can’t seem to find any shoes with the proper arch support…”

The arch support conversation went on for several minutes, eating away at prime purse buying opportunities.  Could this lady not see that her arches could wait?  Could she not see that my acquisition of insanely high sparkly high heels could not?  I stared at another salesman until he could feel my eyes boring into his skull and he came and helped me.  Shoes down, one gold clutch to go.

I quickly found the perfect one and went to check out.  I had five minutes before I had to leave so I could make it home in time.  There was one lady in front of me.

“How are you?”  said the sales lady.

“Fine.  How are you?” said the lady in front of me.

“My mother-in-law stole my wedding ring out of the bathroom today.” said the sales lady.

No one starts a story with “my mother-in-law stole my wedding ring out of the bathroom today” and just jumps to “but here’s your purchase.  Have a nice day!”   No, there was a whole story about how her and her husband had been fighting and her mother-in-law was mad at her husband so she took her revenge out on her wedding ring, etc. etc.  Meanwhile I am standing with my last purchase obsessively watching the time on my iPhone.  When it was finally my turn, I made sure not to make eye contact.  Or talk.

I made it out just in time.  We left the house just a couple minutes late.  Then we forgot the debit card and ended up late any way.  But we had a great time.  We drank too much and danced badly and it was everything New Year’s Eve is supposed to be.  Sparkly high heels included.