Another day older.

So tonight I'm child-free and in an admirable attempt not to be pathetic by lying around on the sofa and eating potato chips, I embark on a little after-dark shopping.

First stop: Ross. They're supposed to have a lot of summer dresses in stock.

Well, not so much. Unless you like a LOT of that jersey polyester stuff. I do, however, manage to find a cotton skirt. But still, not the haul i was hoping for.

So. That's 15 minutes, what next? I'm down the street from Borders. Ah, Borders! Perfect! Open late, bookish folk are likely to frequent a bookstore, we can all be alone together.

I'm happily ambling around Borders and decide to buy a couple of books (austerity plan still in effect, but annual bonus hit my bank account today, and i think i can spend 1.5% of it). There are a few events going on around the store -- back in the Philosophy/New Age section there's a little group listening to a man talk about chakras, and in the coffee shop there's half-hearted applause every four and a half minutes or so for a guy with a pan flute.

I'm wandering toward the cash wrap and take a detour into bargain books. Remaindered books always make me so sad. There are the junky gift books and the no-name cookbooks, of course, but then there are books that you know some novelist somewhere was so proud of, spent years struggling and writing and getting rejection letters and finally got it published and now, here it sits with a thick black marker line along the top and a red sticker ending in .99.

But I don't feel so bad that I don't look anyway. So I'm in the aisle with 30 Nights of Chicken on a Budget and 1,001 Curry Recipes for One! and a new guy takes over in the coffee shop. I breathe a silent prayer for the retirement of the pan flute.

I'm not really paying attention, engrossed as I am in Eggplant for Everybody, and at first i can't identify the song.

Can I tell you there is nothing sadder than being an unattached woman in the remainders section of the Paradise Valley Borders on a Friday night while some skinny cowboy with an electric guitar sings this Tennessee Ernie Ford number.

Comments

[nutty mummy]

Oh.my.god. I totally loved that dude!
I have never heard that before and I am absolutely in love with that song!

And fyi btw... there is nothing wrong with being in a book shop taking some well deserved browsing time! :)

[blackbird]

They played that in Borders? While you were in the remainder area?
I would have had to sit down and have a whiskey.