The Day of the Coupon

[crockpotcauldron]

The day of the $10 fabric store coupon has arrived - and nearly slipped past, but luckily I double checked the date on the coupon. After a brief goat-related errand, I was deposited at the fabric store. I slowly and casually browsed through the whole store. Looking at quilt fabric is nothing but frustrating when I'm away from my sewing supplies. I just have a little cigarette case of mending equipment with me, and the kiddo has managed to notch my little scissors. They weren't the good scissors, at least, just a plain pair of nail scissors, but I loathe sharpening blades.

The town is apparently so sketchy that stores don't offer public bathrooms, for fear of people shooting up in them. I have yet to find a public bathroom in the entire town, and it really does cut trips short. Apparently the public bathrooms that do exist are full of biohazard sharps containers, because they've had serious trouble with needles in the regular garbage cans. Yikes. There is also a loud alarm that goes off any time someone walks into the jewelry section of the craft store. Not very relaxing.

I browsed through the books and didn't find anything worthwhile. The dime cart and the quilt guild sales have spoiled me for craft books, though I'm still sad about missing this month's quilt guild library sale. I have an insatiable hunger for discount books. The clearance section was entertaining, though - an entire set of clear plastic high heels, slightly bigger than porcelain doll sized, for some obscure wedding decoration function. Why shoes? Is it Cinderella themed? The box had an illustration of some sort of chocolate stick perched in the shoe. Another picture featured the shoe itself rolled in sugar. I am baffled. If they sold em individually, I'd get a couple and make a Cinderella doll, but there were like twenty in the box.

I found another copy of that little bronze hobbit door pendant and picked it up, along with a leather string. I found a black and white fat quarter with wolves on it (okay, dogs, but they're cartoons), and then ran out of time, so I grabbed a Twix bar and a little chocolate ball to bump the subtotal over ten bucks. Forty seven cents later, I walked out of the store with my loot. I had just enough time to eye the burger shop next door lustfully, but then my ride arrived. This, and a trip to the P.O. box tomorrow, will have to keep me going over the next week. God, I hope the Bad Things go well next week. I can't buy tickets home until things resolve, but jesus fuck I want to go home.

Comments

[chickadee_sun]

Huzzah for coupon day!

I'm not picturing the size of these shoes very well--are they small enough to be a choking hazard?

I note the two opposite solutions to the problem of people shooting up in bathrooms. One is to punish or restrict behavior by just not having public bathrooms. Sure this method hurts people who aren't shooting up as well, but I guess it's worth it to get the addicts. The other is to supply biohazard sharps containers to reduce the harm of people who do shoot up in the bathroom. This way doesn't hurt the addicts, which I guess is a downside for some people, and also allows everyone else to pee.

It seems like one of these is an obviously better solution than the other. And for such a self-righteously hippie area, you'd think that one would be more popular.

[crockpotcauldron]

I mean, the real solution here is to provide non-bathroom safe places for them, and extremely easy access to medical care and support. But this place is basically split into "the good, safe, spiritually superior hippies" and "the bad, dangerous, unevolved people that should stay far away so they don't throw off the emperor's groove". It's pretty terrible. A lot of this hippie self-righteousness is about personal purity and piety, not about actual practical compassion. They only want to connect with the world in an abstract, soft-focus environmentalist way.

The shoes are definitely too big to swallow. They're slightly longer than a finger, and in terms of bulk I'd say about as big around as a banana. Imagine taking a third of a banana and carving it into a high heel shape.

[chickadee_sun]

Oh, definitely that's the real solution! But it's beyond the scope of someone in charge of a building with a public bathroom, so I'll praise people who do what they can.

Ugh! Environmentalism is good; the world is burning and we need the Green New Deal or something like it. But it needs to be focused on practical ways to help people, not ways for some individuals to feel superior. I'm cool with hippies who want to eat weird food and stuff as long as they're not elitist jerks about it.

[crockpotcauldron]

Unfortunately, this place is low in practicality, and high in elitism. I agree, there are much bigger fish to fry instead of wasting all this energy moralizing over food and soap and tissues. This place is so bad for my mental health.

[chickadee_sun]

Just two more weeks, right? Good luck.

[crockpotcauldron]

Hopefully about a week. I find out on the 18th whether I can buy my tickets home.