Humor: Shopping at large chain DIY stores – Part 1

March 8, 2011 By

SHOPPING

I now have shopping down to a fine art, indeed I think it IS an art. I approach the supermarket with military precision, normally spending days writing my list only to leave it on the kitchen table. Anyway, I have to inspect every aisle and am often to be seen racing up and down like the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, muttering to myself, checking my watch, and speed reading the backs of cans. I buy all the shop’s name tins and am a magnet for BOGOF’s and three for one offers. Consequently, most of the time, my house is stocked well enough to stand a nuclear winter.

The only places I refuse to shop are the big DIY stores.

It’s the assistants, you see.

I’m convinced now that they are trained to lie awake at nights just thinking up devious ways to irritate customers the following day. They cannot BE that vague, hopeless or stupid. They turn me into Freddy Kruger. I always come away from a DIY store, a total psychotic wreck.

First on my list is the dotty pensioner thrilled to be walking you all round the store to find your sprocket, despite the fact that he doesn’t have the faintest idea what it is or where you might find it if he did, but he’s happy to just have a job again and someone to chat to, thus shortening his aimless day.

Or there’s the spotty oik, a real Kevin, who’s uncle’ got him the job to get him out from under the feet on a Saturday. This chap has all the charm and incandescence of a house brick: added to that, he’s hormonal, twitchy, plays pocket billiards constantly, and one is never sure which eye he is looking at you with..or even if he’s looking at you at all.

Finally, there’s Sharon and Tracie, neither of whom actually want to be there. Both are far too windswept and interesting to be wasting their lives in this manner. Sharon wants to be a model (fat chance) and Tracie’s just biding her time until she’s discovered’ down the Karaoke “cuz she was born to be a DIVA.”

They both think customers are intruding on their private lives and believe anyone over 20 is ancient and should get a life. Consequently, when enquiring of either of them, where one might locate a sprocket to open large nuts, one shouldn’t be surprised if they both double over, clap their brightly painted fingernails over their, if possible, more brightly painted lipstick, squeal like piglets, and can’t quite find the right words to explain their private little joke: which, as it happens, is You.

It’s not wise to ask for French polishing sticks either. They think they are something you buy from Anne Summers that take batteries and buzz.

So, whilst I can manage Asda, sadly there are some things they don’t sell that will just never end up being bought elsewhere.

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Humor: Shopping at large chain DIY stores – Part 2

March 7, 2011 By

We have all been there….it’s mid-afternoon, on Saturday, and the snow if falling faster than goose down from your grandmother’s favorite feather bed! You’re surfing the television channels, and low and behold what do you find; Martha Stewart and Christopher Lowell back to back! How lucky can one woman get! You hurry to the kitchen, pour yourself a huge steaming cup of your favorite flavored coffee and standing on tip-toe pull out the box of Andre mints stashed since Christmas! Your cover the distance from the kitchen to your favorite chair in zero to sixty seconds! You are set! Pencil and paper poised, you give your full attention to these DIY home improvement gurus!

Again, it’s Saturday, late afternoon! This time you find yourself standing in the paint and wall paper isle of your favorite Lowell’s chain store. The note book full of your diy home makeover notes is clutch like a badge of courage in your arms! Pages are dog-eared and stained from various food products! But you are determined. The quote “You Can Do It!” reverberates in your ears! You’ve been here before and cringed as the waves of paint chips and wall paper books washed over you! This time, you will not be defeated! You are armed! You have notes! This time, you will face the paint chip and wall paper demons and walk out of this store victorious!

Your self-confidence is at an all time high. You sail through the wall paper selection without nary a hitch…or so you think…until it come to that faux finish you want for that one wall! Your notes are jumbled! The palms of your hands begin to feel damp! Your feel claustrophobic! Suddenly everything that seemed so clear become a swirling wave of color and confusion! Quickly you propel yourself and your shopping cart out of this isle! Once you have removed yourself you begin to gain self control! As if pushed by some unseen force, you and your shopping cart are speeding along looking for a friendly faced customer service person. Ah, there is one! Taking the corner on two wheels you and your cart head in the direction of this orange vest clad human form! You collect yourself, finding the page in your notebook that sorta gives directions on faux finishes, you approach. “May I have some assistance in the paint and wall paper isle’” you ask. As this human life form climbs down from the ladder, on which he was hanging, you quickly see he can not be more than sixteen years old! Just your luck! His father is probably the store

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Humor: DIY that went wrong

March 5, 2011 By

My whole life is DIY. We live on a property in the Aussie Bush. We built our house out of trees that my husband cut up at our DIY timber mill. We pump our own water and run mostly on solar power. But every step of the way, there has been at least one ‘DIY that went wrong’ incident. Take water for instance. We have a pump by a creek to provide the majority of our water needs. We pump to a tank up the hill above the house and then gravity feed back to the kitchen, bathrooms, laundry and garden. We have a rainwater tank for drinking. Everything else depends on that pump.

I got home last night from work (yes, I work – we are a long way from self sufficiency!), to find that we were out of water. Hubby (aka Fatherfigure) went down in the dark and, with some difficulties (pump needed oil), he got it running. Went to bed without a shower, but thought “all will be well in the morning”. Instead I woke up to the beginning of another day of DIY gone wrong.

As I walked out of the bedroom, there was Fatherfigure at the front door, a sour look on his face, announcing we were out of water again and he was sick of the whole thing and just to make things worse, we were out of petrol too. He stomped back outside. so I went downstairs, had a bit of brekky and then went out to help. He had siphoned petrol out of our most reliable farm vehicle, a World War II vintage American Blitz army truck. I offered to take the gas can down the hill and pump. I asked if I needed to take oil too but he said he had filled it the night before.

I slid down the hill because the DIY steps washed away in the winter rains, filled the pump, and then pulled the cord… and pulled, and pulled and kept pulling, till I was exhausted, but it wouldn’t start. I climbed back up the hill and told Fatherfigure. He sighed and said he thought there was something wrong with a doohickey on the thingamabob and we would have to change pumps (we have three… because one is always breaking).

So that meant finding tools and a bucket and going back down the hill with the ‘new’ pump. It took quite a greasy while to get the old one unhooked and get the other one on. While Fatherfigure tightened all the nuts and screwed in the fittings, I took the bucket, made my way through the last six month’s undergrowth (note to self: bring clippy-shears down here and clear up this mess!), managed to reach clean water without going up to my ankles in the mud.

I slopped the bucket back up to the pump and poured in the water. It filled

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Humor: Shopping at large chain DIY stores – Part 6

March 1, 2011 By

There’s something about craft stores that make me want to vomit. I, like everyone else in the world consider myself to be the next huge something. I feel I posses super human artistic powers that need to be unleashed for world domination. Where, oh where, I ask myself, do I take this artistic fury that needs an outlet? My local Michael’s. That’s where.

It was where I went the day before Mother’s Day, when I swore I was a scrap bookie? Scrapper? Scrap person that makes books from paper. I knew I had it in me to punch out not one, but two Mother’s day masterpieces. My mother in law would love me finally, and my place as favorite daughter would forever be sealed in my mother’s eyes once I produced every mother’s dream: Pictures of her children in various stages of life, past through present. Ever single moment that made momma proud would be captured and cut out with stickers and fancy calligraphy. Sure it was my first time doing both, but I figured, I’ve got talent, I haven’t just survived on good looks alone.

Man, I couldn’t wait to see the look on the Maria (my mom) and B’s face (his mom) when they gazed upon my Van Pica Monhol. Pedicures and plants would pale in comparison to what I was about to produce. Sure it was Friday afternoon at the grind, and the only reason I had waited so long to buy presents was because I was waiting for inspiration, not to see what everyone else had bought for Maria and B. My intentions were not to outshine siblings on both sides of our family.

As soon as the call came in from my field agent (husband) regarding the mediocre but very thoughtful gifts everyone was buying the mommas, it was like five thousands flashbulbs went off in my head. Now that I think about it, they had a reddish tint, but at the time I interpreted it as passion. Passion for what I was about to create.

I took and extended lunch and my assistant to the nearest Michael’s. There we spent the next 2 hours sorting through albums and cut outs of babies, graduation hats, weddings, policemen, teachers, ballerinas, tattoos, gall bladder stones, military, vacations, all of life’s most memorable moments. Scissors with blades of glory in shapes of clovers, horse shoes and diamonds. Construction paper in colors with names like Fig, Ambrosia, Venetian Plaster and Holiday.

Finally pleased that I had purchased all two aisles of what I would need as a professional scrapper, Assistant and I loaded the car and headed back to work. But wait! I forgot

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