Why do they do that?

There seems to be an influx of people walking past the shop, looking through the door and then standing in the doorway for what seems like a lifetime! Whether you're smoking, eating or just trying to get out of the rain, either come in - or get lost!

Life is, after all, a mystery.

I just got a text from my SO. He aced a phone interview and is now waiting for the next stage! Hurray!

Meanwhile, I sit alone in a boutique. I have sold one dress, which is good. There are a lot of new dresses in, one of which I've got an eye on. It's very cute, although also very small. Sadly, I seem to have gained a bit of weight over the summer with a delicate combination of no exercise and a lot of food. I enjoy eating out as well (costly in so many ways), which probably doesn't help. I do enjoy swimming, but I was doing back flips into the pool yesterday and I could feel my stomach muscles stretching and it actually hurt. It was either the muscles stretching, or I was ripping my belly button piercing. Either or.

Back to reality.

Sigh. It always pains me to come back to reality after going on holiday or even just having some time off. I've spent the last week on holiday with my significant other, whose family lives in the countryside. Now, whilst I'm not exactly a country bumpkin, I'm not a city gal either. I sway from side to side. But once I arrived, I seemed almost foreign to the fields, much of which was brought out by the fact that I don't and wouldn't own wellies or a rain mac. But this doesn't bother me. I don't mind being muddy. I don't mind being wet. It doesn't bother me if my hair is ruined, or if I need to wash my jeans after walking the dogs.
I had a great time. The place is so quiet and picturesque it's hard to feel stressed. Relaxing in front of a log fire can't be beaten. Driving around the countryside with my other half, singing to old songs and chatting about life was fab. Visiting the horse and driving 8 miles to get milk was fun. Loved it.

But now, I'm back. The shock was harsh this morning. Especially since I had to rely on public transport to get to work. Surprisingly, it turned up early and nobody got on, so it was a pretty quick journey. Now I'm working my way through a long list of tasks to do, which involves a lot of phone calls and stock invoicing. It's hard to explain, but a place can carry its own burden. As soon as I arrived back here, the stress that I feel here was firmly on my shoulders. Suddenly, everything seems real. Now I'm back to my usual stressed self, worrying about timetables and work shifts, freshers week and helping my significant other to get a job. It's all very grown-up and terrifying. I'm only nineteen. I have no experience with unemployment, rental contracts and being in debt. But I have to face it because he has to face it, so we're facing it together. Saving is out of the window until he finds a job, because right now I'm the breadwinner.

It's harder than it seems to get a job. I always thought it was quite easy. My mum has never had a problem. She applies, interviews well and lands the job. My dad took a bit more effort when we moved here, but within weeks, he had his job. My brother is lazy, and so doesn't count. I think he hopes jobs will land on his door and he'll have to rifle through for the easiest/highest paid. But my significant other is proving a bit more tricky. But we're working hard to get one, whatever it may be. Not exactly being fussy right now. He just needs money to pay his rent and to pay his parents back for paying his rent.

Life is most definately a beach.

T-shirt fetish.

I absolutely love t-shirts. I think it stems from a long ago time when I loved t-shirts...
My brother and I both shop mostly at Threadless, but I like to explore the other great unknowns out there and get them known back here in the UK. So, for my brothers birthday this year, I went exploring. I wanted a christian shirt that wasn't quite as overt as the usual, and I wanted it to be stylish enough that he would actually wear it. I thought I'd set myself quite a challenge, but that's when I stumbled across JesusBranded.

Upon browsing the site, I instantly knew that I liked it. It wasn't "in your face", it had really cool styles, and it was to my own taste. I was left choosing between a number of t-shirts that I knew my brother would like, and in the end settled for an amazing number which had Amen written in white ink across it. He loved it.

So yes - not just a pretty face and dress salesperson - I am also a t-shirt hoarder, urging and encouraging everybody to join me! Check out these sites - you won't regret it!

Aaaaah.

The only dress that I have sold today, was to a man.
Admittedly, it was for his daughter, but I think that sums up the excitement of my day.
I am now sitting seething with rage at my significant other for e-mailing people without checking his work for spelling and grammatical errors. Being an English major, I do this constantly. Not just to my work, to everybody elses when I am present. I cannot help it, so it really irks me when he doesn't do it. It just looks bad and unprofessional when it comes across and an I isn't capitalised, or you misplaced a letter.

Anyway, rant over. I've got a movie night with the girls tonight. I'm meeting some of my friends roommates, which should be good fun. Naturally, I am the supplier of the movies, since I spend around three quarters of my life either buying or watching movies. Sigh. I love film.

I really wish my hair was long enough to tumble gracefull down my back. I even with I could get my hair into a ponytail without having to resort to using a rubber band, as it is the only thing that holds my hair into place. With anything else, the hair just tumbles out. Not gracefully.

Sigh.

Burning man.

Ok, so the title should probably read "burning hand", but it's comical in reference to the festival. Anyway. I've just found a dress with a gigantic water stain on it. Most likely from when we had the flood, so not too shocking. Spent a while using the steamer to get the stain lifted, but I mostly just burnt my hand. Painful. And I don't think the stain budged. Stubborn thing. I'll have another go later.

Update on death stare..

This is an update on a previous post, one where I explained that I had to refuse a sale to a customer because the particular style of dress had already been sold to her particular function. Update: Women are bitches. I just found out that the women tracked down another supplier of the dress and has had one commissioned for her anyway, regardless of the other girl going to her function. And that was how *we* found out. The customer who bought the dress first bought it for her daughter, who was approached by the rejected customer and informed that the girl had bought the dress anyway. How bitchy is this situation? What makes it more horrendous is that a mother would actually condone this kind of behaviour - and pay for it, too. It's the one special night that you get with all your friends and you want a special dress. But you can't have it because a bitter girl has gone out of her way to make sure you don't have a special dress.

Bitch.

Friendship.

Friendship is a funny thing. Quite fickle, sometimes frail, but mainly just funny. My best friend and I have been "best friends" since school, when we came as a pair. There was no one or the other, merely both. It was quite a feat when you got one of us on our own. Great times. But, things change. By the time summer was over, we had meandered into a time where we hardly spoke, let alone actually met up. Now, you're probably thinking that we'd gone off to University and that it was totally understandable. What hurts the guilty part of my mind most is the fact that neither of us actually left our city. We didn't even move out. She went to college, I went to Uni. In the same city. We were minutes from each other, all day, every day. We never saw each other, never spoke, bar a quick text fired mainly to apologise or to pull out of a planned rendezvous.

I am notoriously bad at keeping in touch with people. It will normally result in silence for weeks or months, years depending on how distant we were in the first place. Then, out of the blue, something will spur me to text, email or write and find out just what's been happening in their life. This new-found relationship will last for a short while before heading right back into its pitiful previous state of affairs.

At school, our group was large. I'm talking twenty-plus people at one time. Once you narrow that down to the people that you actually gel with properly and have a relationship with, you're down to maybe ten or so. Then watch as six or seven of the ten head off to different cities for University, and you're left in a big city with barely any friends. I live ten minutes from my best friend - five if I drive - yet we never see each other. Same excuses, different time. I work, she works, she's hanging out with friends, I'm seeing my boyfriend, she's hanging out with hers.

It's a hard thing to admit that I can't even communicate with my "best friend" who lives five minutes away by car. I could blow smoke signals out of my bedroom window and she'd probably see, she's that close. It's so easy to let a friendship crumble, even one that was built with such good foundations. Resolution: fix friendship; learn smoke signals.