The associate and I decided that since our favorite babysitter has returned from college for a few weeks, we should start to take advantage of the opportunity immediately. We both needed/wanted to do some last minute Christmas shopping so why not get her on the horn and head out to the mall, yes, great plan.

I may die in the middle of writing this. I hope I at least fall over on the publish key so my last words will be heard by someone. Why? you ask, I’ll get to that later (unless I’m dead of course).

First off, both of us are trying to recover from nasty colds and failing miserably. I’ve coughed and sneezed so much that I’ve subluxated every bone in my body to the point that even my jaw is out of alignment. About 15 minutes into walking around the mall, the pain radiating from my jaw into my skull was enough to kill a horse. Simultaneously, my left foot started feeling like someone smacked it a few dozen times with a ball-peen hammer. Then the overwhelming heat kicked in. Why would anyone wear a turtleneck, wool sweater and down jacket to a mall I ask you?

Now I’m not one to bitch, moan or complain (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) so when I innocently said to the associate “God, what’s worse than pain in your head,” and she replied “only someone who can’t stop talking about the pain in their head,” I was shocked at her lack of compassion. Well, not really. She’s a heartless shrew so I should have expected something like that. Okay, I’m fibbing, I actually laughed. I just wanted to find a way to call her a heartless shrew in this paragraph to amuse myself.

We flew through three stories of mall and didn’t purchase a single thing. That is some seriously ugly junk they’re peddling this year. No wonder they’ve been trying to give it away at 40-75% off for months now. Yikes. We then decided to give it another try with less critical eyes, there had to be something we could spend our money on. Oh why not, I could manage another lap on my nearly hobbled leg and I still had some vision left in the one eye that wasn’t directly in line with my dislocated jaw, let’s go. We even split up to cover more territory with greater efficiency, yet our second pass yielded nothing once again.

I did however gain a few things while at the mall tonight. I see now that by keeping myself mostly in seclusion has also kept me out of the loop, I’m so behind on the current trends it’s sad. Take stacked wigs for example. I know, you’re all saying “oh Lisa, that’s so yesterday’s news, where have you been?” Evidently not at the mall because I would have known that the cool girls are wearing multiple wigs these days. My first spotting of a dirty blonde poker straight wig on top of a curly black one stopped me in my tracks. I was giddy with delight as I poked the associate and subtly motioned for her to check out the spectacle. I was hoping for an eye popping, holy cow, punch in the shoulder sort of response from her but what did I get, “oh, I’ve been seeing that a lot lately.” What? Are you effin kidding me? And you didn’t call, Skype or run home with this wonderfully entertaining news? Some things really make me question her commitment to this relationship, that’s all I can say.

We ended the evening at the Cheesecake Factory since it was conveniently located where our car was parked. We were dehydrated, starved and ready to eat. Their beer list was totally lame and we resigned to drinking Samuel Adams Lager, boo hiss I thought. But no, when you’re that thirsty it tastes like the best thing in the world. They brought out our food almost before we finished ordering it, now that’s some fast-ass service! Geez Louise I forgot that the portions at that place are something out of the Guinness Book of Records. Who are they feeding, the Titans, Paul Bunyan, Jabba the Hut? It was delicious, but there was enough food on my plate for at least three people. Anyone who could make it through their entire dinner and still have room for a piece of cheesecake is a gluttonous hog. Oh no, I’m getting surly and this is only my first real post since July. I guess I’ve been saving it up, was this why I quit to begin with? I don’t remember.

I’ll wrap this up quick and skip ahead to when we got home and why I may be dead by morning if not sooner. We open the door and are smacked in the face with a cloud of gas that I’d swear should have killed every living thing in the house. There was no babysitter immediately visible so I assumed I should be looking for a lifeless corpse somewhere. Luckily she was alive and sitting in the kitchen, next to the stove which gas was pouring out of full blast mind you. She never noticed, bad sense of smell she said.

Everyone is alive and well so far but the entire house is full of gas. It had to be on for hours, scary stuff, ugh, that’s a lot of loot, oh I mean thank God everyone is fine.

We’ve tried to air it out but it doesn’t want to leave. The only thing that’s happening is that we’re dumping all our heat outside and replacing it with some unbearable, frostbitten wind. I’ll need a hat when I go to bed, if I only had a couple wigs…