Sally Bjornsen Writes

The girls working at lululemon are bitches.   And I am not just saying that because lulu is the cutest girl in town, I’m saying it because it’s true.  Someday….just you wait, another brand will come along with a much better personalilty and lulu will have her comeuppance.

Last week I spied a super cute pair of shorts on a women in my yoga class.  So cute, that I made a special trip to University Village to pick up a pair.  Of course there were so many cute things at the lulu store that I walked away with a bag full of stuff, two reversible dresses, two pair of shorts and a pair pants.  To say it was a pretty penny is a huge understatement.  But they were having a promotion and I had to take advantage…right? 

Anyway, when I got home I realized that I had gone a tad overboard.  I live in Seattle and there isn’t enough sun to warrant more than two pair of shorts and one dress per summer season.  So with that reasoning I decided I would return one reversible dress and a pair of coulote shorts.  Unbeknownst to me, however, I had committed a major faux pas—I had pulled off the annoying white size tag from the reversible dress, you know the one, it looks like a tail. 

When I returned to the store with the item, and all of its tags the girl said “Sorry, you took off the tag.  We cannot return it.”  “But here’s the tag,” I begged.  “Sorry, once the tag is removed we can no longer return it.”    Now, for the record I have been in retail off and on in my life for about twenty years.  I cut my teeth when I was 16 on the sales floor at Nordstrom, so I know “the customer is always right.”  Also, I know that if a customer spends over $500 and returns only a 1/3 of her original purchase, with all of her receipts and tags, she’s probably not a criminal.  Well, this reasoning doesn’t follow at lulu.  The twenty-something snotty brat took a firm stance.  I was horrified at her inconsiderate, disrespectful behavior.  Not only am I twenty year’s older than she is but I am a mother, a wife and a career woman and that makes me a role model—right?   

I made a bit of a stink, gave her the hairy eyeball and told her she was poorly behaved.  Eventually the ill mannered girl came around to giving me a refund but not without major attitude. 

This is not the first time I have been treated badly at lululemon.  The company is Canadian, you’d think they’d be nicer—isn’t that the sterotype?  Bottom line…those lulu girls are bitches but when a cuter girl with a better personality moves into town, and she will, she always does,  lulu will be begging for my business and I’ll say, sorry I’m playing with Lucy.

I have recently and reluctantly re-taken up cycling, I guess you could call it recycling.   I say reluctantly not because I don’t enjoy cycling or its benefits—forty miles equals a monster sized burrito and a frothy Hefferweizen.  I say reluctantly because the clothes SUCK.  I am being kind when I say that no one, not even Mark, my handsome, 2% body fat husband looks good in the stuff.  

My re-entry into the sport began last spring when Mark talked me into upgrading my old, Raleigh ten speed to a fancy, schmancy, carbon fiber, eighteen speed something or other, with clip-in pedals.  He said the upgrade was for me but I really think the old red Raleigh along side his pimped-out racing bike embarrassed him.  My new bike, donned with all the components and the aero dynamic seat that is sure to give me hemorrhoids, is something he can stand by with pride.  My outfit?  Not so much.   Upon completing the expensive bike transaction with the tattooed sales specialist, Mark insisted we stop by the apparel section of the store to check out some cycling pants.  He obviously had a vision. 

“Wait a minute,” I said, pausing in my tracks for effect.   “Cycling pants?  Are you !@#$%^ nuts?  I told you I’d ride but I didn’t say I’d wear the pants. I would rather wear a pair of high waist, acid washed jeans than a pair of ugly, spandex, sausage legged shorts with a crotch chaffing, Kotex Maxi Pad chamois.  It’s not my look.”   

“Well then what are you going to wear?” he asked.  

“My yoga pants.”

“Your yoga pants, for cycling?”   

“Yeah, why not?  They look so much better.  You know the ones, the bell bottom lulu lemon pants with the hipster contrast border at the waist.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes.  I am not wearing those weird pants.  No way.”

I saw in his eyes his vision for our future of biking together slip away.  “You can’t wear yoga pants babe.  Not with your fancy new bike.  It’s just not done.”

I knew then I was in over my head.  This cycling business was so much more than the bike.  It was a culture that demanded an aesthetic reset.  I was now the proud owner of a fancy bike that required me to scrap my instinctive fashion sensibility and embrace the ugliest, most unattractive trend invented by man (a woman would know better). 

And so right there in the bike store I acquiesced.   I gathered six to ten pair of black cycling shorts and began the demoralizing task of squeezing my soft body into a variety of girdle like contraptions, one after the other in search of the “most flattering pair.”  News flash, for those of you who have an issue with cellulite the issue becomes an all out crisis in bike shorts. I stood face to face with myself in the small, dingy fitting room and mouthed the words “you know better.”   

Mark called from outside the dressing room, “hon, come out and show us.”  The us included the youngish, sinewy sales woman.   “Not yet,” I said, nearly out of breath and laboriously peeling off another pair of tourniquet shorts.   The sales girl chimed in, “do you have a jersey?”  And with that she hung three loudly colored polyester jerseys over the dressing room door.  “Try these on, we just got them in.  They’re awesome.”   Awesome was not the word that came to mind.  Logo-mad print designer on acid was more like it.

I finally settled on a pair of black, below the knee knickers with a stayfree mini-pad sized chamois.  They were $90.  Who knew that being unattractive could cost so much?   My husband and his sales clerk side-kick were disappointed that I passed on the Jerseys.  I was certain that I could get away with cycling pants and a Gap t-shirt for a while.  At least until I found an inconspicuous jersey that didn’t scream “this is ugly.” 

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job.   (Anonymous Economist)

Last week a friend of mine was laid off from her high paying management job.  It sucks. With three kids in tow and a husband who is an entrepreneur it will be hard for her to make up for that loss. Firing the cleaning lady, laying off the nanny and eating mac and cheese isn’t going to cover the missing six figure income. 

Another friend of mine, in her mid-fifties, just got laid off from the world’s largest software company.  She is the lead bread winner in her family and has made a lot of dough in the past.   Her husband has been Mr. Mom most of their married life due to a serious, ongoing but manageable illness.  She has two teenagers, one in a swank private school and the other heading off to college shortly.  It sucks.

Houses are popping up for sale in our coveted white collar neighborhood like pimples on a teenager.  It leaves me to wonder “is everyone getting laid off?”   It rattles my nerves to hear the stories about well educated, well heeled friends, and friends of friends who have been given “pink slips.”  They are people like me who thought that somehow they would be sheltered from the economic downturn.   

The talking heads on the networks and cable stations are advising people to “retrench,” and “hunker down.”  Let me remind you…these are war terms.   With mortgage payments equaling 50% of a household income…people may have to retrench or hunker down in a different neighborhood.   

I know Obama and his peeps are saying this is a recession but when I see my hard working neighbors putting their houses up for sale because someone lost a job it makes me wonder if it isn’t a little worse than we’re being told.   

Good article if you’re wondering if this is a recession or a depression.

I got a promotional e-mail today from Desert Sun. They are celebrating Cinco de Mayo and their four year anniversary with an amazing offer, a free tan with a ten tan punch card. I don’t know if premature death is worth it. It’s dangerous business,

Four years ago Desert Sun, opened across the street from my office. I watched the opening festivities from afar; balloons, and streamers festooned the entrance, the neon logo shone like a beacon in the gray mist of February. Scantily clad Pamela Anderson look-alike’s managed the door wearing little more than bikinis and cover ups to show off their bronzed bodies. If a person wasn’t familiar with the new retail on the block they might have mistaken the excitement for an adult only movie premiere. Or a casting call for a new reality porn show. Oversized sandwich boards and six foot banners gave potential customers incentives to Sun Your Buns. Ten Tans Free with the Purchase of a Lifetime Membership. What would that person look like when their life was over I wondered? Free Bronzing Lotion with Ten Tan Package. Special lotion? Can’t a person just pack their own Nivea?

This tanning phenomena has been troubling me since the place opened. It’s May and everyone in my neighborhood is Tan. Or rather all the people in my neighborhood under the age of fifty are tan and have been every day since the rain set in last November. It wouldn’t be something to notice if I lived say, in Palm Dessert or Miami Beach, but I don’t. I live in Seattle, where the old saying goes “in Seattle people don’t tan…they rust.” And for the record, in 2009 so far, we have had approx. 5 sunny days with temperatures over fifty degrees, the rest has been rainy and cold, but who’s counting? Nasty weather combined with the recession, swine flu and the increasingly popular “staycation” I doubt anyone is traveling to get a tan.

The tannies are ubiquitous; they’re in the grocery store, at the local Starbucks and at the school auction. It’s all I can do to keep myself from pulling our favorite babysitter aside and giving her a lecture…something akin to…”listen missy, lay off that tanning bed you’re starting to look like an Umpa Lumpa. I want to grab that cute little check-out girl in the market by the cheeks and tell her “sure you look cute now but how about in ten years when your sun kissed face looks like a wrinkled Louis Vuitton handbag.” And then there’s the twentyish barista who can’t stop himself from calling me, “Hon.” He’s so tan I can smell it.

When I mention the smell to my friend Diana she tells me a story that sounds more urban myth than fact. Something about a very tan woman, let’s call her Laurena, waking up one day to the smell of tangy, burnt flesh. On close inspection Laurena discovers that the odor is emanating from her very tan body. Naturally, she goes to see her Doctor. He sniffs Laurena’s body, pokes and prods her abdomen and finally breaks the news to her that all that tanning has actually melted her innards—which explains the stench. I ask Diana, “Did she die?” She responds, “Not really sure, she was a friend of a friend’s cat sitter. I don’t really know her personally. But it’s true.”

Hmmm. Since hearing that story I notice that my local Starbucks barista smells suspiciously like cooked liver.

P.S. Lying in a tanning bed damages your skin and can lead to skin cancer. Now you know. Check out the skin cancer physicians website for more information on the dangers of tanning.

A few weekends ago I had the pleasure of going on an all-girl’s weekend with a group of friends sans children.  The social coordinator of the trip has a marvelous house on a remote island in the San Juan’s.  It was lovely and the weather, which can be iffy in early spring, cooperated beautifully.  The company could not have been better and the food and libations were nothing short of gourmet.  Let’s just say the only thing any of us suffered that weekend was a hang over and a few extra pounds.  That was until late Sunday afternoon on the drive home.  

I was in the front seat driving when one of the women in the backseat of the car took a call from her husband.  He gave her the report: their youngest child, she has three under the age of eight, had lice….again.  This wasn’t the first time the subject of head lice had come up that weekend.  We had spent at least an hour discussing the topic over gin and tonics the previous evening; my friend in the back seat’s three little darlings had had it no fewer than three times.  

As I write this I am hesitant to say, knock on wood, that our family, (three boys aged 6 to 17) has not yet suffered from the Seattle School lice epidemic.  That said all of this lice knowledge is new to me.  

Apparently there is a whole arduous regime that needs to be followed in order to rid one’s head and house from the nasty mites.  And there is quite a stigma that goes along with it. “When we found out we had it, we felt like leapers,” said one mom while throwing back the last of her gin and tonic.   “No one wants to play with a child who has lice.”  

Another mom in the group told the story of going to see a hairdresser in the neighborhood who would only see her little boys “covertly.”   The stylist and business owner demanded that my friend come in after hours and through the back door, lest her customers find out that she had been harboring and helping lice victims.  

After my friend in the backseat hung up with her husband she was distraught; it was as if all the Kum Ba Yahing, from the girl’s weekend had suddenly vanished like a glass slipper.  Nit picking, sheet washing, and itchy children filled her brain before we hit King County.  

One of our friends, an experienced and organized mom who had her own lice infestation story to tell, was riding shotgun next to me.  She suggested, with a practical tone, that our friend call in the professionals. “I have heard they will come to your house,but it’s not cheap.”  “Well, hell,” lice mother responded.  ”At this point I will pay anything!”

A few days later I ran into my friend in the neighborhood, she was surprisingly yippity skippity—hardly the image of a woman who had been slaving over a comb and picking out nits (or is it nats?).  “We did it, we called in the professionals,” she said proudly, with a bright smile stretching from one ear to the other.  “It cost $500 but it was worth it!” 

Who knew?

Apparently there is a business, yes a certified business called Lice Knowing You .   I have heard some crazy business ideas floating around lately but this one really takes the cake.  Talk about filling a niche.  The online brochure states: As the premier (are there others? I wonder) head lice removal company in the Seattle area, we arrive discreetly (thanks for that) with all the necessary items (hmmm. what might that be?) to make head lice removal as quick and painless as possible.  During the removal process, Lice Knowing You will provide free consultation on taking care of your home to ensure that the head lice will be gone for good. .….All of our consultants are trained in the most up to date methods of head lice removal.  Our bilingual staff speaks Spanish, French, Japanese and of course English. Our staff consists of teachers (special ed and general ed), medical professionals and counselors.

God bless her…see what women can do!   What a relief!