Shopping with Mother

Shopping with my mother can be fun and it can be a pain in the gazoo.  She likes grocery shopping but if we go beyond that the margin of fun narrows considerably and once we get into Christmas stuff or knick knacks its game over for me.  When I got home we’d been gone for 3 hours or so and while I plugged my ears and bought what I liked I still called up my sister and asked for a silver bullet.  I’m not sure if I was going to put myself or Mom out of our misery.  Well, I’m just kidding (maybe) about the misery since I’m a grown woman and can do what I want but since I grew up respecting my mother it’s very difficult to ignore her. 

       I’m pretty sure that I am not a shopaholic because I don’t go shopping every weekend and quite often I actually don’t enjoy shopping whether it’s for groceries, clothes or something else.  But when I get it into my head that I want to go on a shopping spree, especially around Christmas time, I don’t want to feel guilty about looking!  Contrary to my mother’s opinion, I do not buy everything that I fancy.  If I pick up something shiny it’s because it’s shiny, pretty and I want to look at it.  I’m not going to wear it.  This morning I shooed her over to the baking pans because she fell in love with an aluminum pan a couple of weeks ago and I thought she might like a second one (but mostly it was to get her away from me).  Then I wandered around the store trying to find her again but she had strayed over to the other pots and pans.  Huh, I caught her looking at something.  Did she want it, could I get her to buy it?  No.  Once caught she wouldn’t look at anything again.

       Then we finally ended up in the bulk candy store where I had some more success with her.  She loves licorice so we headed to the licorice bins, but her favorite salty ones were not in.  Instead we bought the Licorice Allsorts but we struggled with the lid of the container,  We pulled it apart and hand picked (I blush to confess it) our favorites.  I muttered as I put the lid back on “why isn’t this one working like the others?”  As we looked at the other bins I suddenly realized we had not been using the actually handle and lever – instead Mom had yanked off the whole blooming top and I was reminded of the time she threw the ball shaped calculator on the floor in Staples.  That time we laughed so hard we disgraced ourselves and we have not been back in the store since.  This time we just giggled because we were both completely stupid.

       Having finished up at this mall we headed over to the fashion district where I only ran slightly amok in the shoe section.  I tried to buy a pair for Mom but she kept saying she was happy with her little polka dot slippers even though her feet were freezing cold and they look more like bedroom slippers than shoes.  I couldn’t get her to sit down and as I was afraid the cashier would think I was abusing my mother if I held her down with my legs I thought we should go.  We had a light moment as we admired the hoar frost on the bushes were the car was parked and I said I loved that she was crippled with arthritis so we could use her handicapped parking card to get a good spot in front of the next store which made her happy but made me feel like a ghoul. 

       When I went to get a certain size pant she said she was afraid it wouldn’t fit me and I asked, “you mean they are too big?” she smiled, shook her head and I squeaked out “this is my size, you think my ass looks bigger than this?” and she had the gall to say yes.  I almost trembled when I went into the change room, I’m not sure if it was fear that she was right or anger that she had so insulted my ass.  I was prepared to buy the damn pants even if they didn’t fit just to prove her wrong but mercifully they fit (and I wasn’t even wearing my spanx) so my anxiety was over.

       Just to punish Mom we then went over to M&M and I bought frozen food and made her eat it for lunch.  Lucky for her, she liked it.