Freaky Wednesday

While it seems to be true that women are programmed to hunt and gather, I have lost interest in shopping unless I am looking for something I need. Child asked me to shop with her two days after Christmas. She knew I had no intentions of even walking in a mall for at least a week, so I assumed she planned on staying away from them. Yes, I do know how the word "assume" breaks down.

Christmas was a non-event here. Child and I were, between us, invited more than five places. Two were neighbors, requiring not even a car key nor sobriety for attendance. One was a relative, my closest family, who invited me the day before. They love me, they really do. We were expecting to spend most of our time, as we did last Christmas, at the home of Child's friend. I am also friends with the friend's mother.

However, child and said friend were having issues. Child wasn't even sure if she was invited. I knew I was, having spoken with the mother recently. I didn't want to deal with the intricacies of fractured friendships. I didn't even want to change out of my jammies. Child and I opened gifts, had a nice time of it, but she continued to fret over her friend.

To avoid confrontation like that is not like me. I wanted to call the mother, ask what the situation was looking like at her end, and make a decision about what to do. I didn't want to go there without child, of course. My plan was to spend the day with her.

I offered her a beer. That worked. She calmed down, I had a beer too, and we started to talk. Several beers later, we realized it was dark out and we hadn't eaten all day. By this time, I wasn't about to go any where to eat, so I heated up some leftovers for child. I really wasn't hungry. We ran low on beer, so I switched to goose and Cranberry to allow child to have the beer.

Friend's mother eventually called me. I said we didn't go because I wasn't able to drive and we lost track of time. All true, but I still didn't like things as they were. I felt child needed to settle her differences before I spoke to the mother and said the wrong thing.

Oh yeah, the shopping. So, we decided to go shopping. We had lunch at Chilis, and child said she hadn't yet found what she needed for her trip where we had already shopped, so she wanted to go to A Mall. I sighed. Multiple times. Drove us to the mall.

Everyone was at the mall. I am used to walking in malls when I can actually walk without touching anyone. Child was in her element. Her eyes were almost glowing. I was getting crabby. She made me laugh by telling me that she told a male friend that she was going shopping at Forever 21 and he told her she needed to go to Almost 30 (she will be 27 in 2 weeks). She asked me if I thought she should dress like she is almost 30, and I said don't ask me, since I don't.

I don't know how men do it. How can they follow a woman around a mall and just watch them touch things they aren't going to buy? I was starting to nod knowingly at men who were sleeping in chairs, leaning on walls, and looking bored as I was. I was getting impatient, crabby, bored, and my feet were starting to ache. I hadn't worn the right shoes for being upright for 7 hours.

Eventually I started to voice my discomfort. Child tried to calm me, assured me she was almost done. I started feeling like a two-year-old who was forced to shop with mommy.

It helped when she said that if I would just be good in one more store, we could get a Dairy Queen on the way out.

She let me go potty, too.