random thoughts – Day 1,383 – (Saturday) – interactions

There was a ride to Worcester today that featured 100% cloud cover and pockets of rain of varied intensities. The destination was the hair salon for my 16-week appointment. Since letting my hair run free and natural with whatever color it chooses to grow, appointments have gone from around every six weeks to 16 or more.

The highways and city streets featured the usual cast of drivers performing the usual antics. There was the weaving in and out of traffic, waiting until the last possible second to race across two or three lanes to take an exit, and changing lanes in the middle of an intersection, as if they are accidents looking for a place to happen.

After the salon appointment with the shampoo and amazing scalp massage from the stylist with magic hands who could probably get any foreign operatives to spill all their spy secrets, there was the tiniest of trims because my hair and I have been getting along great lately and I didn't want to screw that up.

After, there was a trip to Habitat ReStore, which, unfortunately, was closed for the weekend. Not far down the same street is Savers, which was filled with shoppers and no available carts. Signs throughout the store declared that orange tags were 50% off, and after browsing the equivalent of 15 miles of racks of sweaters, blouses, and long-sleeve knit shirts, I had not found one single orange tag. Nada. Zip. The same situation was true in housewares.

I wandered the store for an hour or so in search of soup bowls and looking at sweaters, and had a conversation with a lady who stopped to ask me about my hair which morphed into a chat about a sweater she was considering buying, and a quick chat with a guy who asked “Is it my imagination or do I see you in here all the time?” Spoiler – unless “all the time” is every 16 weeks, then it’s his imagination. 

The day's acquisitions.

The browsing rescued two merino wool sweaters and a cashmere turtleneck. The sweater infatuation, which began in high school, continues. The new facet of “collecting” them is probably reaching the level of a psychological sickness, but there are worse things I could regularly be spending small amounts of money on. And the merino and cashmere versions take up much less space in the drawer than the acrylics they replace. 

A cure to the sweater hoarding might be to stop looking at sweaters in thrift stores, or maybe stop going to thrift stores at all, but that would mean fewer reasons to leave the house, and I’m not looking to stop going to thrift stores. If I pay $5 for a sweater, wear it twice, and donate it somewhere, I’m okay with that. And there are days when the tiny random conversations with strangers in thrift stores are my only  contact with another living being.