Oops, Sorry!

This is a bit embarrassing, particularly after I made reconnaissance trips to two different Walgreens stores to see what they stock that I use, and after I carefully kept a list of all the things I was going to buy with my 20 percent discount on the first Tuesday of the month. When I saw an older woman in Walgreens with a big pile of stuff, I smiled to myself: kindred spirits. Except that you have to be 62 to get the discount.

I bought my own big pile of stuff and was several blocks from the store when it occurred to me that the total was kind of high. I walked all the way back to point out that my receipt didn’t show any sign of a 20 percent discount and they pointed out that I’m not 62 and I pointed out that one of the people who works in that very store said all you need is an AARP card, but evidently that is not right. I guess maybe in the original conversation, my wonderful Walgreens employee friend—I still like her, even though I very nearly ran out of BioBags waiting for the first Tuesday to roll around—said something like, “I don’t want to assume anything, but do you have an AARP card?”, which to her meant I was 62, but to me just meant I had an AARP card. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have renewed my AARP membership. Sorry!

A couple of weeks ago, I met with one of the people who was a guest speaker in our chaplaincy class. He’s a really sweet fellow, and gave me some tips for my clinical pastoral education interviews. While I was downtown, I returned the jacket that was too large.

The next day, I had lunch with my friend Judy, and the day after that, I picked up my thrift store jacket from the cleaners and found that the stain was still there. Using a Sharpie on it was effective, but only for about four seconds. After that, the stain reasserted itself. The original stain was in an area where it might not have been noticed, but I also saw there was a second stain in a prominent location, so the problem of having to have a nice jacket by the following Monday remained unsolved.

I read online that ISIS is threatening Mark Zuckerberg due to Facebook’s efforts to eliminate ISIS-related accounts. Since he lives part-time 1.5 blocks from me, let’s hope ISIS uses weapons that can be aimed very precisely. He also has a home in Menlo Park—that’s the place where he bought up four neighboring properties—but since his wife is a doctor at San Francisco General Hospital, they probably spend a lot of time here. On the other hand, she might be on maternity leave right this minute, so who knows?

Another thing difficult to analyze is just how much money I’m saving via my new frugality practices: Taking the cab saves money, but getting a huge, ugly red-brown stain on the sleeve of my second-favorite blouse while on Muni means I’ll have to replace the blouse, which will cost about as much as three typical cab rides. It also turns out this blouse is no longer available, making the calculation even more complicated.

On Friday of that week, per Judy’s advice, I made an appointment with a personal stylist at Nordstrom and went down there. I’d indicated that I was willing to spend this amount and, if necessary, up to that amount. When I got there, a stylish young lady told me they didn’t really have anything in that range and for a moment, I feared I was about to spend $500 on a jacket, but it turned out they had items priced lower than my lower figure and higher than my higher figure. I didn’t try on any of the latter, and within minutes, we had selected a lovely jacket and that was that except for having to have its sleeves shortened.

I went on to Michael Bruno, near the Castro, to look at bags, since I don’t plan to carry a purse to work every day. There was a sign in the window saying something like, “Duct tape can’t fix stupid but it muffles the sound.”

On Saturday, I drove up to see Carol Joy in a City CarShare car. Yes, this was about $90 more than taking the bus, but I figured that riding the bus both ways would cause $155 worth of personal misery, so this was an obvious frugal move. We always have brunch at Toast, but there was going to be a 20-minute wait, so we tried a new place across the freeway, Bistro de Vine, where I had eggs with avocado, mushrooms and chicken apple sausage, home fries, and the best toast I’ve ever had. They either grill it or use a panini press, the server told me.

Then we went to see the light-hearted How to Be Single. We noticed children riding around the mall on large motorized animals. It turned out there was no age limit and that we were under the weight limit, so after the movie, we each paid $10 to ride a motorized animal around for 15 minutes. It was really fun and renewed my desire to get a motorcycle, but my father says I’m not allowed to.

We ended our day together with dinner at the Sonoma Latina Grill, which is owned by the same people who own the La Tortilla company, the Tamayos.