Of all the bases here and all the exchanges, there is only ONE furniture store. ONE. For the whole island. For all of the thousands of military personnel here and their families.

One store. How messed up and weird is that??

So I've been to this one furniture store three times now. The first time I was horrified to find that all of the cribs available for purchase were not all that attractive, and priced at least $100 more than what you'd pay in the 'states for the same crib. Disappointed and with newly lowered expectations, we went back the second time to truly scope things out. We found (to our surprise and delight!) a crib similar to the crib we had for Amaris, just in a different color of wood - perfect for baby's room! And it was only $200! The same price we'd paid for Amaris' crib! Score. Money in hand (well, debit card anyways), we went back to the furniture store last night only to discover that crib (was it a mirage?) was gone. And all that was left on display were those same cribs from our hopeless first trip to the store. Nothing suitable for our intents and purposes OR within our price range.

This was all AFTER we went through the fiasco of trying to deposit the check from our crazy former landlady in Texas. (The one where she wrote "$440" on the amount box, and then "four hundred fourty four dollars" on the legal tender line... Dunce.)

Since then, I've been extremely bitter. We found an amazingly cool TV cabinet (if our TV EVER arrives, that is) and I was temporarily contented by that, but after the awesomeness of that had worn off (and the price tag had set in and given me a mild heart attack) I was back to bitterness over the crib that never was but should have been. We asked a store employee what the deal was but she didn't fully understand our inquiry (English was not her strong suit, poor thing) and we were left informationless.

Last week I discovered the curtains I'd fallen in love at first sight with for Amaris' bedroom were out of stock on pbkids.com, and the outlook for them returning was not good. I've been scrambling trying to find a friend with access to these curtains ever since to no avail.

One of my friends emailed them and they told her that there were just 5 left in stock and that she'd better order soon via phone to ensure she could get a pair. I called the moment she told me this news, and the customer service agent told me that no, they're all out. I about cried. Of all the false hopes!

I shopped online for over an hour trying to find a crib I could deal with, and finally settled on one from Wal Mart - it turned out that if I ordered the crib and changing table both from their website, I'd score them for cheaper (even after shipping) than the original crib and changing table would have cost me. I was so elated. I went to order them immediately. Only to have Wal Mart's website tell me that they would ship me whatever I wanted, just not the crib. I checked 3 other websites. None of them want to ship me the stupid thing.

Clearly it is not turning out to be my week, right?

So we go to check the mail. Mark has high hopes and is expecting a check from his bank account to help us in the baby items shopping. No check in our box, but we did have two small packages in our box and 3 claim slips for large packages. So we claim the packages and find that Pottery Barn (damn that store all to Hell!) has come through and our new Christmas stockings are HERE! Score! We immediately tore into the boxes to find... 4 stockings. That I paid $6.50 extra EACH for to have them personalized with our names. All of them packaged nicely, but entirely blank. What the EFF, man. Mark and I then spent the next hour discussing how I will NOT be paying shipping and handling to return these stockings, and Pottery Barn will be fixing this issue ON THE HOUSE, or ELSE. Mark seems convinced they are going to give me hell over it, but I am so damned angry that I will absolutely be the one giving all the hell there is to give. Just wait and see.

So for now, I'm extraordinarily bitter. My slippers arrived from shoemall.com (my favorite store right now since they are the only store that ever bothers to come through with their agreements) and here I sit wearing them and my yoga pants. I bought a pint of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey, and I'm about to crack it open. I'm ready to just go to bed.