Summer Clothes......

At this time of the year, you would think that the local stores would still be selling summer clothes. The temperature outside is either right up to or over 100 degrees every day, and it will be like that till at least the end of September, and probably right on into October. Usually, when the kids here go trick-or-treating for Halloween, they're wearing shorts underneath their costumes.

So why is it, every mid-August or so, I can walk into a store here and see not only heavy sweaters for the "cooler" months (when the temperatures dip way down into the 60s and 70s) but I can also find Halloween decorations.

And that's exactly what I found yesterday when I went into SteinMart, and today when I went into Marshall's: heavy sweaters and Halloween pumpkins and witches. Give unto me a blessed break. (As Lawrence Sanders' Archy McNally character would say.)

I didn't look around the women's section of SteinMart yesterday...... my husband and I ran in there so he could get new slippers and new shorts. Being that he doesn't like shopping much, I tend not to shop for myself when we're together in a store. When he's on a shopping roll, I try not to do anything that will distract him. He's the kind of shopper who goes in the store for exactly what he wants and doesn't browse much, especially in clothing stores. "Get in there, get what you need, and get out." -- that's his shopping mantra. (As opposed to mine, which is "Get in there, look around, try things on, look around some more, try on more clothes, look around again in case you missed anything the first two times, then look around the clearance section to see if there's anything you need that you hadn't thought of to buy.")

I drove to Marshall's today, to see what I could find in summer skirts. My sister put this little bug in my ear-- "Don't keep buying capris for the summer.... get those long cotton skirts and cotton tops and you'll be more in style." (Heaven forbid I not be in style.)

Cotton skirts were on my list today....... and I think I tried on more than a dozen in Marshall's. I came home with three of them, but (as sometimes happens) when I got them home and tried them on in front of my own full-length mirror, I didn't like them. So all three are going back. They looked okay in the store, but looked ridiculous in my own dressing room mirror. I swear, there must be something in those store mirrors that makes everything look good.

I did find a pair of capris, though, and I'm keeping those because they looked just fine in my own mirror. They're the color of canteloupe (the inside, not the outside of the melon). My sister wouldn't approve of these, however... she'd be telling me that my aim in life shouldn't be to look like a piece of fruit.

I also have to find a bathing suit. I have suits here, but nothing that I would care to take to Hawaii. If I go to Hawaii, that is. The jury is still out on that one. The thought of flying over the Pacific Ocean is bothering me. I hate the way the world is changing. I hate that certain people in this world are changing the way we think about things. My husband isn't worried. He never worries, because he says that I worry enough for both of us. (My theory on his carefree state of mind is that Presbyterians don't worry.... Italians-- now we know how to worry.)

My husband was searching the Internet on the Hawaiian islands. He asked me if I wanted to take a helicopter ride around Hawaii. Is he kidding? After I got sea-sick on the whale-watching boat in Maine? Does he think I'd do any better in a little glass dome thousands of feet up in the air and looking down into the top of a volcano?

Give unto me.....