It was lightly snowing as I walked across the way to the grocery store for bus tickets, passed the shop where I buy my families Christmas presents every year, passed the coolest pet shop in London, eatery, eatery, new eatery, my dentist, the library, a coffee shop, the hardware store, organic eatery and on down to the Black Walnut Cafe (the place to be) to waste some time and buy a delicious breakfast scone, then back passed all those same places to wait for my bus, snow still flying. Dismal day. I didn’t care.

If a comet hit and it all went out like a light, I’d be happy, satisfied, as I accomplished my goal. The first hurdle, and the most difficult part, was getting my arse out the door to the mall and buy the thing, and escape.

Wait FOREVER for the bus, cause I left way to early, but it arrives, and on we go.

We leave the fringes of the downtown where I live, and turn onto this street, with house after house, a beige one, gray one, brown one, a brown one, another brown one, gray one, semi-detached one’s and detached, each with their own bespoke ticky-tacky, garden gnome here, Christmas lights still up there, winding on through the burbs.

Today the thing was jeans for work.

The ones I wear have worn through in all the wrong places. Almost my entire shift I spend on concrete walking around and around the warehouse, thighs rub together, swish swish swish for 7 hours or more, until they wear through, AND than I wore them some more, and then I decided to mend them, which was a horrible mistake. My co-workers haven’t called me on it, no write-ups for shabbiness, but I was shabby and I know it, with every step, bending down, lifting that, reaching here, waiting for a rip and there I gots’ me some Daisy Dukes.

A co-worker, as she was setting a box down on a cart made the box somehow fart yesterday, and god did it make me jump. So, it was well past the time when I could get away with it.

Just so you know, going to a mall is for me an exercise in patience, and I fail horribly and therefore avoid at all costs until I blow through my jeans, and this mall is the closest place that has what I want.

Even as I was walking today to the bus, saw there were no cars in the Catholic Public School staff parking lot, and in HORROR realized it was March Break, I did not turn back.

As luck would have it, I guess maybe the burbites chillin’s are in Florida cause the place was actually rather quiet, for one of the remaining malls left in London, it was practically dead, just the freaks and weirdos, and a few soccer Mommy’s, and Daddy’s with little ones in hand.

Had a burger and root beer in the food court, and watched this little girl in pink rubber boots, holding her Daddy’s hand and skipping along beside him, with this sullen little boy trailing behind, evidently not as excited as his sister at this excursion.

You have no idea the joy, heck, almost skipping myself, free of the mass of humanity that normally congests, or had when I was last at a mall. Maybe its dying too.

AND I didn’t get lost, which was shocking. I mean, I always use the maps, but I always get lost anyhow, turning left when I was supposed to turn right, ending up again and again at the food court, with the hallways radiating off like spokes of a wheel, all look the same to me cause I was not paying attention, and round and round, passing the same store, I think. But not this time. No idea why maybe it was the deserted corridors, the polished white marble floors underneath my boots gleaming, store after store of things I don’t want, focused on this one thing.

And they were ON FRICKIN SALE, and I got the very last pair. Very last EVER, sadly. The new style they’ve switched to are made from this material that feels like cheap bendy tissue paper hugging my thighs like saran wrap, flaring out at the shins, cutting me off like a leech at the waist. So glad I decided to come in person, and not ordering online. Details, details, yet being vertically challenged make jean options limited, although generally not in length, riding up or down my butt, and a completely unpleasant experience.

However, when I blow through these? Who knows. Shudder at the thought, yet that is a horror for another day, not that day. This day I got the last pair, they were on sale, so I bought a new notebook, deodorant, and some other stuff, and STILL was under budget. Winning.

After I found my jeans, I wandered with my list in hand, accidentally turning into an electronics store, and having a tete a tete with a commissioned salesperson. Mistakenly admitted to him how old my crap phone was, and thinking he had an old fart with an old plan that needed changing, to which I corrected him, just wasting time until my bus comes buddy, not into buying, just shopping, and left back the way I had just come, of course.

So I retraced my steps through the quiet marbled corridors of commerce, making my escape out the next exit and into the sunshine, thankful.

I once walked out of a Le Chateau after one salesperson’s high-end pitch, with my Mom in tow telling me I was being rude, to which I told her my thoughts on who’s rudeness was offending, I got a umpf. We headed off to some other store less hip and cool and with no pushy salespeople, and where I could be left alone to shop, have a nice day get lost.

Safely returned to the village, dog flaked out on the floor, and alls well that ends well.