Two-country jeans

It takes two countries to dress me properly.

I bought clothes in the U.S. recently. I wear jeans almost every single day of my life (lucky me!), so I bought quite a few jeans. They will be threadbare before I get back to the U.S. next time.

I am too tall for short/petite-length jeans, and I am too short for regular-length jeans. I have no clue how to sew, and I am waaaaaaay too cheap to pay to have them professionally altered in the U.S.

So today I took some of the jeans to have them altered in the men's department of a high-class department store. Three pairs of jeans were professionally altered for a grand total of $2.50. It took about ten minutes and they are perfect.

I feel so happy that I got them done for so cheap!

Wrinkles

Last year I had some button shirts made by a tailor. I have found no tailor who stocks no-wrinkle material, so my shirts were made with regular cotton that wrinkles badly.

But ironing is a pain. I hate it. When I am preparing to go on a trip and have to iron a lot of shirts at once, it just drives me over the edge. I needed a better solution, so I took five button shirts to the dry cleaning shop nearby to see if they could iron them for me.

They had no starch, but they said they would iron all five shirts for the equivalent of $3.00! I was totally excited. I can afford to do this often.

Also, they are fast. I took them in at 5 p.m. one day and they were ready by lunch time the next day. I guess this dry cleaner, which doubles as a liquor and cigarette shop, doesn't have a lot of business.

I went in after lunch the next day, saw the beautifully ironed clothes, and decided I would definitely take my clothes to be ironed more often.

And then, in front of my wide-eyed dumbfounded self, the woman who works there took the shirts off their hangers, wadded them into a ball, and stuffed them into a plastic bag so I could easily carry them home! SHE WADDED UP MY NEWLY IRONED CLOTHES!

Really? Were her brains on leave? Was I having a nightmare? No one does this! She had no malice, she really and truly thought she was helping me. It's been two days and my brain is still reeling. I'm going to have to iron them again before I go on my trip.

Crazier yet? I'm going back there someday. I started a meaningful conversation with the lady who works there, and we all know that matters more than the wrinkles do. 

I'm definitely going to try to train her to leave the shirts on the hangers though -- or at least get her to let me fold them myself.