mompoet shops and lives to tell about it

I do not shop willingly or cheerfully or with any skill. If you want me to love you forever, shop for me. Andy does this all the time. I write lists and wait at home while he shops. I go get my own clothing and personals, and I take the daughter unit out for similar items, and I will go to places like "liquor store" or "veggie store" but I try to stay out of big boxes and mega-stores as much as possible because they make me
CRAZY LIKE SQUASHED BANANA WITH BUGS CRAWLING OUT OF IT.
I like stimulation, information, sensation, but one thing or theme at a time. I do not like smorgasbords or surveys or samplers. I like a lot of one thing done well.
I HATE IKEA.
I went to Ikea today with Andy because we need to look at things together to decide what we will buy to renovate the bathroom. I think I need a support group for this, really, but I did quite well. I also went to two different Ronas (Rona is okay because it is relatively small and all one theme) and two different Home Depots (which are not as bad as Ikea because there are dogs in Home Depot - really! and things are sorted into sections which I can ignore until we get to the thing I want to look at). And I went to Costco which is obscene, but still better than WalMart which is obscene and mean. And I survived. Actually, the anticipation was worse than the actual shopping. Andy and I always quarrel before we do serious shopping. I am resisting looking at more than one place or more than one thing. He is imagining that we need to go everywhere and look at everything then go again to be sure. The reality is somewhere in between and by the end of the day we are proud and grateful towards each other for coming through it still attached.
My strategy this time was to bring a digital camera. Whenever we saw something we liked I took a picture of it, preferably with the price sticker in the picture. So when we got to the second Home Depot, and Andy said "I think I like this soaker tub better than the one at Rona," I said, "Well, let's just look at the one at Rona. I have a top view and a side view." This made life much easier because you just can't hold an accurate picture of tubs, sinks, cabinets, counter tops, and light fixtures in two brains all day and have them make any kind of sense.
So next Andy has to take the toilet out of the bathroom so Mike, the carpenter can saw a hole in the floor to find out how far the wet/rot and miscellaneous damage has gone and how much he will need to fix, so we know how much the whole thing is going to cost. The deal is, the less it costs, the more we can get Mike to do for us. In the end we will have a beautiful bathroom and we will still be a happy family. And Andy can go back to doing all of the shopping until we have to get a new fridge or something like that. I hope not for a while anyway.

phew

question: is there any ordinary thing that you dread/suck at/hate?

mompoet - nada-shoppa