1,235 Hours Remain

Target has my number. Remember the One Spot, with its insidiously cute merchandise at deceptively low Dollar Tree prices? They just started stocking their Christmas stuff. Mini trees in classic green and pearlescent clear, battery-operated strings of white LED light, packages of 12 multi-colored mini ornaments, sets of 6 make-your-own glittery ornaments, sparkly pom-pom garlands... very cute and pretty harmless, right?
Wrong.
Remember how this last stock of Fall One Spot merchandise had a special section devoted entirely to my worst of addictions, not simply dishes, but sushi dishes? And remember my dismay at seeing new little signs up reading, "2 for $5"?
My darling mother offered to buy me a tree and the aforementioned trimmings, including a second make-your-own ornament pack and a $1 wrapping embellishment/ornament for a tree topper, thinking it would only cost a few bucks, no harm done.... Until we reached the checkout and realized that we had both failed to notice (or was it not yet posted?) that horrible dratted sign... "2 for $5" What should have cost $7 (plus tax) cost $16. I was horrified, having just reached the checkout from my last-minute frenzied (an shockingly unsuccessful) search for those heaven-sent Brach's Autumn Mix candy corn bags marked down like 90% from Octoberween as Mom painfully signed her check. No, make that more like mortified. I offered to go return it all, as I never would've picked it up if I had seen the real prices, but she refused. She wouldn't even let me pay her the $1.08 I had in coins! (What? I got nothin' against coinage...)
Further confounding me at the unexpectedly astounding extent of her forbearance, she left my very messy glitterballs out to finish drying (as I speak, two are still not completely dry) overnight on her kitchen counter. Her obsessive-compulsively clean, black kitchen counter! Nothing left on that counter overnight is ever there in the morning. Ever.
And so we have...
















The Tree.

Meanwhile, my fourteen-year-old brother Zach is going to his first skool dance Saturday night, and I still will be sitting at home with my mother. Eighteen stinkin' years of this nonsense is starting to get to me. I'm losin' my everloving mind. Is that knucklehead ever going to ask me out, or is he just content to admire my beax and leave me to my solitude, requiring no action or effort on his part? What am I, art?
But seriously, a girl can only take so much rejection and indifferent disregard before she starts to wonder... What, am I just not good enough?
I mean, guys have it easy: they can just go up to the girl they like and ask her out. Worst-case scenario she says no (well, actually, worst-case scenario she rends him limb from limb, but I haven't been working out quite hard enough for that option to be open to me yet...), whereas all I can do is wait at home for the phone to ring or my email program to ding, and pray that it's not just that silent prank-caller we keep getting or the library telling me one of the books I requested is now available for pick-up. Because I'm on my last book, and they don't have any more on knitting that I haven't read... And most of those sucked big time anyway.