Redecorating

I have decided to redecorate my house, beginning and ending with new bath towels.

"These are one step above disgusting," my neighbor told me on the day that I cut my hand. She expressed concern that the towels populating my linen closet might breed infection.

"I've had these since eighth grade!" I yelped in protest.

She was not amused by my joke. She did, however, find it within herself to pass along some insider information about a certain national retail chain that sells goods for the home.

"They get their shipments on Tuesdays and Fridays," she told me. "The Tuesday truck is unloaded on Wednesday morning and the merchandise is put on the shelves by Thursday morning. The Friday truck is unloaded on Friday afternoon, just in time for the weekend rush."

I made a mental note of her advice and went to the store on Monday at noon, when inventory was at its lowest.

Even in this harsh shopping climate, there were still a fair number of well-manicured and sleekly dressed interior designers perusing the aisles, filling their carts with barbaric candelabras and gigantic ceramic elephants. There were also several women about my age in the store, all of whom were crammed into the store's arboretum.

"Do these look real?" one woman said to another, holding up a bundle of fake roses suspended in a vase filled with clear acrylic gel.

"So real," the other woman replied. "And such a bargain at $16.99."

That was all the convincing that the first woman needed. Plop. Into the shopping cart the flower arrangement went, along with two of its close relatives, a pitcher of plastic tulips and a large wreath fashioned out of plastic Easter eggs.

When I left the aisle, the second woman was putting the exact same trio of treasures into her shopping cart.

I stalked one of the interior designers until I caught her off guard in a sea of throw pillows.

"Are you an interior designer?" I asked, lamely. The thirteen pieces of framed artwork in her shopping cart gave her away.

"Professional home stager," she clarified.

I wasn't exactly sure what that was, but it sounded like something that I might be good at.

"Do you like these towels?" I asked, gesturing to the mound of objects filling the bottom of my shopping cart. "Do they go together?"

"Are they all for the same bathroom?" the woman asked me, studying the objects with a raised eyebrow.

For the record, I tried to find a complete set of towels. When the lack of inventory deemed this impossible, I was forced to mix n' match.

Before I could explain myself, the woman picked up a beige hand towel that I had discovered on the clearance table next to an assortment of Christmas soaps.

"Is that a horse?" she asked, pointing to the animal stitched onto the front of the towel.

"Unicorn," I clarified.

The look on the woman's face forced me to put all of the towels back on the shelf, including little Pegasus.