Clothes shopping is the worst kind of shopping. I've been on the lookout for some cute Mary Jane flats for a long time. But the only kind I've found are atrocious. Most shoes they make, unless they are heels, are ugly these days. And most stores charge way more than I'd ever be willing to pay for any shoes. (I'd like to pay $10, but $25 is my limit.) I was growing desperate for some black semi-casual shoes so I could wear my black or dark pants. (I don't want to wear heels all day going up and down our stairs, dragging screaming kids up to their rooms, or clacking around on our hardwood floors. I like heels, really, but they are so impractical for a mom to wear all day long.) I finally found a decent looking pair of Mary Janes on Payless online. But no stores in San Antonio carried them in stock, so the only way to try them on was to buy them and have them shipped to the store. Fortunately, I chose the right size and they are cute enough and not beyond my price range, and I even found a 5% off online coupon code. Still, I spent WAY too much time trying to find the darn things, and I can't say they were what I was dreaming of. (If I'd known they'd be so hard to find, I would have bought 10 pairs when I used to wear them all the time nearly 10 years ago. They worked so well with my plaid skirt as well as jeans, and I could just wear socks instead of uncomfortable nylons.)
Now I have to buy some new running shoes but I can't bear to fork over the money...and some white dress shoes for Megan so she can wear her light colored dresses without looking funny in black shoes...and this after having to buy James new shoes. I made good on my threat that if James wore the next pair of shoes out in less than 2 months -- on the top of the shoe from dragging them -- I was going to make him pay half for the next pair. At least he's making his jeans last a little longer these days. (Sears gave me SUCH a hard time about the 7 times I cashed in on their Kid-vantage program for the same 3 pair of jeans.)
Grocery shopping isn't too bad if the kids are behaving and I know where everything is in the store. But then they go and move everything around so it takes twice as long to find everything on my list. Or, even worse, they stop carrying the things I like. For instance, it took me a long time to find a specific ingredient for a dinner my kids loved, and I stocked up on them when we were on food stamps. Now that my stock is depleted, that particular ingredient is not found at any store. Of course, it's not like we have many stores to choose from here in Texas.... Not long ago, stores diminished the variety of flavors of their generic yogurt and I've been forced to switch to the more expensive Yoplait because my family will actually eat it. (So save all your Yoplait coupons for me!) Now they have stopped carrying generic bar soap. You can find generic bodywash, but not bar soap.
Specific stores: I especially hate shopping at Target for food because they are so expensive and don't have a lot of generic stuff. HEB is more expensive than Walmart and we don't like their generics and they don't carry as much generic as Walmart does. But they do have better meat and produce than Walmart does, even if more expensive. Still, there isn't an HEB Plus near me, and I'd rather go to a Super store than to have to go to both grocery and retail. That's all the grocery stores here. I stopped shopping the CVS deals because it was too hard to play the game with their new rules. Walgreens doesn't have as many good deals either and I now only shop their free-after-rebate deals. Because generic is still less expensive than using a coupon on a name-brand and Walgreens and CVS deals have diminished, I didn't renew my subscription to the Sunday paper. Besides, some of the coupons I do use are available online and, if I am ambitious enough to waste my time perusing the ads, I found a site that has a link to all weekly circulars.
And last but certainly not least: WIC. I have found Texas is pathetic in its resources for the public. Not only are the people at the WIC office mean and rude, the program itself is almost worthless to me. If my kids didn't drink so much milk and cheese, I would have quit last year. Once Megan turns 5, I think that will end it because getting it for just one child won't be worth it anymore. It takes 30-60 minutes to drive to the closest WIC office, depending on traffic. It takes 2 hours to pick up new vouchers (or now to reload the card). And it takes 3 hours to get recertified. They offer online classes so you don't have to go to their dumb nutrition/breastfeeding classes but they still make you come during the designated class time and sit in the waiting room during the whole duration of the class before they will handle your case. Their little cardholder/appointment booklet that they scolded me for not bringing last month is only in Spanish and when I asked for an English one, they said they don't have them. Hmmm, maybe they are just rude to me because I'm not Mexican...
Well, they switched over from the paper vouchers to a Lone Star Card, similar to food stamps. All stores who want to accept WIC had to be refitted with new credit card swipers that would accommodate the WIC cards because they don't swipe but are inserted instead. No stores near me can accept them correctly on any given day. I am lucky if one register in the whole store can accept WIC the day I do my grocery shopping. They've all been refitted for the new WIC cards, but nearly all registers reject them anyway.
I had to fight with them to skip a recertification appointment in order to get my 2 kids in sync so I wasn't going back to the office every other month. I did this when we moved here and they were on paper vouchers. Then things got skewed again when they went to the cards. And I just got through getting them back in sync so I can just go every 3 months.
Now tell me that system isn't inefficient. This is only one example in which I am severely disappointed in the way Texas handles any kind of public service . I had no idea Oklahoma was so efficient! How did they afford such a nice WIC building to be built in Norman? The DHS building is quite nice too. The WIC office here is in a hole-in-the-wall in a dumpy neighborhood.
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