Thanksgiving Goddess Style

Ok, it’s T-Day and I swore that I would not get on the computer. This didn’t last at all. In fact, I was seconds from dialing my publicist to tell her about a new show idea I had (she would’ve looooooved that call), my girlfriend whose husband is obsessed with infomercials (I found this new blanket that you wear like a robe), my assistant (have you come up with those new tea recipes for Sunday’s show yet?) And then there were the calls I actually placed (to my ex-husband, had to talk about the Indian crisis, the weather and just life in general, had our son grown out of his latest pair of dress shoes), not to mention everyone I was already with today and the multiple convos I had with them.

Instead of making the other calls, I want to tell you about my Tuesday. I’m in Palm Desert with my entire family to rest. This has not happened. I have been working on a new project so I’m all over it constantly. I am completely obsessed. More on that in another blog or ezine. So Tuesday I go with my Mom to Saks because they are offering triple points. For those of you who aren’t in this loop, Saks Fifth Avenue offers triple points (rarely) when you use the Saks charge card to buy something. Instead of getting one point for a dollar, you get three points. This is enough to send my mother into an anaphalactic shock (sp?). In fact, she scoped Saks out on Monday, in anticipation of triple points on Tuesday (that’s when I would be arriving after all; she was doing it for me. Ah, yeah.)

So we go to Saks (I am in between conference calls, texts, emails, you can’t even imagine because I’m very ADD right now and I am trying to actually make some MONEY in a recession) and proceed to scope out the store. Shocker, the whole place is decorated like Christmas and the music is playing, etc. But we’re in a recession, right, so how bad can it be? Bad. There are no dressing rooms available. Really? Like there are no places to try on the clothes that I’d like to buy from you in a recession? Correct. I try things on in the aisles. My mother is making a rabid search through handbags at a feverish speed. Mid-conference call #12, she motions that she’s going to run upstairs (to the big ticket items). Fine, no problem, I motion back. Meanwhile, she just can’t stand it anymore, goes back downstairs and starts looking at shoes. This is the most ridiculous thing she could possibly do. She does not really walk very far and her shoes are all very high. This causes her to have to change them often, so let’s just say that she needs 2x the number of shoes as the average person. Whatever. She has 2000 times the number of shoes as the average person.

Still on the conference call, I hear a shriek. And I mean a shriek (sp?). Not like a shriek of terror but more of a squeal combined with a sharp intake of noxious air. My mother has spotted a pair of Jimmy Choos that she has “been watching” (for two months). &quoto you have them in a seven?” she asks breathlessly? Maybe the clerk replies, but it’s been a busy day (I guess). (Remember, it’s a Tuesday in a recession – clearly prime time.) He returns with not only that pair but like 2 others that she’s “been watching.” Evidently, her shoe stalking has paid off because the shoes are “the most comfortable she has ever worn. They fit like a dream.” Right, don’t they all. This sounds like a bad one night stand.

So, after another tool around the store, she decides she can’t stand it anymore and she’s going to ask the clerk to call the Beverly Hills store to see if they have her size in another pair that the Palm Desert store didn’t have. He turns white. He said, you know, I would do anything for you, you are my customer, (this sounds like something a faux handbag salesman in Soho might say) but today I can’t. Today you can’t what? Use the phone? Push the buttons? No, today he can’t call the Beverly Hills Saks. He proceeds to go on to tell us that they have had to close the store three times today already (B.H.) and hired ARMED GUARDS because it got so out of control (triple points on a Tuesday). Due to the armed guards, the constant closures and the triple points, he cannot call over there because they have stopped answering the phone and will not do shoe transfers anyway today. The demand is just too great.

So in the midst of the great depression of the 21st century, Saks Fifth Avenue can no longer do shoe transfers, on a Tuesday, has shut down repeatedly, brought in the national guard and stopped answering the phone. I give up.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I sat down to blog. I have been tortured by a shoe-crazed quasi-geriatric. Tomorrow, it’s back to Pasadena. Say a prayer.

(BTW, I tried to go to the Saks site to add a link to this story and their logo. The site is evidently so busy that you CANNOT ACCESS IT AT THIS TIME. Un-flippin’believable.)