There are a lot of places on my favorites list. The
mountains of Tennessee, when the fog drifts through the trees at dawn (yes,
I’ve been up at dawn before). The mountains of Colorado, where the wildflowers
blow gently in lakeside meadows, high above civilization. My own sofa, with a
good book, a cuppa joe and my hubby. The craft room with my kiddos. The Snooty
Pig with my friends. Hobby Lobby…
One place ranks so far down on my list that…wait, no, not
even on the list. One place I tolerate and happen to have to visit occasionally
is the behemoth Galleria mall. I don’t love it. I barely like it. The Galleria
and I wouldn’t even be friends on Facebook.
I mention this because I was at the place today. The traffic
was not even part of the headache for once. I guess enough people had
Presidents Day (or Presidents’ Day, depending on how you roll grammatically)
off and didn’t want to be at the mall.
One reason I dislike The Galleria is because the majority of
the people there are snots. Also, they jack up the price on everything just…because.
The reason I disliked it today was that it broke up my Downton Abbey screening. I watched last week’s two-hour episode
this morning but I have to watch last night’s season finale tonight-before any
more spoilers ruin it for me online.
So there we were, my middle and youngest children and
myself. I gave the oldest child a buy because our main objective was the AG
store and she does not dig dolls.
We made our getaway from American Girl with newly-pierced
doll ears as the only damage. Well done us! They girls did not have enough
money for the new “Doll-of-the-Year” Saige, that was for certain. I offered the
suggestion that they pool their money and buy Saige. Then they could share her.
**This is the part where you snicker behind your hand at the
idiocy of my suggestion**
They actually discussed this. Then quickly, the reality of
“sharing” hit them and they declined.
“I’ll just save my money for Saige,” the middle child said
in a very dejected manner.
“I’m going to get my doll’s ears pierced and THEN save for
Saige,” said the youngest, triumphantly. She had more money.
We got out of there, as previously stated, and headed into
the mall. The first store was The Pottery Barn where I inched them through with
bated breath. “Pleeeeeease don’t break anything!” As we walked through the
doors, it was like the “may I help you” riff in Wayne’s World. Magically, four women appeared from far corners of
the store simultaneously.
“Have you been helped?” a nervous woman in beige asked.
“We are fine, thank you,” I said and smiled.
They didn’t look like they believed me. They looked like
they thought we were ready to kick into high gear at any moment. Maybe they
shouldn’t have constructed elaborate towers of apothecary jars and blown-glass
terrariums within inches of the walkways.
By the way, we broke nothing.
You’re welcome.
We moved through the mall, stopping here and there,
bypassing the coffee mecca-yes, I said we bypassed it! We walked around the
center court and their eyes got huge.
“They have a skating rink?”
“Yes.”
“Can we go ice skating?”
“No.”
“Awwwww…..”
Onward we pushed, to the other end of the mall. We passed
one store and the youngest read, “Steve Madden Shoes. Why are all his shoes
here?”
The middle child said, “Mommy, you could totally rock those
heels!” Ha ha ha ha ha! But flattering, all the same.
As we walked by one store, the middle child turned to look
up and almost shrieked,
“Does that say LUSH?!?!”
It did, in fact, say LUSH.
“What is LUSH?” I asked in my ignorance.
“It is the most awesome store that sells all kinds of
homemade and organic cosmetics and bath stuff and they have these shampoo bars
that you rub between your hands and lather and then rub it into your hair and
they don’t use bad chemicals or do bad things to the environment and they have
the coolest stuff and I saw reviews online for all their stuff and I want to go
in can we please go in please?”
“Ohhhhh, you mean that
LUSH,” I said. “I guess.”
We went in. And were assaulted. Not by people, by scents.
Lots of patchouli-esque and lavender-y scents. The walls were lined with
shelves, bins and baskets full of handmade body products. It was like Bath
& Body Works on hiatus at a commune.
The visuals were beautiful, I won’t lie. There were bright
colors and natural elements. Fruit and herbs and grains were abundant. I felt
like I was in a familiar place and everyone was smiling. They clearly weren’t
looking at the prices-well, at least the other customers weren’t. That’s
probably why the salesfolks were grinning though.
The middle child strode into the shop with authority, found
a cute 21-ish saleslady and began grilling her on the differences between bath
fizzies and bath balls. The lady looked at her with rapt attention because
she’s nine.
“I have heard that the bath fizzies are really good and
smell nice and make your skin soft but why are they different from these bath
balls over here?”
“Well,” the lady said. “Those are for bubble bath and those
fizzies are just a little bubbly. They have baking soda and lemon in them.
Would you like to see a demonstration?”
Oh, boy.
Yes, they wanted to see a demonstration. Of a lot of things.
Her fault for opening that door. I wanted to tell her, "Hello! These people have no money-they couldn't even buy an American Girl doll or lunch!"
30 minutes, seven bath fizzies and several
free samples later we were back on our way.
We decided to leave through Saks Fifth Avenue because I must
be masochistic or something. The middle child looked around in awe.
“I love this whole place! Can we come back here this
summer?” I think she meant for vacation. Sigh…
I needed a few things from the Kiehl’s counter and grabbed
them quickly. I walked up to a very high-tone lady at the perfume counter and
asked if I needed to take them to another cosmetics counter to check out or if
she could do it. I got the full once-over, Pretty
Woman style.
“You want to buy
those? Right now?”
“Yes.”
Do you also want any fragrances?”
“No.”
“Just a moment. CAROL!”
Carol came over and relieved this poor woman of her burden
of having to wait on suburb people. You’d think we were strumming Deliverance music on a banjo. We were
dressed simply, the girls holding AG dolls and I even had a Coach bag. Wow. I had to hold back from
saying, “You just made a big mistake. Huge!”
So we thanked Carol, got in our domestic SUV and trucked on
back to suburbia. I plan to recover in one of my favorite places-my sofa, with
a decaf cuppa joe, my hubby and the season finale of Downton Abbey. Ahhh, perfection!
No comments:
Post a Comment