Saturday night in Atlanta and what do we do? We go on an international scavenger hunt for dishes. My inept ability to retain dish ware for more than a few months has been fraught with ravenous speed, the latest casualty a dinner plate which was innocently occupying space in the bottom of the sink. Poor dish never saw it coming. So, off to Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma and Macy's where we walked around the dishes section for approximately 20 minutes relegating some patterns to oblivion and giving other patterns an 'Eh' rating. Then it happened from across the crowded floor... I saw it. I promptly fell in utter lust with a set with birds on it - not hick-centric, Alabama-esque hunting birds but sparrows with a robin egg blue band around the dinner plate. Love at first site... I knew then and there that God had created these plates just for me and my personal use... then sticker shock when the sales woman told me, almost gleefully that it was $100 a place setting... Hell maybe for fine china but this was for every day, cereal eating, chinese food ordering, burgers and ribs off the grill foodstuffs. After hemming and hawing we walked out as the Macy's clerk hurried us out the door at closing time. Disgruntled we went to dinner to discuss our options and my needing to take it down a notch and realize this was a necessity purchase as opposed to an 'Ooh I HAVE to have it' purchase.
Step 2: Bargaining. As we set out early in the evening with a vision of 12 place settings, obviously to cover up my dish crashing habit, I started kicking the numbers back in order to prepare my wallet for a fiscal outlet. Now understand that having just lost my job (Grrr) and having just landed a new one which pays monthly, I have no money to speak of for leisure purchases. ' You know we could get away with 8 settings... that would cover breakfast and dinner when Lexxy is over...' Adam said nothing and continued to eat his burger while Lexxy listened on, influencing her purchasing habits forthwith. 'Then again, since it's most of the time just you and me we COULD only get 6 settings... and use our good stuff when we have company.' Now also understand company usually accompanies my husband's grilling expertise and results in a paper plate usage bonanza. Still, he said nothing and continued to finish his meal.
'You know my birthday is in 2 weeks... just saying...' Yeah nothing worked... So after Adam and Lexxy finished their burgers we went to Target where I dragged my feet as we headed to the kitchen section of the store in utter defeat, half hoping that everything they have was crap. Now I love Target. Normally I get a high off of Target, loving their anti-Walmart-ness, offering a bounty of products I actually use. Plus they sell dog food in HUGE bags and when you have a house with 6 dogs, bargain buys on Purena One are a plus. We learned the hard way that Beneful is a bad thing. Walking down the dishware isle there were solid colors, no... stripes, no... weird imprinted patterns, no. Then we saw it. It was a knockoff of the pattern I looooved at Macy's. There was one set left and it only was a set of 4 place settings. 5 minutes to spare until the doors closed we hurried to the customer service counter to see if they had others 'in the back', which mind you no one ever does. There is apparently no 'back' anywhere and everyone stocks what they have when they have it. If there is a 'back' anywhere I want to go there to take photos for proof. They offered us the option of looking for other stores with that pattern and there were a few which had two there and one there. So home we came to the graveyard that is my broken dish collection. Thank God we already ate... the rest of the unmarred dishes are dirty.
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