Notes About Mundane Life

Caterers: I need someone to make me a bunch of carry-out hors d'oeuvres for a party. I have had my pal Galahad do food for me on several occasions, and he’s great, but it’s time we let him out of the kitchen.

I want stand-up finger-food, nothing too messy, probably around 200 pieces, give or take. No serving required – I have that covered - just hand off the goodies the day of the party and take your cash.

I may wind up doing Costco for this, but if you’ve got a better idea, email me.

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I know it’s not the weekend, but I’m going to talk about shopping anyway. Ladies, I went downtown yesterday to the Nordies sale, and actually, it was pretty underwhelming. There just wasn’t that much, and what there was – well, you could see why it was on sale. (Except lingerie. There were actually a lot of cute undies.)

I was mainly looking for a casual spring jacket, and I couldn’t find a thing I liked. It’s all short trench coats, and I don’t want anything with a belt. Burberry has some short light jackets, but I tried them on and wow, they’re very matronly looking. I may have to go for this Moncler jacket, even though I’m really not sure about that belt.

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From the Slightly Overzealous Salespeople Department: I also was browsing for bedsheets in Bed Bath and Beyond yesterday. I didn’t think I was doing anything all that unusual, but... I like to throw all the options in the cart and then when I’ve looked over all the displays, look at what I have and see which ones I actually want to buy. I was doing that, and while I did so, a saleperson – a youngish guy – kept coming to see if I needed anything. Like, every three minutes. Which is not an inherently bad thing to do, although one usually doesn’t get that level of attention in a big-box store, and I don't generally like to be hovered over.

But then things took an odd turn, when he remarked, “Wow, that’s a lot of sheets.”

I had three sets of sheets in the cart. I wouldn’t have thought that was a noteworthy amount of linen. So I just shrugged, without making eye contact, and made some noncommittal remark.

“Why do you need so many sheets?”

I thought, “How am I supposed to answer that question?” I mean, why do people usually need bed sheets? You work at a housewares store and you have to ask this?

I briefly considered being a smart-ass. “I’m going to a Klan rally and I want to be the best-dressed girl there.”

Or, “I used all the old ones to wrap my late boyfriend’s body in before I threw it off the pier.”

“I’m a bed-wetter. Sometimes I piss on things in the daytime, too.”

I mean, really. Sometimes when people say silly things, it would serve them right if I did say something smart-ass. But I don’t, because I don’t want to deal with the fallout. And I didn’t want to be mean, I just wanted him to go away and let me consider the merits of Grand Percale versus Royal Sateen.

I was telling a pal about this and she said, “He wanted you to say, I need all new sheets because I just got divorced and my ex got all the bedding. And then he’d have hit on you.”

That made me laugh. I think women should try not to just assume that any guy who speaks to them has romantic intentions. But maybe that was it. Or maybe he was just competing for Salesperson of the Month or something.

But what I did was just say nothing and give him the raised-eyebrow look that usually brings boys to order in my dungeon. He went away. I settled on a nice set with 6oo thread-count, in sort of a muted plum color.