We had to go shopping today to buy some birthday presents for Boy 2. He is not an easy child to find presents for, so it takes some searching for just the right thing.
Five minutes into this shopping spree I was ready to give up and go home! I couldn't believe how croweded the stores were. It was as if the Christmas shopping season had officially started. Dear Man detests crowds even more than I do, and they cause him to lose his calm.
There we are in the store, using our parental sign language to alert the other of a possible gift idea. This entails catching the eye of your spouse, then looking at the object in question, eyes back to spouse, back to object. The spouse will look at you, look in direction of object but not see it and look back at you for the next cue. With the flick of a finger you discreetly point out the object. Spouse will then give a verbal sign that object has been sighted. You then take the children down another aisle so that the other spouse can peruse the object and make an informed decision. After a bit of time spouse will hunt you down and give you a yay or nay on the object. Hopefully spouse has no questions.
If there are questions you have to have a hurried and hushed pow wow about the object. This can be hard to do while you are looking directly at your children so that they don't wander off, put things in pockets, pick things up and spray themselves in the face, or smear it all over themselves. These aren't things from off the shelves, these are the things already in the cart, that they like to completely examine, and you let them so that you can do the business you really came for in the first place.
Finally a verdict is come to and spouse will then take children to car while you race about collecting the objects you agreed upon. Items paid for you make it back to the vehicle with your apologies about the length of time it took, but there were so many crazy people in there! Spouse reports the crazies they met on their way out the door. Spouse is all heated up about the lunatics who actually pushed our children out of their way, after they had been given a direct order to stay close together so that no one would get lost.
I wonder if the people who watch those little security monitors have a good time spotting gift shopping parents? Do the other people in the store make it back to their vehicles and discuss that crazy couple with all the kids,and the weird eyeball twitches, and finger seizures? Is somone blogging about how these kids wouldn't get out of their way so they finally had to shove their way thru?
I think I'll stick to catalog shopping. It will save my eye sight, my sore finger, my Dear Man's calm, and my sanity. |
Nov. 14, 2005
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Thanks for stopping by...
Nov. 19, 2005
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*Laughing!* Been there, done that!
