woman, thy weakness is shopping!

Why oh why, my dear reader, do i have to live in an eternal state of temptation?

It's not that I'm not trying to resist hard. But then when I'm least shielded against it, thinking I have almost mastered my habit, it strikes back at me strongly. I happen to be in the city for some very innocent business. I don't even plan on hitting the shops. I'm just there for a coffee with a friend or some banking stuff and then suddenly I have a couple of minutes to spare, maybe even half an hour or so and here we go...

Down, down, down!

The times where a lack of coins or other ready money sort of saved your days are over! In every corner an ATM happily grins at you and even much, much worse, all those plastic things in your purse screaming in your ears: USE ME!

Even the good old train stations are not only heaped with shops sending out the nicest of food whiffs very deliberately in and around your nose, no, jewellery, shoes, clothes, cosmetics and perfume, ties, bras and the like beg at your knees to take them home with you!

How to withstand all that?

The will is strong, but the flesh is weak..

Finally coming home you happen to catch your own reflection in some passing mirror. All loaded with this and those shopping bags, half of which containing stuff totally unnecessary. It will end in some never visited corner of your wardrobe, the darkest corners of your drawers, finally to be thrown out with the next spree of cleaning out and the attached wondering how ever you came to buy that article, or even think you wanted it.

One day, yes, one fine day, I will move into the country, just out of the way, I'll live a happy and contained life. And yes, maybe I need to form some other weird habits, milking a goat, spinning wool, knitting, cross-stitching or even crocheting and hopefully I would be in a place with no connectivity to DSL or other temptatious stuff. Maybe I'd even need a place without phone...

But then, thats seems a far way and long time removed.

I better get ready now, ehm,
I need to do some urgent shopping,
you do excuse?

lifes' quests

On a trip to Barcelona a couple of years ago, where my sister happened to work at that time, my capacities for trials was being put to the test.

It started of with a visit at Subways. I simply wanted a sandwich. The guy asked if i wanted 'integrale'. I didn't know Spanish, he didn't know English.
Gosh, what has maths got to do with a sandwich?? It turned out laters he asked me if i wanted wholewheat instead of white bread...

My sister having been there only for a couple of weeks and working, asked me to have a copy of the flat-key made and gave a superficial direction of where to find the appropriate shop. Unlucky the key master had left for lunch or siesta as the spanish call it, and left a monolinguistic daughter in charge. i don' want to get you - my reader - bored yet! A mere 2 hours later i was in happy possesion of two keys.

The next chapter were tickets for an eqine gala. the naive me thought: Nothing can go wrong here! Oh, how wrong was i! I had to deal with another monolinguistic of course, but that is not the funny part of the story... The event took place in a sort of stadium with endless different price categories. Neither could i say the letters of the categories in spanish nor say the prices.
I started sweating a bit, but finally i got the tickets.

Starting to feel like the prince in fairytales, the worst of all was still to come. My sister asked me to buy a pair of black tights for work, as all hers had ladders and gave me a maximum amount to spent, which was not very high.
If you think thats an easy task, you are com-plete-ly wrong.

My sister happens to be 5.11 ft. The average spanish female is a couple of inches less tall. i learned the word 'grande' and added an extra to it, in order to indicate Xtralarge or better extra long. It was a nightmare as u can easily imagine. Finally, when i had almost totally given up on ever succeding, i called at the corner shop, which looked simply antiquated to me. Surprisingly the furnished me with the required item, though not the required price, but i really felt much to exhausted to mind at all.

I can't say my sister valued my sucessfull quests as i had wished her to and finally there was no princesses' hand to be won, but anyway it was worth going for!

Top 5 quirks

This is a really difficult one..

1) i am addicted to anything that comes on paper, so i have an eternal fight against the heaps i build up of the former.

2) i cannot help colour coordinating my clothes

3) neither can i help being magnetically drawn to any shop with a 'sale' sign nor any item marked ' reduced'

4) in public buildings i tend to be stuck to the same toilet and i get very annoyed in case someone else dares to occupy my cubicle when i come in.

5) i change my habits quickly e.g. for a certain period of time i might drink black tea only after a sudden transformation i will only drink espresso in huge amounts.

Note: i m not proud of any of those and i do feel a little embarassed about posting them, but as i proudly promised syl, i better keep to that...