Cav's Place

Meant to write this yesterday, but simply couldn’t get myself to do it, so I had to end up with a third Sunday update during 2013, still very soon after the second, after all. And to think that it’s nothing but a personal post about what I did over a couple of days, and Friday in particular… This is certainly going nowhere, and it never has, but I guess I’ll keep struggling to write two posts per week here just like I keep struggling to write something in my story every day, despite the whole thing constantly drifting farther from what it should be.

Since the discount season started and I only have one pair of pants I can wear outside, which is well over a decade old and visibly in poor shape, I wanted to have a look at what was available, and perhaps also see about a good t-shirt that could be worn outside and a simple pair of shorts to wear around the house, since I’m doing rather poorly even by my standards when it comes to those as well.
The problem, of course, is that I remember having a lot of issues with pants before getting these and also being basically unable to wear the one pair I got at some point after that, so now that I know one type that really feels all right I want some that are just like these, not to try who knows how many others to see what else is available that may just feel comfortable, and I can’t find any even though I’ve been doing this for the past at least four or five such periods. Worse, while so far the issue was that what I did find of this type in any places that were reasonably priced seemed to be of pretty poor quality, this time around I didn’t find it at all, unless you count precisely three quite expensive pairs stuffed in a corner in one place, and those seemed to me to be of worse quality than what I could find for about a quarter of that amount in previous years.

I sort of started on Thursday, when I found myself waking up at 7:30 AM and went to two hypermarkets I can easily get to on foot, since I wanted to check some offers on some food items. Didn’t come back with much, but made plans about that for the next day and also spotted something that may do for the shorts, since I didn’t care too much about the quality when it came to those, and even a t-shirt that might just work, though I wasn’t keen on it. Absolutely nothing as far as the pants were concerned, but I wasn’t particularly surprised by that, as the plan was to more properly look for those the next day, though I was getting even more uncertain about that after failing to fall asleep again after getting back.
Still, a plan was a plan, so on Friday I woke up at 8 AM and was out the door at 9:15, set to wander around for a good part of the day on a total of about four hours of sleep between that morning and the previous one. For that purpose, I bought an one-day metro card and ended up using it eight times by the end of the day, so the cost per trip was half of what it’d have been if I’d have used eight trips off a ten-trip card. Thanks to that, I could check out pretty much every place I knew of and, by the time I came back for something of a “pit stop”, I at least knew that finding a suitable t-shirt shouldn’t be much of a problem, if pants were still out of the question. In addition, that “pit stop” was actually due to finally finding an offer for a certain type of ice cream that Andra kept getting and which I had been looking for offers for since the start of summer, so I couldn’t miss the opportunity and then obviously had to bring it back here quickly.
When I went back out, I wasn’t sure where I was going. I mean, there was one place with the two stores from where I was going to pick a t-shirt and the hypermarket I had to pick up the stuff that was on offer from, after noticing it the day before, and if I was going to go to both places I obviously had to get the t-shirt first, but I really didn’t feel like wandering around anymore and the decision to do so after all came at the very last moment, when I got to the place where I had to turn right to get to the metro and the clothing shops or left to get to the hypermarket, and I ended up turning right after all.
The actual shopping was about as stressful as I thought it’ll be, and my odd behavior quite clearly got the attention of at least one security guard, who made a point of watching me and probably played some part in my decision to eventually buy from the other shop. Not that I wasn’t watched there as well, but those were regular employees, not guards, and at least they didn’t make a point of walking up to me and staring. Was still shaking by the end of it, especially after I tried to fold one t-shirt I had tried on and an employee quickly told me to let her do it, and as a result I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible and hardly even looked at the one I ended up picking, only noticing afterwards that it was a little dirty in one spot. Don’t think it’s a stain though, but I guess I’ll find that out now after it was washed, just like I’ll find out just how badly the color comes out and exactly how it fits. At 40 RON (about €9 or $12), it was the most expensive one I had considered, so I’ll be feeling even worse if there’s anything wrong with it.
Then I made my way to the hypermarket, had the t-shirt sealed before entering though I believe the guard wanted to just wave me through, as it obviously wasn’t something they’d sell, and quickly grabbed what I wanted. Felt even more awkward when the cashier took note of the large quantity of cereal I was buying and took her time reading the back of one of the bags, but thankfully she didn’t actually ask anything about it, so I got out of there and for the first, and probably last, time used the free transportation they provide to get back. Unlike what the hypermarket I usually go to offers, this seems quite poorly planned and the only reason I could use it was that three older women also wanted to get on, one of them also getting off at the metro station here, from where I could easily walk back without keeping perishable food in the afternoon heat for too long, so I just used the opportunities they provided without needing to talk to the driver myself.

As for the pants, I guess I’ll have to hope I can make these last another six months and then try again. I doubt there’s much hope of finding any just like them, so I may need to give in and switch to jeans, but I have real issues with the texture of those and the ones that feel all right are outrageously expensive by my standards. This was actually the first time I seriously checked out jeans while looking for pants, realizing I’ll probably need to make this switch, and noticed that I could pretty much tell the price by how they felt, finding that each and every pair I thought might just be all right, in a few different shops, was in the 150 RON (about €34 or $45) range, and that was the discounted price! Granted, if I’ll end up using them for 15 or so years as well, it may seem somewhat less outrageous, but I hope I’ll end up using anything I get for that long anyway and the amount itself is well above anything I’d find in any way reasonable to spend on clothing, with the exception of winter jackets or boots.

But I think I babbled long enough and I’m not even sure I’ll understand everything I just wrote here, so I’ll just say again that I absolutely hate shopping for clothes, or getting or picking clothes in any way, and leave it at that for now, without going through all the other issues staring you right in the face after something like this as well. At least I got all that food at discounted prices and also finally found some of that ice cream at somewhat less than its regular price, so something good came out of these days, but not much of it had anything to do with the actual reason why I did it all… In fact, since I decided not to bother with the shorts after all, if the t-shirt won’t turn out to have been a particularly inspired choice either, it’ll mean that none of it had anything to do with that.

Later edit: Was sort of thinking to make a separate post about this, but doubt I will, so will just add here that when I left Friday morning I saw two people walking through the vegetation behind the building here and, after they had been digging and obviously clearing everything in another part of that area recently, that worried me… And it worried me for good reason, as by the time I was back with the ice cream, everything had been cleared with great efficiency. And I do mean just about everything; little trees, small plants, bushes, the lower portions of those that had grown along the walls and onto the roof of that building there, so everything that’s on the roof is now dying as well… Dad said four people struggled with it for hours while I was gone, and I still don’t know why the fuck do they keep doing this. In the middle of summer, instead of the fresh air and what little cooling effects those plants, even if they’re mostly just weeds, can bring, they just want piles of dried leaves and branches strewn all over the place! If only they’d happen to catch fire due to the heat someday, teach them a lesson…