Signed, sealed, delivered ... it's mine
I have felt on several occasions of late that I am sojourning in a land of strangeness and crossed signals.
But lest you think I have become a permanent resident of the State of Confusion (which, I assure you, is not the case ... yet), I have sprinkled throughout this post several things which do not confuse me in the slightest.
Just so you know.
So let's get started.
About ten days ago I decided to hunt for a few cosmetic items online.
You're lucky that I do not tell you all about how strange my recent physical visits to the Chanel and Lancôme and Clinque counters were, at Dillard's at Columbiana Mall.
Suffice it to say, it ran from quaintly amusing to faintly bizarre. No need to say anything further, lest I bore you, my cherished readers.
So, needing to re-purchase a few products I have used in the past, but wanting to switch up my shade because I thought I could do better than the one I am already using, and earnestly desiring to complete the transaction without leaving my house, I began studying the color charts for one of the foundation formulas on Clinique's website.
As I said, I didn't necessarily want to get the same color I already had, and felt I could do better, as in a tad bit lighter.
(I am fair-skinned. Deal with it. I do not identify as a fair-skinned person; I was born this way. Which is to say, my stated skin color is the actual truth.)
The charts showed ladies of various ages and skin tones, and displayed pictures of how they looked both before and after a certain shade of makeup was applied to their face.
It was as helpful as online pictures can be, and I was doing all right until I saw this:
Say again?
OK excuse me? How exactly is this going to help me choose a makeup shade?
Look. I have no problem with this young man's appearance; that is not my point so settle down if you have concluded that I am making fun of him. I'm not.
My point is that, while I'm sure there are some boys who wear foundation and they're free to do that if they want, the overwhelming majority of people on the Clinique website to select a makeup shade are female.
I don't even have to see their internal site statistics to know that. It's just a fact.
And even if half the people searching for foundation were male, this picture of a freckled boy wearing face makeup (I assume; it's not as though you can tell) is not helping anyone choose a shade.
And it makes me wonder: What is being said or implied here? What's the takeaway?
If you are able to figure it out, please offer any explanation that comes to mind. I will wait.
Because I remain, as originally stated, well and truly confused.
Then there was the Amazon delivery, last Friday. I was lolling in the TV room with Erica and the boys while our men toiled outside, working on our still-under-construction deck, when the doorbell rang.
I went to the door and standing on my front porch was an Amazon delivery person.
Dagny with Elliot at church on Memorial Day Sunday
A small box had been placed at my door, as per usual, but he was waiting for something.
I get a fair number of Amazon deliveries and this was the first time the doorbell was rung and a delivery person poised at the threshold with an expectant look on their face.
I said, pleasantly enough I think, and half in jest:Is this something new? Y'all ring the doorbell when you make a delivery now?
And he said, You requested it.
? ? ? ? ?
I said, Um, no, I didn't. Why would I do that? And besides, I haven't got the slightest idea HOW to do that.
Because that's the truth: I don't.
He was holding his phone in his hand as most people do now, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three-hundred sixty-five days a year, so I had no reason to think it had anything to do with me.
I picked up my package (which, because I know you're curious, contained a 33-ounce Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Hand Soap Refill, Lemon Verbena Scent), and turned to go back inside.
So you're refusing to sign? he said.
? ? ? ? ?
I turned back around and asked him what he meant. I had not refused to sign; I had not been asked to sign.
Rhett at Elmwood Cemetery on Memorial Day morning
It requires your signature, he said.
I paused, thinking, Please someone make this make sense. But I said:What would you have done if I were not here to sign?
I would have called Support, he said.
? ? ? ? ?
Honestly folks, I was flummoxed. Again: I do not know how to request that a signature be exchanged for a delivery. Even if I did, I would not request that.
And I've never ever been asked to sign for anything before. Not even once, in all the years I have received Amazon deliveries.
What I have had is electronic notices that my item has been delivered, claiming that it was "handed directly to a resident" when it was not, in fact, delivered until the next day and shoved into my mailbox.
What I have had is notices that my item was late because "delivery was attempted" but could not be completed because there was some hindrance to delivery, as if they had been prevented from walking up the steps and putting the package down.
I have had my item delivered to neighbors, requiring me to go and hunt for it.
I have had my neighbors' items delivered to me, requiring me to re-deliver them.
All of that I have experienced more than once, at the hand of Amazon. But never have I been told that my signature was required and that I had requested this action.
Erica's birthday is May 30th ... we celebrate on Memorial Day
Be that as it may, fortunes had been made and squandered in the length of time that had transpired since I had opened my door to the Amazon delivery person, so I scribbled on the line displayed on his phone and finally he left me in peace with my soap.
If you can shed any light on that whole exchange, I would again be eternally grateful.
So I went to the kitchen and opened the box and got out my soap and refilled the dispenser on the sink, without spilling any, all the while pondering the situation, then rejoined Erica in the TV room where she was holding Elliot and watching Rhett play.
It was around that time that my friend Andrea from church contacted me via text.
My dear friend Andrea, through no fault of her own, has a certain disability that makes written communicationwith her challenging, her texts often being difficult to decode.
This one involved a question about whether I was "going to the wedding tomorrow?" which I suspected that Andrea's mother had ghost-written.
So I asked her what wedding she meant, since my only knowledge of an imminent wedding was not the next day (this past Saturday, June ninth), but the next Saturday, June fifteenth.
She replied: Chloe D, except she gave Chloe D's whole last name.
Chloe D is a young lady in our church who I know only slightly, and hers were the nuptials I knew to be looming. TG and I are not invited to the wedding.
But Erica knows Chloe D quite well, since Chloe goes to Cherica's house for several hours one day a week, to look after the boys while Erica runs errands and has some free time.
Birthday balloons always make sense
Since Erica was sitting right there with me when I heard from Andrea, I double-checked that Chloe D's wedding was taking place not the next day, but a week from the next day.
Erica confirmed that Chloe D's wedding was set for the fifteenth, so I texted that information to Andrea, who I figured had got her wires crossed. Or, like me, did not receive an actual invitation, but had only heard of the wedding through the church grapevine.
A wedding! I love weddings! (That's a line uttered by Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribean: Curse of the Black Pearl.)
So Andrea texted back OKand I figured that was settled. Crisis averted.
Several hours later though, after the Chericas had gone home, Audrey and Mike and Dagny came over and we were sitting around having coffee. All we do at my house is sit around.
I relayed to Audrey the story of Andrea texting, asking if I were going to Chloe's wedding tomorrow, and Erica assuring me that Chloe's wedding is next Saturday, and my texting Andrea to tell her as much.
I wanted to know if she and Mike had been invited to the wedding.
No, but Chloe IS getting married tomorrow, Audrey said.
She told me that she knew this for a fact because Miss Pat was involved in the wedding and therefore was attending the rehearsal and dinner that very night.
(Miss Pat is a lady whose house Audrey cleans every Friday. We have known Miss Pat since 2002, when we moved to Columbia. Her husband served as our realtor when we bought our current house.)
It was exceptionally sweet but we ate it with glee
Oh no! I said. I told Andrea that it was not tomorrow, but next Saturday!
I quicklytexted my friend Andrea, who, trust me, is much more easily confused than I.
I was mistaken, I said. Chloe's wedding IS tomorrow. I won't be there. Do you have an invitation?
A few moments later she responded: 15.
That's typical so I am pretty sure I had a puzzled look on my face, and not for the first time that day.
I called Erica, and had her on speaker phone but she had only said Hello? when Audrey, for whom the nickel had just dropped, blurted:
No it's Chloe G tomorrow (only, she said Chloe G's whole last name)! Chloe G is getting married in the morning!
A different Chloe.
Audrey iterated that the reason she knew this is that she had talked that very day to Miss Pat, who was set to be the stand-in for Chloe G's late grandmother at the wedding the next day, and therefore was attending the rehearsal that night.
I am sure that I looked positively brainless at that moment but I managed to sputter to Erica: Never mind! We had a mixup! Chloe G is tomorrow and Chloe D is next week as was originally and so beautifully planned (that's a line uttered by Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story), and now I have led Andrea astray and I have to fix it!
Erica with her boys on her birthday
I texted Andrea back once more and risked her eternal mentaldiscombobulation by telling her that there had been a mixup and that Chloe D's wedding was indeed a week from Saturday, and we'd been talking about another Chloe -- Chloe G -- who was getting married the next day.
(Chloe G is well known to all of us. She is the granddaughter of the late pastor of the church we attended when we first moved to Columbia in 2002. It's three miles from the church we all attend now. Her late grandmother is the one who Miss Pat, a friend of our entire family, was standing in for at the wedding the next day.)
(BTW I have never heard of having a stand-in for a late family member at a wedding. Have you? I've heard of a rose on a seat representing their absence and the fact that they're missed, but not an actual person. I'm perplexed. But what else is new?)
(And not for nothing but to confuse matters you further, my friend Andrea was once engaged to be married to the son of Miss Pat and her husband, our realtor, who also suffers a mild disability that is in no way his fault. The son, not the realtor.)
Andrea wrote back: 15.
I know that she will hand the phone to her mother when I write too many words, so I was not worried.
And Chloe G did get married last Saturday, and is now Mrs. Chloe W.
Chloe D is all set to get married this Saturday, and our Cherica will be there as she becomes Mrs. Chloe S.
A picture of Sweetness. Her, I understand.
Who's on first? You tell me because I haven't the remotest idea.
Everything I think and everything I do is wrong. That's a line uttered by Cher Horowitz inClueless.
But at least we have enough soap.
And that is all for now.
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Happy Monday
