Scraps (n. ,fem., singular)

Shopping recap for the weekend

10.75 spent on a pink martini glass lamp for the bar

79.57 total spent on shoes
 (4 pairs, average 19.89 per)

26.30 total spent on accessories
 (5 items, average 5.26 per)

317.36 total spent on clothing
 (23 items, average 13.79 per)
    1 dress
    5 jammies
    1 pr shorts, 3 pr pants, 4 skirts
    9 shirts

And that’s what I did with my weekend. Not including a trip to the grocery store, a stop at the liquor store and 2 meals out.  But you get the picture. After a whole month of not shopping, I suppose I was due for a splurge. Granted, of the above, most of it was on store charge accounts (nice to have for the few times a year I go and refit my wardrobe, lol).

Most of the clothes are work clothes (obviously not the jammies, those are for recuperating from surgery and so forth) that will get me through quite a while. The shoes were an attempt to find comfy sandals/casuals with mid-height heels for walking around in at DragonCon and I think I finally managed to cover those bases (I can’t do 3 days in flats or tennis shoes without serious tendinitis pain and my current heeled options aren’t con-floor friendly).

And speaking of jammies! Even though I was specifically looking for nightgowns and sleep shirts I saw this one tank-and-short set that I _had_ to have: it’s got martini-swilling monkeys on it, hello?!?

Tags: clothesshopping, monkeys, jammies, martinis, dragon con preparedness

Last night I managed to format all of the pages I had pre-blocked (up to 52 physical pages of the graphic novel) so it’s good that I planned to block in the car while Mom drives us to Orlando.

And, wow, tonight was just a whirl. A very good question was posed over at the A&E forum of eHow and it sparked an instant article. As soon as it gets approved (tomorrow if I’m lucky) I can post it as a reply instead of just a well you could do this, this and this. But it was just something I hadn’t thought to do an article on and there didn’t seem to be one already written on the site, so it was providence, indeed. That’s four of my 7 for the month

Also put my new tag on the car, today. Sweet! I wasn’t really “sold” on the State of the Arts plate but it really does look nice when it’s actually on the car, goes well with the blue. Then there was the SCA meeting, amusing as always, come home and pack my overnight bag, start the dishwasher, and worked on next week’s comics. Whew! Busy night!

K’s boyfriend managed to pull off an early surprise birthday dinner for her tonight that Mom and I went to. Quite, quite fun and I purposefully only ate half my steak and loaded potato so I’d have lunch for tomorrow. Such good birthday cake.

Before dinner we needed to kill some time and pick up K’s gift certificate for a pedicure so at the Mall I found something majorly surprising: a denim skirt, knee length, in a blue that doesn’t look dirty or stone washed. ON SALE. Rock on! There was also a funny moment when Mom and I picked up identical jackets from across the room. The hounds tooth pattern was too large to look right on anyone our size but still, that was a bit too freaky.

Palmie has also informed me that our travel plans for next year will preempt the Memphis road trip in favor of hostel-ing it in England for a week. Hey, who am I to argue?!?

If I only managed to do one comic, tidy the living room and dining room, listen to a friend’s rant, and hang up all the clothes strewn about my bedroom but ordered dinner in instead of cooking? Oh, and I managed to do two sections of digital coloring, too, for the Secret Project.

Still, compared to the mad dash of the last couple of nights tonight almost felt like slacking. Of course, I couldn’t really allow myself to slack, but I oh so wanted to. Tomorrow won’t be much better, laundry list of things to do then as well. I’m looking forward to the weekend, though, maybe I can carve out some serious downtime then. It’s always good to hope!

And a blog post to boot!

Let’s see, I’ve managed to shop (I really need to wrap up these party plans, y’all), pencil a comic and a half, do laundry, start decorating/arranging for the party, draft a NaNo email, create a survey, watch a movie uninterrupted while only knitting, upload two articles, and I’m not done yet! But I will be soon. Gotta get better at this whole bedtime thing before NaNo really rolls around so I can write in the mornings again.I think that really made the difference last year to getting me to 50K in fine form.

And the Abyss is still clean and totally blowing my mind.

Friday night I started Tuesday’s RA strip and, uh, yeah… I’m still working on it. And we’re not talking standard procrastination, here. No, this is a full-on creative block. I know what needs to happen in this one panel but I cannot get it composed. The mental image is sketchy at best and ARGH! I had wanted to get the next 4 strips done this weekend and it’s just not happening. Granted, I have cleared some other items off the to-do list but that’s not the point! *beats head against the wall*

So I think I’ve stared at that blank panel enough for now, and at some point I need to write for a couple hours. Perhaps some totally non-creative manual labor will break the block? Off to tackle the laundry!

So today was two. two. two-days-in-one! for me since I don’t work tomorrow today was essentially my Friday, but with the usual Thursday stuff included. After work I had a couple of discounts that were about to expire so I figured I’d hit the stores for a little start-the-long-weekend-off-right shopping.

Um, did anyone else notice how hard it rained at 4 today? I swear I did, but somehow that didn’t equate in my brain to the fact that Lafayette would be nearly flooded! Needless to say, not only is the top of my car clean, the inside of the wheel wells have been all-but pressure washed!

So I get to Borders (discount #1) and I have a decision to make: to umbrella or not to umbrella, that is the question. It was still raining but in a non-torrential way and I was parked at the end of the sidewalk so I decided to go without. It was fun. I laughed at the silliness, giddy with the 4 days of freedom ahead, and cleaned my glasses off as I entered the bookstore (sometimes windshield wipers on glasses would /not/ go amiss). Blind though I might have temporarily been, my ears worked fine and the sound they heard was a biddy’s affronted ‘Well’ at my dampened state as we passed. Oh get a grip, lady, it’s only a little water (and I’m much less likely to drip than an umbrella), this isn’t Escape from LA and it’s not acid rain. (Or was is NY that had the acid rain? anyway…) Let your inner child out of the attic would you?

In a stroke of true luck (seriously, the last several times I’ve gone in there–or any place else–it’s been out of stock) Charmed, Season 4, was right where it was supposed to be and it promptly accompanied me to the checkout counter. Now, I thought the discount I printed out was for 25% off but when I checked the receipt at the door it was only 20%. Wouldn’t you know it? I pulled the wrong one out of my notebook! I think I might have actually given them an expired rewards discount! But it scanned so who knows. I still have a 25% off to use before the end of the weekend, so if I’m out that way I might pick up an actual book (gasp!).

Next stop was the shoe store (discount #2) where I really intended to buy some everyday wear sort of low kitten heels or even flats (since I seem to be able to tolerate them a bit more now). But I really didn’t like the ones they had. I tried to talk myself out of them, really I did, but they just kept calling to me… So now I have yet another pair of truly cheesecake peep-toe pumps for the fall. When I described them to palmie over the phone she declared them the quintessential [Scraps] cheesecake shoe and I happen to agree!

I had thought I would then stop by Michaels for some more canvas-boards (I’m feeling painterly this weekend) then I noticed the Fashion Bug had finally opened. I love their clearance racks. 40% off the already discounted price? Why thank you. Then I decided to go ahead and apply for the store card (free tote bag) and got approved (lipstick case and add’l 10% off the entire purchase). So while I left the store with a stuffed bag (including some great straight-legged slacks that will go perfectly with the new pumps) and an invitation to participate in their store fashion show in two weeks, I didn’t actually spend any money there. (Yet… it’s semantics, okay?)

Then Michaels had some of their Halloween stuff out already Dude. Orange chinese lanterns for a buck a piece? Oh yes! And pumpkin shaped doilies? Those, too. And a few odds and ends decorations to stock up for what will be the best BYOP in the history of my throwing them (and this’ll be #5 and I throw pretty cool pumpkin parties so that’s saying something…). And I got the canvas-boards.

But now I’m faced with another dilemma. I have the next four days off, entirely to do my own bidding. This is bizarre. I don’t generally take time off to just do nothing, though I had thought that a slacker weekend would be cool. Except I’m me, y’all, I can’t just do nothing! The dilemma is whether to leave the alarm on for tomorrow morning. Granted, I’m not a morning person in general, but how great would it be to get up at 6am on my day off and get caught up on the comic or write the next article or finish reorganizing the Abyss (which is very un-Abyss-like now)? I mean, really? And then do it again on Saturday and Sunday and even have Monday still to do it again? It’d be like the time in ‘03 when I took most of Spring Break off to learn Dreamweaver and build Rock*Paper*Scissors and all it’s inventory in a week. It was a creative oasis in the middle of my work-a-day world. It was glorious!

And apparently I’m crazy. But that doesn’t mean I won’t do it!

So. The cruise date is coming up quickly (just 2.5 weeks to go if that!) and Mom still needed something for formal night. The idea was to maybe go shopping this weekend but that didn’t happen: Mom decided that she was home and was going to stay home. Instead we went to Catherine’s after work tonight with plans to have dinner at the Olive Garden once we were finished.

Since I don’t wear a watch I’m really not sure how long we were at Catherine’s but we succeded in finding Mom a fabulous outfit for formal night, a casual shirt for her, and a glitzy top for me (which will probably get paired with one of my many black skirts for formal night). Dinner was nice and leisurely and, since we were out, we decided to see if we could find appropriate shoes for Mom while we still had the outfit to match with us.

To the Mall we went, the big Mall, and proceded to cover about half of it. We found shoes right off (which is a bit of a surprise since it’s an odd color between grey and taupe we were trying to match) but then I suggested we look for a cute evening bag for her as well. Y’all, I never thought she’d go for it but she did and we traipsed through several stores trying to find just the right color bag for the outfit.

Of course we succeded and we found another cute shop while making our rounds that I will definitely have to return to when I have a clothes budget once again. [Stupid ER trip messed up some budgetary issues for the end of May, meh!] ['meh' really shouldn't be followed by an exclamation point as emphatic apathy seems to be a contradiction in terms however it was wholly appropriate to the sentiment.] As we left Macy’s we noticed that the crowds were getting quite light and that the kiosks were closing up. Mom checked her watch to see that it was a quarter til 9–no wonder we were starting to tire!

All in all it was a very successful trip and I can’t wait to see everyone’s face when they get a load of Mom’s plunging neckline!

No, this is not yet another entry about my neuroses… This is actually about productivity!

Saturday pretty much sucked for productivity: I did nothing of consequence and the only reason I actually got dressed was to drive out to Koosh’s for the Crawfish Festival to-go. The price wasn’t bad, but the quality of the crawdads, at least in the two pounds I brought home, was not so great. Worth it, yes, but we didn’t miss much by not going out there for the afternoon.

Sunday, on the other hand, was very productive. I decided to forego Knitting in Public at All Saint’s in favor of tackling my bedroom. Now, really, what was wrong with my bedroom was not all that much it was merely the preponderance of clothing EVERYWHERE that made it look bad. That and the stuff from the little folding table that, when I moved said folding table, I just sort of left where it fell and never dealt with. Most was easily organized once I actually took the time to do it, I just really hadn’t cared enough in the past to do it. It’s not like anyone other than me sees that room.

But the time had come to fix that (the state of affairs, not the lack of public viewing) and so I tossed a few hours at it. And, well, now the room looks so empty!!! It helped when I moved the quilt stand from the foot of the bed to the side wall where the miscellaneous crap was, but oh my goodness with the blank walls. I really need to do something about the expanses of off-white walls that are in that room. Still left to do is to organize the shoes and deal with the vanity table. I moved the table into place, the chair sits in front of it, but the boxes of stuff I need to go through to figure out what will and will not go onto the vanity table? Still underneath the table and trying to escape. Most of it will be tossed, I know this, but I haven’t quite worked my way up to dealing with that mess. Soon, though, it will happen. It has to, really, because my tiny little bathroom lavatory isn’t big enough to hold all the makeup, etc. that it would otherwise need to and putting an etage in there is out of the question!

As to the title? Yes, well, I sorted all of the clean clothes that were existing draped over various bits of furniture on my bed and put everything on hangers and into the closet or folded and into/onto the dresser. I ran out of hangers. This isn’t overly surprising but I had recently purchased 16 more hangers since the last time I vowed to hang everything up again and, well, no. Still not enough. And y’all, I haven’t done laundry in a week so even though, when all was said and done and hangers that had been hiding were uncovered, I was still a handful-shy of enough. I have a walk-in closet. One side is shirts and one side is skirts/pants. Dude, I almost don’t have enough room for it all. And almost all of these clothes? I wear. It’s not like half of my wardrobe just sits there collecting dust! I cycle through almost all of it every few months. And now that it’s warming up again? More will get cycled through. Sure, there is some chaff amidst the wheat, I admit, but even if I ditched that? Still loads of clothing.

But I need more hangers. I think I should just make the rule that if I buy a new article of clothing, even if it’s only one and comes with the hanger, I need to go buy a pack of hangers at the store. Because, y’all, I really don’t know how but they seem to multiply. And there are still some pesky wire hangers in there that need to be disposed of.

Somehow I think I’ll get more hangers before I get that scale.