The Socks and Underwear Question

I went shopping yesterday. My list was simple: socks, underwear (not to be confused with lingerie-we're talking here about the most utilitarian and cheap option for every day, wear-under-my-work-scrubs-and-remember-that-I-work-at-an-ANIMAL-stop-HOSPITAL-stop use), an inexpensive sports watch (to double as a timer for taking heart/resp rates), and simple-but-still-cute earrings. I trekked over to Target after work, hopping a bus filled with Lane Tech high school kids as the time coincided with the end of the school day.

By the way, the phones that high school students now carry simply amaze me. How did I ever manage, at the age of fifteen, to get from Point A to Point B without handheld games to play, text messaging, digital camera imaging, and Web access combined with an actual working PHONE that you could gab on incessantly at any time and for any reason? I mean, Christ, I just got a cell phone myself in '05 (age: 32!), and my only real criteria was that it be a flip phone so that I could pretend that it was a communicator from the original Star Trek TV series. All of the above just goes to prove that I am a) getting old, and b) a huge nerd.

Anyway.

I found 12 pairs of socks, 8 pair of underwear, and the sport watch. No go on cute earrings, so I consoled myself with a $7 wallet that matched the purse I was carrying. I got home, unwrapped, laundered, put away. It all gave me an enormous sense of security and satisfaction. The socks & underwear shortage that has been bouncing around my "to-do" list can now be checked off. I won't have to worry about getting new ones for a while. No matter what happens in the near future, I have plenty of socks and lots of (very basic) underwear. I looked around and made a quick mental list of some other life "staples" of which I have a surplus.

1. Toothpaste-3 tubes, Crest brand (sale + coupon = happy penny-pinching me)
2. Coffee, tea, and espresso (most of which is courtesy of my part-time gig, and if any of you loyal readers out there are lumping "espresso" with "coffee" then I highly recommend getting thee to a local snobby coffeehouse and having the proprietor explain to you the vastly important difference. I would do so myself, but I am a professional barista, after all, and I'm currently not on the clock).
3. Lubriderm lotion (which should be sold by the vat come winter-time as without a twice-daily slathering my poor skin peels off in chucks. Yes, it's as ugly as it sounds.)
4. Silk brand vanilla soy milk (sale + aseptic container = happy non-dairy drinking me)
5. Batteries (AA for the flashlight, D for the radio)
6. Light bulbs
7. Clicky pens (freebies from drug reps, theatre companies, the dry-cleaner. And yes, it must be a clicky pen)

So much abundance. So much preparedness. Not ready for everything, she is, but ready for so much. And now, socks matched, underwear folded, and all of it put neatly away, she can move on to the next "to-do" list item.

Tomorrow.

-C.