Indulge me a minute while I rant.

I went into Old Navy Saturday to get a birthday gift for a friend. I also wanted to check out the new flare jeans (right) and see how they looked on me. As I've said time and time again, I love Old Navy because they make jeans for short and tall people, in addition to average. I am short.

I stopped into the Clearwater store, which I always loved wandering through because it was big, bright, spacious and calming. But all Old Navy stores have had a makeover, and things have changed, people. I'd seen the new layout once before, on Black Friday, but I discounted the chaos because of the droves of lunatics stuffing bags with tank tops. Saturday, it wasn't a ton better. The dressing rooms, once stowed neatly in the back, took up a huge space in the middle. The clearance stuff was crammed along the sides of that in disarray, and everything else was sprinkled all around.

I found a table of flare jeans at the front -- all average-length. I found a rack of flare jeans --  same scenario. I found a wall of jeans -- no flares. I found yet another table of flare jeans -- all average. THE JEANS WERE EVERYWHERE. And the sizes went from, like, 0 to 18 with not much in between. To be fair, the flare jeans have been on a rocking sale, and so the middle sizes were probably picked over.

I finally asked a dressing room attendant (only person I could find) if the flare jeans came in short, and she zipped over to the wall of boot-cuts. No, not flare, but I was so confused I told her my size anyway, and she kindly raced to the back to find them. One problem. She came back with not flare, not boot-cut, but two pairs of trouser jeans.

"These are trouser jeans," I said, stone-faced.

"They're pretty much the same," she said.

"Trouser jeans are wider," I said.

"No," she said, and went away.

If you're going to try and say a flare and a boot-cut and a trouser are all the same, you're talking to the wrong girl. Head throbbing, I went to the register to buy my friend's birthday gift. The line was long and totally jammed with strange impulse items, ranging from Hello Kitty band-aids to Mad Libs to Jones Soda to Advil (YES, PLEASE). When the cashier asked if I found everything OK, I replied with a baffled "no." Then I explained my jean plight.

She was very sweet and informed me that the stores are going to carry fewer short and tall sizes, but will continue to carry them online. This bummed me out even more. I love Old Navy jeans, but I have to try them on because every style fits differently. She said I can always return online purchases in the store, which was good to know. But I hate returning things, so I'm less likely to even try. I might just go to the Gap, which is owned by the same company, so they shouldn't mind.

What do you all think of the new Old Navy? Did I just have a bad experience? Should I gamble and get the flare jeans online? Or should I just go back to my front porch rocker and tell the kids to get off my lawn?

Deal Diva Stephanie

Photo: Those. Those are all I wanted. The flare jeans, in petite, Old Navy.

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