Working in a mall store has caused the scales to be removed from my eyes. The state of civilization in America has deteriorated to degrees I never imagined in my safe little ivory tower of public, not-for-profit service.
Item the first:

The posture of American youth is appalling. I have never been exposed to such slouching and round shoulders, ever. I spend my days wanting to shout "Stand up straight!" at ten minute intervals. These teen-aged girls have dowager's humps and they have barely hit puberty. They hold their necks extended, leading with their chins, and their shoulders curve around as if to meet in the center of their clavicles. It's just not healthy, but then

Item the second:

Neither is their weight. And let me tell you, I can see every ounce of extra fat rolling over their low-slung jeans, extruding out from under their cropped tops, and oozing out of their decolletage. In my day (which is to say, the sixties) not a one of those girls would ever have gotten laid, or even let out of the house with so much fat showing. And, as in primitive societies where fat is counted as a display of wealth, so it seems to me in America. These girls are blissfully unaware that a pouchy stomach, or a pair of love handles are not attractive. They parade this avoirdupois with pride. Or at least as much pride as their slumped shoulders and pigeon necks can portray.

Item the third:

Money is no object in appeasing our children. I sell, among other things, the best toy in the world: i-pods. I say they are toys because the majority of purchasers are mothers of young, nay, very young, children, and they are not buying them for their own use. They are buying $200 electronic devices for their eight-year-olds. I suggest to them that a shuffle, with no moving parts, half the cost and a storage capacity of 120 songs might be sufficient for the little darlings, but no. These mothers and grandmothers want the real deal. Just a question, but wouldn't you be better off spending that money on, say, summer camp, where the children would be out of doors, learning to oh, ride horses, or play soccer, or any other activity requiring physical movement and interaction with other children?

And why does every little monster who comes in have a cell phone clutched in their sticky little mitt? What about personal supervision in person? Not that that seems to matter because we have

Item the fourth:

A small boy, with his mother at the local grocery store. He is wearing a full Darth Vader helmet. It contains electronics to make his voice sound like the filtered basso profundo of James Earl Jones. Not to dwell on the price of such an object, or the appropriateness of letting your child wear such a thing in public, um.... if you are going to encourage your child's imagination in emulating a movie character, shouldn't you be guiding him (or her) towards the HERO? and not the slayer of innocents? Darth Vader, in case you've been living under a rock for the past thirty years, is the Bad Guy. The Very Bad Guy. Just because he repents in the third act, and kills the Emperor, he's still had a long run of being the most evil creation in the whole Star Wars saga. So, here's the question: Why would you want your six-year-old to pretend to be him? And not just pretend with a stick and a pillow case, but with very expensive, electronic toys that you had to purchase to enable him?

Conclusion

We are a nation of instantly gratified swine. We don't teach our young manners, clothing sense, correct posture, or the value of money. Our youth are indolent, arrogant and spoiled. And then we wonder why.

True phone call:

"I want to get wireless service. Who supplies it?"

"Anyone who provides internet service."

"Can't you recommend anyone?"

"Who are you getting service from now? They don't beam it into your home, you know. You still need a cable and a base station."

"What about when I'm in my truck?"
Call number two:

"Are you familiar with the i-pod?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, I tried to load a CD on it last night and after a couple of hours, it still wasn't showing up on my i-pod."

"OK. Uh, did you digitize the music into your library first?"

"?????Digitize? Library?"

Happy Birthday, Bob*. As usual, I baked a cake, and made a special dinner for you. As usual, you didn't show up. I suppose the fact that you haven't the faintest whiff of an inkling of a vague imagining that I exist is the reason you never come for your birthday dinner, but that doesn't stop me.

One day. One day I'll meet you outside my dreams. Not that I'm a stalker or anything. I'd never do that. Nosirree, Bob, not me.

But if you're ever in Miami and want a nosh, or a little drinkie, just give me a call. My door is always open.

*Dylan. Bob Dylan. Duh.

This is a touchy entry. After all, we here at Girlyshoes try so very hard to be politically correct at all times, and the epithet JAP (referring to Jewish American Princesses) is so not PC.

On the other hand, being Jewish, and as the youngest grandchild on either side of my family and a little girl to boot, a certifiable princess in my own right, I feel that I can take liberties where others may not.
Having said that, let me also say that I am so not a JAP. Never have been. I cook, clean, enjoy relations with my husband and do not require massive amounts of jewelry in order to do so. I have always worked outside the home, and not as a charity volunteer, although I also do charity work. I do not shop as a competitive sport and I do not have a standing appointment for acrylic nails. I have never had plastic surgery, nor do I intend to. So there. Furthermore, my nose is my own, original model, as is my hair color.

Now that we have the ground rules, if you will, let me say that I have spent the last three days in the company of JAPS, and the last two weeks trying to pry information and money out of another set of same, and I can honestly say that I'd rather poke myself in the eye with the charred end of a sharp stick than do either ever again.

The three days at the bead expo were wonderful learning and shopping days, except for the time spent with a woman who can best be described as a Dowager Princess. She was needy, demanding, a know-it-all, requiring constant attention from either her co-students or teacher, engaged in extended one-up-manship and bragging and made me want to convert to Episcopalian, just so I could sigh and say "Not our kind, dear." She was dreadful. Her daughter was somewhat better behaved, but utterly clueless as to polite conversation.

In response to my question "You did recieve the thank you note I sent after my father died?" she said (and I fucking quote) "Yes. And it was such a sob story that I felt even worse after I read it."

Yeah. My life last year was pretty much a sob story, and if you think reading about it sucked, try living it, beyatch.

The Dowager and I actually shared a work table in our class on day three, and I was tempted to shove her Ott lamp down her throat. The first few hours she complained non-stop about the teacher's instructions to use double thread. The teacher kept saying that if you found it hard to work, use the thread and strand count you preferred. It was more entertaining for the DP to bitch, and so she did. I finally said to her, why don't you stop complaining and change threads? So she did, and the next three hours were spent gloating over how utterly fabulous her work was, and talking about how much better it was to work with her choice of material rather than the instructor's.

The second interaction with a company of JAPS involved my latest tallit commission. The little princess apparently did not like one piece of fabric that I used and it so upset her that her bat mitzvah was nearly ruined. She had to have a dress maker install a piece of fabric over the offending two and one half inch wide stripe, before she could go on. The matching tallit bag was salvagable only by turning it inside out, which she was able to do because I made it with no seams showing.

Not that she or her mother have had the courtesty, despite e-mails from me, to tell me any of this. I have it third hand, from a cousin who happens to be friends with the mother. I also have not been paid.

I am expected, I have been led to understand, to remedy this atrocity for them. It seems that't the princess doesn't like purple at all, and the fabric stripe in question was a strip of magenta silk brocade, the brocade pattern being leopard spots. She felt that the color was more correctly defined as purple, and she hated it. The leopard was more than she could bear, and she just broke down in tears and rage. Or so I've heard, third hand, as I said.

Check out the offending fabric

And here it is in place, so you can see the proportions

I'd also like to point out that the only direction I was given in making this, was that the girl was a princess, and as such needed some sparkle and glamor.

OK, fine, so their idea of sparkle and glamor and my own don't match. Is that any reason to stiff me on my fee, or to not contact me with complaints and concerns?

I didn't think so. Bite me. I'm off to work.

This time the bus that hit me was a head cold. I hate head colds. My whole brain gets stuck in the gel that fills my skull. I can't think, I can't breathe, I can't sleep, I can't eat.
You might think that the can't eat part would be good, but I'm the only person I know (except my alter-ego, Edina Monsoon) who can gain weight through my pores. I swear, when the brown shirts round me up and send me off in the box car, I'll be getting out heavier than when I went in.

And being brain-dead and snuffling in retail is a bad, bad thing. So I'm dosing myself with Day-Quill and Ricolas and walking around with a handkerchief up my shirt sleeve like a granny.

Pathetic. This must be some sort of cosmic retribution for ridiculing the man with the horrible slurpy sniffle the other day. Feh.

I was in training for the past two whole days, and as a result, exhausted. The RLA took me out to dinner last night as a reward. Our first choice was an excellent little family-owned Middle Eastern restaurant. I was looking forward to the tardig. We sat down in the pleasantly uncrowded dining room and started to review the menu.

And then it started. (Warning: do not read further if you have a weak stomach.)
There was this noise. It was coming from the table to my left, and directly across from the RLA. It sounded like... I don't know what. It was definitely WET. Slurpy. At first, I thought maybe the man behind me was blowing his nose. But the sound went on and on and on and on. Much longer than possible for a nose blow. And it was so WET, so bubbling, so liquid and viscous at the same time. And I couldn't tell if it was a noise from going in or going out.

It sounded a little like someone was eating oysters on the half shell. Very liquid oysters. Not on the half shell so much as maybe on a saucer full of brine, and they were trying to slurp up all the brine, while holding the oyster at bay with their tongue. Wet. Slurpy. Bubbly, yet slimy.

Then the noise stopped, and I looked around to see what was on that table, but I couldn't quite make out anything out of the ordinary. I went back to my menu.

SLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPSSSSSSSSCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP.

What. The. Fuck. I turned around again, and the man at the table seemed to be moving his head back and forth like he was.... sucking something off a plate? But I couldn't see a plate. I finally asked the RLA, who was facing him.... What in G-d's name is he eating? What the hell makes that kind of disgusting noise?

The RLA turned a lovely shade of gray-green, and said:

"That's his nose. He's blowing his nose."

Except blowing isn't the right word. Having very, very extended, very, very wet, slurping sort of burbling exhale like you might hear in a movie if the alien had gotten it through the lungs but wasn't quite dead yet and was coming after the hero at a gallop is a better description, but still misses the unholy horror of that noise.

The RLA and I looked at each other and bolted. I don't know if I'll ever be able to eat there again.

We went to a new Cuban restaurant over on Dixie Highway, and I marched off to the loo to wash my hands. When I came back, I almost fainted, because, sitting at the next table was a man almost identical in appearance to the disgusting noise man. I looked at the RLA and he just shook his head. Nope. Not the same guy, just a little too much synchronicity and coincidence in the universe.

The pan con lechon was delicious.