A Shopping Spree

My girl Audrey loves horses. She also loves stuffed animals, the color green, and soup and salad buffets.

What she does not love is shopping.

Most of the time she flat-out refuses to go.

This is my fault I think. I hate shopping too. Not as much as she does, but it is rarely an activity of choice for me. I consider it more of an evil necessity.

I have tried to pick things out for Audrey and bring them home to her, but it hasn't worked very well. Because even though she hates to shop, she also hates to wear clothes that don't feel right on her. So I bring stuff home, she hates it, doesn't wear it, and then I don't return stuff. I lose the receipt, or I forget. And years later, we find things stuffed in her closet that she never wore.

So I swore off buying her anything she has not tried on first. And since she would never go shopping with me, she didn't get any new clothes for many many moons. In fact, it is now to the point where she has no summer clothes.

None.

She has been spending her summer in long sleeved shirts and jeans.

So I finally coerced her into going to Target and just looking to see if they had some capris she liked. They have to be capri's because she won't wear shorts. She doesn't like her knees to show. I have a feeling that at some point in her spiritual journey to us, Audrey must have somehow passed through a Victorian-age time warp that left a mark on her. She is a very modest girl. I have no problem showing my knees. I don't really care what they look like. That is one of the few benefits of being 40-something. Your knees are the least of your problems.

Anyhow, we get to Target, me, Audrey and Olivia, who LOVES to shop, and is no way going to miss a chance to rummage through the Target clearance racks, and guess what?

THE POWER IS OFF.

They had some kind of auxiliary power to the cash registers, so the store was still open, but most of the lights were off, and it was hard to see anything.

Just my luck. The one time Audrey and I are in a store where she has actually agreed to try on and perhaps even purchase clothing, and there we are, hunched over in the semi-darkness, going through racks and shelves, searching for knee-covering capris and t-shirts that don't advertise anything.

Guess who found her heart's desire on the clearance table? Olivia of course. She found a $7.00 dress that she could not live without, but that I thought was the ugliest dress I had ever seen. I told her she didn't need it. I told her it was ugly. I told her I was not buying it.

She wore it to preschool today.

I have to admit it looked better in the daylight, and on her. She got lots of compliments on how cute her new dress was. She made sure to tell everybody, including me, that I had said it was ugly. That I was WRONG about that dress, and that I was not to be trusted in matters of fashion. She may not have used those exact words, but her meaning was clear.


The lights came on in time for Audrey to find two pairs of capri's, several shirts, and a swim suit cover up. Shopping in the dark did nothing for her aversion.