Question of the Week

Yesterday I spent the entire day shopping with Chad. Yes, CHAD! He got to come home unexpectedly (and rather last minute) this weekend so that pretty much made my life. Or, at least my next few days.

But back to the point, which is that I spent the ENTIRE day SHOPPING. If you know me at all, then you know that I do not particularly care for shopping. When I do go, it's usually with a strategically drawn map of which stores to visit for which things in the order that will get me done and home again in the least amount of time possible. Because that's my thing, I make plans... and then I execute them. And then I pat myself on the back when everything went accordingly and I may even treat myself to a Coke or a pedicure. Or both.

Well, Chad doesn't really do "planning". And this entire day of shopping was not MY shopping (because according to "planned", I'm definitely all done with everything wrapped) it was Chad's shopping. And he had to do ALL of it, because where he lives, there's nothing but Walmart. When I asked Chad what he needed to get he said, "I have no idea. My idea of Christmas shopping is looking around until I see something that I want to buy for somebody." I was not a big fan of this anti-plan. That could take ages! And Chad doesn't particularly like to shop either, so I knew after an hour or two of "looking around" he would start complaining and want to give up. But, as many of you know, dealing with this is a delicate art (especially if you're not wife status). And he needed to buy gifts for his entire family, including nieces and nephews, in this one day.

So, I asked him who he needed to buy for and what they like and based upon his answers I was able to make suggestions of places we could go. For example, Ashlynn (4) -the one who called me Aunt Raechel and who today told me that she loves me- likes anything dress-up. And who can blame her really? So then I said, "Okay, what kind of dress-up?" Anything princessy of course. So then I say that I'm pretty sure the Disney store has Disney princess dress-up supplies. And that's how it went. And Chad is very particular about things, so it took him a long time to make up his mind on what to actually purchase. But, I'm only telling you this to celebrate my achievement - which is that I didn't make a plan for him, rush him, complain, or even ever tell him what to buy. (Although I did tell him that I needed to be properly fed before starting out on this shopping endeavor because patience NEVER could have occurred alongside low blood sugar - especially considering the fact that the mall was a zoo - so, that probably helped a lot.) I was just there for support and opinion and as the where-to-find-things knowledge base. And at the end of the day, we didn't hate each other! In fact we didn't even have an argument or an impatient tiff. We just had fun together - laughing and making fun of ridiculous toys (I'm sorry, but I've never seen a Pillow Pet that actually looked decent - check out the Woody from Toy Story one and I know you'll agree)

Yeah, exactly. Please caption this.

So, all in all it was a success and I was able to keep my OCD-ness to a minimum (besides commenting on how after spending 2 hours in Toys R Us I will definitely be spraying all my own children's stuffed animals with Lysol before they touch them). See? Who says I don't have patience.

But really the point of this story is, why don't they make One-Piece Barbie? One of Chad's nieces wanted a "Swimming Barbie" (At least, that's what we thought she said -- I believe her exact words were actually more like "shning bawbee") so we were looking at them and all of them wore bikinis. Yeah I've worn my fair share of bikinis in the past - so I can't REALLY say much) but I just wanted to see a non-slutty looking Barbie, you know? Why can't there be One-Piece Barbie? She can be pretty too!

And that's what I want to know.