...why you don't need to be "smart" to get a masters degree. You see, I put up a good front...I can carry on an intelligent conversation, usually look somewhat decent, and the ever-present book in my hand makes for a handy prop when I must look like someone who has it all together. My glasses are also the perfect accessory to the "intelligent" look, however I stubbornly refuse to wear them most of the time despite the fact that I often insist I can read things, when really? Not so much. I thought I was hiding that well until I gleefully (?) exclaimed to my husband a while back that we were nearing our intended destination and were now at 114th Street (or something like that) and he just looked at me like I had just announced that we had just arrived at the moon and said something along the lines of "Um...Beverly? Yeah, that was 87th Street" And I was like, "I know that! I was just kidding" and a few days later I was in the optometrists office learning that my sight did indeed suck. But, I digress.

So, underneath my "intelligent" and "pulled together" facade lies a clumsy, half blind fool as I have surely already given away with my stories of getting my hair caught in my nephew's weed wacker and finding myself trapped inside my duvet cover, to name just a few.

So, a few things happened yesterday while I was shopping with my mom. (Oh, yeah...and that time I forgot my own mother?? Not the most intelligent thing I have ever done) She has forgiven me (I think) and we spent the day shopping and had a nice lunch together. For Christmas, I received some gift cards for La Senza and had decided i was going to purchase some new bras. I recently read a post on another journal (I'm sorry, I don't remember which one but it wasn't a bravejournal one) where the author was talking about getting fitted for a bra. This is something I haven't done since... well, never... and after reading her tale of embarrassment and awkwardness I decided, YES this is exactly how I would like to spend my Friday morning...being humiliated in the bra store while the lady tells me that I have been wearing the wrong size bra for my entire bra wearing career. So, I went. I will spare us all the details but lets just say I was wrong...more wrong than I could possibly have imagined. And I now have some new bras in the right size and about 500 bras in the wrong sizes and it was almost as humiliating as I had imagined. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I am adverse to being felt up by random women (welcome back male readers who vanished immediately upon reading the word "bra"), it's just that the ambience in the store is just not ideal for an encounter that intimate. Dimmer lights or perhaps complete darkness would have helped.    

Then we went to Walmart...home of very rude salespeople (I never noticed this before...but oh my god, were they rude to us) and cheap household products. I needed basic necessities...razors, toothpaste, coffee, garbage bags, Max and Ruby videos and a new armband for my MP3 player...to replace the one that Maggie ate. With no thanks to the rude salespeople, I found everything I needed, except the armband which rude salesperson rudely explained that they don't have but I can check "over there" (points vaguely - also? rudely - to the other side of the electronics department) if I want to see for myself. While there, I bumped into exactly 4 people which of course had everything to do with the fact that they were in MY way and nothing to do with the fact that I was riding the shopping cart around, something I only seem to do at Walmart and something that despite my best efforts to restrain myself, I am compelled to do everytime I step into that store. I then drove said shopping cart directly into a display of crackers (what the hell are crackers doing in the middle of the frigging aisle anyway?) I picked up what I could quickly and then snuck away over to the household goods aisle where I proceeded to grab a box of garbage bags. Now, before I go on, let me point out that the kind folks at Glad really tried to help me out with this one. You see, they have these really neat things on the boxes of garbage bags. And these things? They are called labels. And these labels? They even have pictures (not just diagrams, but real pictures!) And the label on the box I chose? As I later discovered...it said "Roommate" I tried to fit the little tiny "roommate" bag in our large(ish) garbage can...and I sighed because this type of thing is nothing new for me. Look around Beverly...you've got a husband, a couple of dogs, possibly more than a couple of fruit flies leftover from the box of mandarin oranges that went bad over the holidays. But hmmm...do you see anywhere, a roommate? Um no, and this sure as hell isn't a dorm room with some ice cream pail posing as a garbage can over in the corner beside your ROOMMATE'S beer can pyramid. Household garbage does not fit in "roommate" sized Kitchen Catchers (TM) and apparently some people actually read these "labels" before they grab the biggest box they can find and head on over to the next aisle. And by some people, I clearly mean not me. Because I am stubborn and refuse to take them back, I have put an ice cream pail in the laundry room (next to the beer can pyramid) and if you come on over, I'll introduce you to our new roommate.