Brave new shopping world

 

On a weather note, I put on shoes for the first time (not counting sneakers for walking and pickleball) yesterday.  I’ll happily wear sandals with jeans and a sweatshirt, but I woke up to 44 degrees this morning and I can hear the heat cranking up in the basement. So it’s time, bunion or no bunion.

You may recall my post a few days ago about unearthing my watches, unworn since my retirement over ten years ago. My victory was short-lived. The watch, with its new battery, keeps on ticking (as John Cameron Swayze would say in those Timex ads), but the
watchstrap went, “Nope. I’m done.”

          On examination I thought, “Well, it’s just the leather. Maybe we can superglue it together.”

          I fiddled, My Guy fiddled, but nope.

          I wracked my brain for somewhere, in this land of disappeared department stores, who might have simple leather watch straps and be able to put them on. I certainly wasn’t going back to the jeweler who sold me the new battery. Everything in there was gold, silver, or diamonds.

          Target? No human.

          Kohl’s? It took me a minute, but behind the huge new Sephora area I found the “jewelry department,” nothing more than a bunch of racks of earrings and bracelets. I remember getting a really good deal on a watch for My Guy there not so long ago, helped by a human behind a real counter.

          Okay. Back to home and online shopping. Watch straps, yes, but meh. None had the nifty ‘gold’ trim like my old watch. And we’d have to figure out how to put the new one on.

          On a whim, I looked up watches. For about $15 more than a watchstrap I’d have to assemble, I could buy the entire watch. And it looked uncannily like the one I already had.

          And at 7 a.m.,12 hours later?

          I’m wondering if I’ve just heard another bong of the death knell for in-store shopping.