13 posts tagged “shopping”

When I registered at Williams Sonoma for our wedding, the point was to register for stuff that I would use daily, and also be able to replace /complete on my own if needed (we had a small wedding, so there was no hoping for big gifts). One of my favorite things we ended up with were their Duralux Picardie tumblers. We bought the 12 oz size, and have only managed to break one in over 10 years.

Right before Queenie was born, and I was nesting, I became convinced -- convinced! -- that she would not/ could not be born without my buying a complete set of the Picardie juice glasses. Bought them from Williams Sonoma. Love them.

For months now, I've been meaning to buy the 8.5 oz set (see above). The girls have moved past sippy cups, I'm trying to weed out plastic, the juice glasses are kind of small for water or milk for the older one, and the 12 oz are ungainly. But we've been tight on budget, and so I've resisted. I've also been unable to find a local W-S. But today, I could resist no more, and thought I'd look them up online, or send Clive to the nearest store in BH (I cannot actually step foot into a W-S store, that would be trouble, especially given my current knife problem).

They are gone. And have been for just over 2 months (a couple years from W-S, though).

Oh, W-S still sells tempered glass tumblers, but they are Spanish, not French. They are even-sided, not odd, like my beloved Picardies. And they do not match. But it is worse than this.

The Duralex company is in liquidation. Meaning, I cannot even get them from the UK site that imports their brand.

And, some bastard on eBay is selling 6 of them for over $40 with over $10 shipping. Robbery! These are EVERY DAY cafe glasses.

There is also a nice person selling them for a reasonable price which of course I am watching and if you are reading this you will not, I repeat, NOT, bid on these because you are kind and understand my duress.

In any case, I am now sad, and obsessed, all at the same time.

I am also not alone in my sadness, as I found pages of posts about this on Chowhound, as well.

Sigh. Wish me luck !

edited to add: Seems they may have them still at World Market. They are listed online, at least. I will be near one tomorrow, and so will check the shelves. Stay tuned! $2 each!

edited 6_08 to add: Do I have actual readers or are there more crazy people like me? Last night I put 3 sets of these glasses in my cart online. Today, after checking the local store (none). I went back online to order 2 sets (the third I put in by accident).....only to find that they will only let me order one! I am currently blaming  vox for  this. I  KNEW I shouldn't have tagged  it. Sigh. And on top of it they charged me for *gift wrapping.*  Damn.

Here are the places I went today. I think I deserve a medal:

1. Queenie's school for drop off, and work ( I work there for Before and After Care) - with Spit Spot
2. Spit Spot's pre-K for drop off (crying all the way about said drop off)
3. Manicure/pedicure (I know, this should be fun but it was more a "to do" than relaxation)
4. Doctor's office in Santa Monica
5. Pharmacy for prescriptions
6. George's vacuum repair - lugging vacuum
7,8,9. The Mall -- The GAP, Nordstrom Children's shoe department, Make up counter (now I remember why  I send Clive to these places for the kids. Too many opportunities to spend. Too many pretty pretty clothes at Nordstrom). Clive thinks this should count as one place, but as I made purchases in each and had to run down escalators, I think this counts for 3. I do not include Brooks shoes, which I ran into, but just to check inventory. So there.
10. Home - unload bags, grab a drink
11. Back to Nordstrom to return lipstick I bought 20 minutes earlier so I would not be stuck with yet another color, pretty as it may be, that I will not wear, as evidenced by the other 2 similar colors I do not wear at home. I get lost in the parking structure, which almost makes me want to add it as its own destination.
12. Pre-K to pick up Spit Spot
13. The new job, across the street, to do some quick pre-employment paperwork
14. Queenie's school for pick up
15. Queenie's ballet, cross town, for make up class
16. Gas station
17. Home!

Tomorrow looks similar. Eeep!

I spent most of today crabby. There were occasional breaks in my personal fog - watching Spit Spot splash happily in puddles, and lay herself flat down upon wet pavement to splash in even dirtier puddles - that was fun. But then the subsequent wet and messy brawl back to the car was not.

I kept bemoaning the fact that I bought the "wrong" sized rain boots for the girls and the beat myself up for letting them wear them today, before I could return them. I forgot the cardinal rule of rain boot shopping: Thou Shalt Buy a Size Bigger than the Child's Foot. So now, I pray, and hope, that their feet won't grow too fast, that they just had their big winter growth spurt, and my choices won't turn into a big honkin' waste of cash. I actually have a bigger size for Spit Spot, left over from Soledad, but they are short, and therefore, mostly useless. Because, you and I know that there is no toddler on earth who can just walk through a puddle. No, they must leap, splash, bang, and pounce through them, and splash as much filthy water as possible up their legs and into the folds of the pants we put on them to keep them dry. The taller the boots, the better.

On a brighter side, I also got a new pair of boots, and my first tall pair of Wellies. I was going to get basic green or black, but they were back ordered at both Restoration and LLBean, and the ones at Nordstrom were way too much. So I took a leap of faith and bought a jaunty pair of red and black plaid ones. Classic, and hopefully won't get too dated to fast. I briefly considered the horseshoe print, but am really not a horse-y kind of gal, and all the rock-n-roll skulls and roses seemed to be trying too hard. So plaid it is. I'm very excited to wear them.

I also got a couple new tee shirts without holes (yay!) and 2 pairs of jeans to fit my new, larger size. A bit sad, but really really nice to have long pants that fit again, and I have enough that I don't have to do laundry every other minute. Thank G-d for cheap Old Navy jeans. And when I get back down to my comfortable self, I'll splurge on a new pair of Joe's.

On another note, the damn writer's strike has finally sent us a direct hit. Clive's a finalist for an Big Studio Talent Fellowship. He's been happily jumping through their hoops for a month while he finishes up school. We've been expecting "The Call" at any minute. Well, they called today, but just to tell him that there will be no call until they figure out what's going on with the strike. Fair enough, but it means more waiting, and that's kind of painful. I'm sure there's a good Zen lesson in all this. I keep thinking of the story where the moral is you never know if something is good luck or bad luck until the future unfolds. I'm grateful he's still in the game. Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts!

Hanukkah comes early this year and I am in a present-buying tizzy. My family has decided to just send me a check and let me shop for the girls. On the one hand, this is great. They only get what I want them to get. No mounds of plastic pthalate-filled crap, and no ill-fitting clothes I can't return. Wooo! On the other hand:

It's a lot more work for me, as I hate decision-making-minutia and my brain is already over-flowing with it (e.g., should the Aunt and Uncle get Queen Soledad some fancy German modeling wax or Goblet Jr?).

I kind of get the "we can't be bothered" vibe from the hands-off approach.

Part of me feels the kids kind of have a right to get some pthalate-filled, over-hyped junk, and I just can't bring myself to buy it (even if it's not my money).

Anyway, I'm almost done if I can just hunt down the right size/color/style crocs and get Clive to make a run to The Container Store (the capital of decision-making-minutia).

The new "feels and moves like down" pillows came last week. Know what? They don't. They're squishy, but oddly springy. They push back at you. I don't like that. And while I think they get your head at the right angle, that only works if there are no pillows or bolsters or whatever under them. And our bed has a bolster. So if I use them I get an achy neck. Queen Soledad, however, LOVES them and has claimed at least one of them as her own. Clive likes his fine, too, so I'll be keeping them. But I would argue that they are Firm pillows, and not the so-called Medium.

So there.

I'm a bit disgusted that Queenie has a $40 pillow, but then again, she's got an at least 40+ year old bedspread that's falling apart and a cotton blanket that's been eaten by the vacuum and has the scars to prove it. So she might as well have something nice to sleep with.

Spent a whole day last week washing and vacuuming absolutely everything on our beds due to some imagined bug infestation that left Clive with about 9-11 horrid bites on his back. He thinks bed bugs, I think spiders. In any case, it completely messed with the plans for our day and we went through 2+ rolls of quarters to do about 9 loads of laundry including pillows, comforters, mattress casings, etc. We used 2 laundry rooms here, and went to the laundromat down the street for the bigger items. I'm not messing with any bed bugs.

We lost one pillow in the wash (Pom enters laundry room with girls planning to leave Queenie with Clive to take to school, while she goes to gym with SpitSpot, only to find Clive surrounded by and covered with feathers. Wackiness ensues) and suspect another is about to go any second. So I had to buy 2 new pillows, allowing everyone in the house with 2 and one for company.

Pillow shopping is an exercise in madness.

I just want decent, comfortable pillows at a fair price. I need them to be hypo-allergenic so I need to get an allergen cover to top them. I like the pillows we have now, but have no idea if they are/were soft, firm, or medium. I don't know if I'm a side sleeper or a back sleeper anymore. I vaguely remember buying a couple of 2 different types to layer...but was that medium/soft or firm/soft? I have no idea. I tried to look at the tags of my existing pillows but they were no help. The thought of going to a bedding store to face a wall of plastic-wrapped pillows is daunting. There's too much choice and I'm uncomfortable "trying out" pillows in public. You can't really tell with the plastic on, and what if they're not clean? A friend of mine recommended Marshall's, but I don't really trust the markups at those places and don't really know any pillow brand names to look for. So I went online.

It has taken me days (days! of! my! life!) to narrow down the choices in type, fill, and casings. In the end, I went with the hometown brand of Cuddledown of Maine that has served me well in the past and is a few bucks cheaper than a more well-known catalog brand from the mid west. But I am a bit scared of what is coming in the mail.

And I hate to return things. That, if it needs to happen, will be done by Clive. 

Why do I need to wait over a month, possibly 2 months, for some items from Amazon.com? They're just books. Field guides, a cook book, and a couple kids books.

Sigh. This is the second time this has happened with them, and last time they just delayed everything further, and then it never came. It's happened to a friend of mine, too. Infuriating!

I'd never buy anything from them, but it was a gift certificate present for the holidays.

Damn.

update: March 3rd: 2 of the books have come, a third is on its way, but I actually had to cancel the cook book because they delayed it another 4 weeks. WTF!!? A pox on them. Now I'm stuck with my packing taped up crusty old one for another godknowshowmany years.

Sigh.

Clive got me a gorgeous, ridiculously comfortable and expensive pair of workout pants for the holidays. I was going to return them, felt guilty. But then I got to the store and everything there is so lovely and the women who work there, so nice and helpful and before I knew it I had a different pretty pair of pants and had just handed them over for the free fashion-conscious hemming (who hems workout pants? Now, I do!).

So I got them back and I've been pretty much wearing them nonstop. They're fabulous. Then, a couple days ago, I was reading the care instructions. Apparently, the material that makes them so fabulous, Luon, while super-comfortable and flattering, is somewhat easy to snag or pill or scuff. The company goes to a fair amount of trouble to explain what could snag or pill or scuff the material, and how once the material does snag or pill or scuff, one should look at it not as some overpriced piece of shoddy material that doesn't even hold up to one's car seats. Rather, one should see these now messed-up pair of pants as lovingly as one looks at their favorite broken in jeans.

Now, that, my friends, is some inventive 21st century SPIN.