Small Town Sunday #10 - Big City Shopping

One of the downsides to living in a small town, especially my small town, is having to drive to a larger city to do major shopping. Unfortunately, my small town is almost 100 miles from a city large enough to have any major shopping.  This does, however, make shopping an experience, one that can be a lot of fun if you go with the right person(s).

My mother and I made a "quick" trip to the city to buy a new faucet for my leaky sink after I got off work on Friday. I had looked all around our small town and couldn't find the type of faucet I wanted, and I knew Lowe's would have one. Normally, I would buy it online and not need to drive an hour and a half one-way to buy a faucet, but I had someone coming to my house the next day to install it, so...

One thing that seems to never fail when going to "the big city" to shop, is running into someone from our small town. At Lowe's we ran into my best friends' in-laws (yes, that was an intentional plural possessive. Two of my besties are married to brothers and have the same in-laws) I hadn't seen them in awhile because we no longer go to the same church. It was nice to catch up.

After finding the faucet, we went across the road to Target so I could look for a present for my niece (what I had ordered on line was NOTHING like I expected, but that's another story). As we were leaving target (without the present), who did we see but our neighbor and her little girls. 

It is so weird to be in a huge store, in a big city and look over and see someone from your small town. You just have to go over and say "hi".  It is like looking at a Where's Waldo and actually finding Waldo in your first glance at the page. Maybe it's more like winning the find-a-friend-among-400,000-people lottery.  Either way, it's always a little shock...even though it happens every time I go to the "big city".

So even in a big city, there is still a little small town feel. It reminds me of the song, "It's a Small World After All."  Sometimes the big city can be like a small town. Of course, there are people out there who would consider a town with just under half a million in population to BE a small town. I would completely disagree. Probably because my town has under 3,000 people.  Now THAT'S a small town!

Mall Fun and Big Hats

There are two different types of shopping. You can shop with a purpose, or you can shop for fun.  I hate to shop with a purpose in mind. You MUST get out of the store with the item needed.  Meh. Not so much fun. But I love to just shop for the fun of it. No pressure.

That's what my BFF and I did today. We went to the mall to just cruse the stores and see what deals we could find. It was a small mall, which is even better because even when I shop for fun, I still get burned out pretty fast.  The only thing we had to get was soap at Bath and Body Works, which is a lot of fun because you get to try out all the new scents.

We got some good finds, but my favorite part of the shopping trip was finding and trying on ridiculous hats.

This one was voted as looking best on me

Not sure about this one

Let's go to Ascot!

I was just shocked to find out that both JC Penny's and Sears had hats like these. Our JC Penny's in Southern Missouri doesn't have hats like this. It wasn't until I had tried on (and taken pictures of) about 10 different hats that I realized the reason they had these hats in the Goldsboro, NC mall is because of the older black ladies who need something to wear to church. And here I just wanted to go to the Kentucky Derby to have an excuse to wear one. White people don't get to wear big, awesome hats like this...not even little old white ladies.  I really wish I could bring the big hat to our all white Southern Baptist church.

The Worst Shopping Trip Ever or My Stupid Back

I am currently sitting by myself in my SiL's van outside the discount grocery store. Why? Because my back went out on me. When we shop we each take a kid and I had my niece. I went to put her in the shopping cart and almost dropped her when a searing pain ripped theough my back. It's been bothering me the last few days and was pretty bad this morning, but I've learned to live with it and just keep moving. Now I'm begging for pain killers and muscle relaxers. I'm just hoping that I can drive the 2 miles from my Mom's house to my house.

Oh how I hate my back!!!
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Personal Assistant

I've decided that I need a personal assistant for the following tasks:

1. Pay my bills - I am terrible at paying bills on time. I've actually set almost all my bills to be automatically paid in order to make sure they get paid on time.
2. Do my laundry - Or more specifically, fold and put away said laundry. I don't mind separating, washing and drying it; it's the folding and putting it away that I hate.
3. Take out the trash - This would including burning trash that can be put into the burn barrel as well as loading up the nonburnables into a truck and hauling it to our dump. (yes we burn stuff like paper, and yes we have our own dump).
4. Pick up random items at the store - I don't mind taking big grocery trips, but I hate having to run to the store for just a few items.
5. Help me out at work - I could really use someone to help make copies, enter grades and grade things that wouldn't take a college education to grade (worksheets, etc...not that I really give out too many worksheets because I think they are lame and don't really teach much or require much brain power to assign, grade or complete...but I digress). Technically, during the school year, I do have a student aide that can do a lot of this, but that is only one hour a day.
6. Pick up around the house - I am terrible about just putting things into piles. It would be awesome to have someone who would pick up after me and make sure things ended up where they belong.
   

If I actually thought I could find someone to come over and do stuff like this once a week, I would tighten my belt and find the money somewhere. You can hire someone to clean your house, but finding someone to do a bunch of menial jobs...that may only exist in the big cities. Also, I'm not sure I could find someone to do it just one day a week. Also, there is the problem that I don't need all those things done on the same day, but maybe I could figure something out if I knew someone was coming over to help out.

If you have any suggestions (other than me being less lazy)...send them my way!