January Shopping

Some days I could just scream when shopping in this town. I wish I had a buck for every time a merchant told me, "We don't have any of those, but we could have some in in a week...." I remember one April 15th in the late 1980's that I scoured the whole town looking for a manila envelope to mail in our income taxes. There was not a manila envelope to be found in the entire town. Finally, the manager of Buttreys gave me one he had in his office. This nice man didn't even charge me. Another time, in February or March I could not find pencils anywhere. I am not talking shopping for a Rolls Royce here. I could not find pencils, for Pete's sake.

Then, there was the time I escorted Grandma L. all over town trying to find a battery for her watch. After several unsuccessful inquiries, a lady at K-Mart kindly explained that the battery needed was a very common one needed for a lot of things and was in high demand that time of year (Thanksgiving), and they always run out. Yeah, I thought, and knowing that, we wouldn't make our order a little larger would we?



Shopping in January is even more impossible than the rest of the year. First, a lot of the stores were closed for inventory, so I can't shop at all. Then, it seems stores must want to whittle that inventory down because products are sold out. My dog's feet bleed when we hike in the snow, so I was looking for pet boots. I just learned that such an item exists, and I felt like a complete idiot asking the clerk if the store carried such a thing. I mean what's next, ski equipment for my mutt? Both pet stores told me they were all sold out of the size my dog would need. "We had sixty pairs of those back in December," one clerk told me. Thanks for sharing. That tidbit of information does me so much good now. Another store, same story. "We get sold out of those quickly when it snows." I guess ordering more is a presposterous idea. After all, people would just come in an buy them again.



After searching for the dog boots, I beat the brush for a certain type of insole for shoes. The sporting goods store recommended them to me and sold me this item in June. In January they only had this item in children's sizes. " We won't be getting in any more in until spring." From this information the only logical conclusion is that adults in my town run around barefoot all winter, but in the spring they don shoes with the special insoles. Well, if if the citizens of my town get cold feet maybe they can borrow the snow boots they bought for their dogs for Christmas.