Surviving Shopping

Tonight I had to make a trip to the mall. I don't do this often. The mall intimidates me. Finding parking within a 5 mile radius of the building, walking miles between stores, thwarting stroller attacks, navigating a path in a sea of slow walkers, unpredictable kids, mass packs of angsty teens, snobby skinny bitches, couples galore, and even thugs and hookers makes my blood pressure rise to dangerous levels.

Also, for those of you not from around here, a couple months ago there was a RIOT or mass fight of more than 300 teens at one of our local malls. Seriously. Can you image over 300 thuggy teens fighting in the middle of the mall? (and from I heard it was some sort of moving mob, therefore was not contained to one area!) The thought of that scares the crap out of me and makes me want to avoid the mall at all costs.

But I HAD to make this trek to obtain some jeans to wear to the ECU Homecoming game tomorrow. I'm not even going to tell you what happened to my favorite-only-pair-I-wear jeans today because it is just too embarrassing and sad to relive through words.

First just let me tell you, finding jeans (or any pants) that I can wear "right off the rack" is almost impossible. I HAVE to have short or ankle length and sometimes those are too long too. Then there are all the other normal "fit" issues to deal with.

I started out a J Crew. Even thought I didn't have any success in the jeans department, I saw these awesome pirate rain boots that were worthy of at least a cell phone pic but not a purchase. (yet)



Then I headed to the Gap. I got distracted by a pink pea coat when I walked in, but forced myself to re-focus. After about 30 minutes of sorting through jeans, I finally found my size in a short length. At this point I didn't even care about the style or color. As I stood in the fitting room analyzing them in the awful lighting, I almost gave in to buying an awful pair of jeans for $60 just because I wanted this search to be over. But walking up to the register with the blah jeans, I just couldn't do it. Not worth it.

I had to follow behind a really really slow guy with a stroller and 2 kids (because there was just no way to get around them) all the way to Express. I spent at least 45 mintues scouring through piles and piles of unorganized jeans to turn up empty handed.

I was about to head back to my car and drive over to Old Navy, when I decided to check out The Limited. I get great work pants from there sometimes, but I didn't even know if they carried jeans. Long story short is they do. And in short sizes. I got a great pair of $80 jeans for $40! SUCCESS!

As I was walking back to my car I passed a new store I had never seen that was all kinds of colligate gear craziness. And I spied purple! Since I was going to the game tomorrow I decided to pop in and check it out. Of course it was overwhelmingly blue (Carolina and Duke) and red (State), but there was some cute ECU stuff. I found one PIRATES shirt so cute I got it in 2 colors (2/$20!) AND since I decided I really am going to apply to grad school (woohoo!) I picked up a shirt for my future alma mater (fingers crossed!) for $6! Here's the goodies (minus the jeans- they have to be on to be appreciated)



What do you think?