Screw It Just Buy It (Or, I Threw Up In A Furniture Store So Shut Up)

Horribly irresponsible post alert?

What if you tell some poor depressed soul she can’t buy something just a wee bit out of her budget and she goes and kills herself?

"Happy Ending Pic" - Rockstar scarfing free (and biggest) sesame seed cookie at Tequila Kola waiting for me to finish my purchase (the nice furniture showrooms have now started offering freebie cupcakes, cookies, coffee/ tea/ babycinnos to shoppers or at least their kids)

But seriously. I’m one of those obsessive compulsives who has almost always been able to name every big-ish item on her credit card bill before she looks at it each month. When I remember to log on and check my credit card statement <sheepish> (What? If you already knew what your credit card bill probably was, wouldn’t you be a bit like me? And yes this is how the credit card fraud people get me – by slipping in tiny amounts <doubly sheepish>)

So anyway. Being one of those obsessive compulsives means I don’t know what it’s like to be in credit card debt or to spend beyond my resources. You have to understand that before you follow me on my rant about Buying Myself Some Lurve And Dignity. Yes folks, isn’t life wonderful when you have a (small!) Frivolous Shopping Fund squirreled away and can act voyeuristically (for a Virgo!) by buying something otherwise out of my budget.

Not THIS Showroom: The "UK" Section... There's an "NY" and "Paris" section too...

I threw up while exiting a (nice) furniture showroom yesterday. There was absolutely no warning. One moment I was fine, the next I was coughing ineffectively and increasingly violently (draw attention to oneself, why don’t I, the more to watch my humiliation, the merrier.) I clean up as best I can, but in the heat and discomfort, I feel filthy. Not to mention humiliated. Wretched. Of the WHY, God, Would You Possibly See Fit To Make Cough And Cold Bugs In The World?

Rockstar’s about to meet me after school. I can’t let more people see me like this. How? I text our driver to bring Rockstar home and I’ll meet them there. I stand very close to the lift, willing it to hurry up. The lift won’t come. Immaculately dressed shoppers breeze in and out of the lobby while I stand close to the wall and frantically pound the button because I desperately. Need. To. Get. Away. I smell perfume. Perfume. I have just soiled myself and am standing here, dirty and sweating, while women with gel nails and ponytails tied with scarves in impossibly high heels, giant shades and perfume saunter by. I want to just die. Except then I’d be taking the baby with me. Can’t even make that bloody selfish decision, what has my life become? <tragic hand wringing>  And where the f— is the lift??? HOW many more people are going to see me like this before I’m home??

Who Knew Feathers Grew On Trees

Out on the street where there usually is a line of waiting taxis. Today – nothing. How can that be? All those times I walked by that line after being dropped by our car… There’s never not been taxis here. It’s blazing hot on the street. But if I go indoors more people will see me. 10, 11 years in the markets, sometimes with a bank’s record number of trades to stuff through in the final hour or even minutes of trading, I have never lost it the way pregnancy and motherhood has made me lose it.

A blonde mum and her son, probably about 8, come out and wait behind me. We recognize each other, we happened to be at the same cafe earlier. I inch away. Please Dear Lord, please don’t let me stink. Another supplication soon joins the first. Please, please don’t let her notice my clothes. She’s a mum. She’ll know immediately what happened to me. Another few agonizing minutes pass and a cab pulls up to drop several shoppers off. I scurry over, but then the driver impassively waves me away and puts an Out Of Service sign in the window.

I’m standing right under the blazing sun on the street now, but somehow I can’t bring myself to step back up onto the kerb with what little shade the building offers, and where blonde mum and matching blonde boy are now watching me. She looks sympathetic. Boy has mildly disinterested stare not unlike something Rockstar’s been known to give. Please don’t let him pipe up, “Mum, what are those marks on that lady’s clothes?” Because Rockstar might. Now I know how awful that can make someone feel. Note to self: distract the Rockstar next time he looks like he’s going to do another “What’s that smell?” in the lift or what not. 

Please, please don’t look at me. I hazard a peek. Blonde Mum’s expression is too sympathetic. She knows. SHE KNOWS. Finally another cab. I hope never to see Blonde Mum again. May her husband get that plump job back in whatever exotic European country they’re from, the language of which they’re speaking. For all that empathy I hope it pays super well. Just don’t let me see her again ever.

As luck would have it, at a traffic light the cab pulls up behind our car on the way home – yes, the one with our driver, Rockstar and helper inside, on the way back from school. Of all the absolute crap to happen today… We’ve still got the bedroom-trespassing, money-borrowing, busybody-ing old driver – because I’m so bloody pregnant, it’s so bloody hot and Rockstar’s in his final term in school. Annoying Driver still doesn’t shut the hell up unless you scowl real hard. Here’s an e.g. of the worst of the very “pat” (busybody) local elderly. “Bought things again today?” “Wow, you spend a lot on Lego for Rockstar!” “Whoa your belly is big!” “When are you due?” “You don’t know when you’re due meh?”

I cannot have lip from this idiot today about what has happened to my clothes. Because I will kill him. My child will be scarred for life watching his mother bludgeon this idiot gossipy old local. When Rockstar visits me in jail he will meet the wrong kinds of friends and grow up to be a white collar crime boy.

The cabbie is kind. He willingly takes another route that lands me in the carpark lift. I apologize profusely for the detour and the HKD 500 bill I hand him (even Kings apologizes briefly for HKD 500s – and if you have a HKD 1,000 bill the cabbie has to make change for, good luck to you). “It’s really alright.” The 3 kindest words I’ve heard recently. I get out without being able to help a surreptitious glance at his seats (I probably wasn’t really filthy enough to soil them but I couldn’t help but check).

Tick Tock Tick Tock...

Then I tear into the apartment, brush past the bewildered dog, strip off my filthy clothes. My lip curls with revulsion – not so much because of my clothes – what I wish is to be able to tear off the discomfort and indignity of this particular pregnancy as easily. No matter how often I bathe (and my skin is really gonna start drying out from it) there always seems to be sweat or discomfort to wash away. If I had lighter fluid I would dump everything I was wearing into the bathtub and have a bonfire.

I greet Rockstar smiling, and in fresh clothes.

Rockstar Inspecting "Treasure Chest" - I might move his clothes in here and put the baby's clothes in his Indigo chest instead (why is it the kids have arguably all the nicest furniture in our home when in general they don't care?? Because we do!), mainly because the chest of drawers with his stuff in it is not brand new with possibly lotsa dust or factory chemicals to irritate a new baby's skin...

I’m buying myself whatever the bloody hell I want for furniture. Sale or no. For me, drastic measure indeed. I got the exact piece of furniture I wanted, not even compromising for HKD 2,000 in savings to take one that was a little scratched and a different finish – I paid the HKD 19,100 in cash for HKD 2,000 off (the budget piece I originally was eyeing was almost HKD 17,000 which I initially already considered pricey; the non-budget was HKD 21,000).

Yes, praying and something a little more wholesome than dropping cash has also helped before. In this case I had another prayer – thank you Lord, for having blessed me in the past with the job that allows me, very occasionally, to do this.