So then there was this Russian woman with a dachshund

First off, thanks to everybody who chimed in on the windshield-wiper thing. Honestly? I'd feel like a dork (well, like a bigger dork than I already AM) if I pointed them toward the sky, but that's just me.

So! I've been looking for a new area rug for the living room. The one currently in there was a forty-dollar Big Lots special, and a scant year-and-a-half after I bought it, it's pretty much beat.


I've been looking on line, of course, which ... have you ever tried shopping for a rug on line? I DO NOT HAVE TIME to look at 1,293 rugs, which is the average number of rugs on rug websites.


So this past weekend I went to various department stores, carpet outlets, big-box stores, blahblahblah (because I DO, evidently, have time to look at 1,293 rugs in actual STORES) and of COURSE I ended up at Home Depot, which is where I always end up sooner or later, no matter what I'm shopping for.


And they had some rugs draped across this platform thingie, a closeout special, a hundred-and-seventeen-bucks-each, and I was just kind of pawing through the rugs, la la la la la, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a woman sitting on a pile of nearby rugs. And she had a man with her. And also a dachshund, with a little doggie sweater on.


She had a flippin' dachshund. In Home Depot. Sitting on top of a pile of rugs.


So I'm trying my VERY BEST to not be rude and to just ignore the circus act one pile of rugs over, when the woman says, in a heavy Russian accent,


"Do you want to see these rugs?" (Try to imagine the Russian accent, okay?)


"Excuse me?", I said.


"These rugs!," she said, "These rugs we are sitting on! Did you want to look at them?"

"Oh, no, that's okay," I said. "I'm looking for a smaller rug, like these over here."


She got up off her pile of rugs and came over to me, while the man with her held onto the dachshund. She was a tiny little thing, younger than I am. And much cuter.


"You know", she said, and I noticed that her mascara was baby blue. She really had to cake it on to get the blue to cover up her dark lashes. And it was only, like, in the middle of her upper lashes. Maybe that's Russian chic, I thought. "These rugs are all made in China. That's no good. There's a web site, where you can buy rugs from Iran, real Persian rugs, and there is free shipping! It's e-sale-rugs dot com."


Oh great, I thought. I'm about to be captured and sold into white slavery by a rug-peddling Russian with blue mascara. She and her cohort and the dachshund will follow me out to the parking lot and club me over the head and the next thing you know, I'll wake up in a Russian brothel. Or, you know, I'll decide to check out that web site, only to click on it and have some world-dominating virus activate on my PC and infect the entire east coast.


So, I had her write down the name of the website, haha, because who isn't up for a little PC-eating virus activity on a freezing cold Sunday afternoon, that's what I want to know.


But! I had to wait until yesterday morning to look up the site, (because I am a Luddite and have no PC at home, and anyway, if I'm going to activate some world-destroying virus, it's gonna be on a WORK computer, dammit) and it's a legitimate site! With faaaaaabulous prices on rugs! (eSalerugs dot com, if anyone's interested). AND you can sort through the rugs by size and color group and shape, which narrows things down A TON. And free! shipping!


Oh, Russian woman with the dachshund in Home Depot, I am sorry I doubted you. You ROCK that baby-blue mascara.

Now! Who wants to help me pick out a rug?