Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Shopping
Ultimately I took my sister’s advice and bought my mom a Macy’s gift card for her birthday, but not before walking up and down the mall searching for just that right balance of glam, sequins, flowers, and froth. Shopkeepers predatory for commissions kept their eyes on me as I passed, murmuring Let me know if there’s any, Can I help, How are you to, Are you shopping for your, the pulsatile tinnitus of Madison Avenue.
The cosmetics counter women have given up. They give each other makeovers or lurk expressionless by their wares. An older woman in Fashion belts out a song just out of step with the Muzak and wants to know if I like anything I see. “It’s all too stylish,” I say, and move on, quickly. My mother doesn’t do haute couture.
The mall is empty of money. The mall is full of bored kids, dropouts and truants, Generation Huh? Only the food court is busy.
This guy on his cell phone, someone’s arguing with him about training for a marathon. “There’s no way I could train for a marathon in six months,” he says. “Even if I could, I don’t think I have the mental outlook to run.” Guy looks upwards of 400 lbs. His gut squirms out below his tee shirt, gasping for air.
As for me, I’m one of the underemployed. We’re all taking a day off per pay period to meet the budget; our supe knows how to share the pain. Like Castro’s Cuba, Karen tells me. Oh, well. I can absorb a 10% pay cut and still do well. And besides, it gives me time to do the important things, like buy my mom a gift certificate for her birthday.
D.
I hate to say it, but I heard Macy’s is cutting back on their employees and might even close a store here and there. Hopefully, she uses the gift card quickly. A check, Doug, a check.
yeah, yeah, but a check is so IMPERSONAL. While a Macy’s Card, you know, shows so much careful thought . . .
I miss my Mom so much. Sorry, just thinking about her chokes me up.
My parents, per my mother, are all about consumables – something that doesn’t linger and clutter up the house. They have enough stuff, she tells me and she’s right. My approach to gifts to well-established adults is something that can be eaten (gourmet chocolate or restaurant gift certificates), ldrunk (we quite like Gosset champagne) lit (scented candles), or experienced (massage certificate, opera tickets…). I used to give them magazine subscriptions (my father would never pay for anything other than financial magazines, but enjoyed The New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc.), but my mother is sensitive to chemicals, so there went the Vanity Fair subscription, since it always had those perfume inserts. Then my mother begged me to stop buying my dad subscriptions, since they just added to the piles of reading material mounting up in the house (my dad has a bit of the hoarder in him). So, now my sister and I deputize my brother to go buy gift certificates at Chef Chu’s or the Los Altos Grill (definitely worth a try, next time you are in the Bay Area). My brother and his wife send flowers, which are nice, but I find them sad when they die and there’s that fragrance sensitivity problem. My dad still likes to get WWII books and I’ve been sending stuff from the Eastern Front, since hardly anyone in the U.S. knows much about it.
Are things really that awful there? Here is doesn’t seem that different, although I noticed that the real estate pages were stuffed full with ads and I’ve heard prices are going down. But I’m insulated from the real world. My husband mentioned that some of their clients have told him that they have already stopped their production lines and that they have enough inventory to last for a year. He thinks that things won’t start to turn around until mid-2010.