Scenes from a Shopping Trip
My little girl and I ran some errands while big brother was at preschool this morning. Having grown up with three sisters, I recall the magic of mother-daughter shopping trips and am experiencing it from the "mother" side for the first time now that I have about seven hours a week without my four-year-old boy. I walk through a store and she follows me, pointing out this or that as we go ("Look at that cute chair, Mommy!"). There's no running, no hiding beneath clothing racks, and no whining about wanting to leave. It's beautiful.
Our first stop today was the post office. There she stooped outside the entrance to claim a small piece of granite from the landscaping bed. (It's still in my pocket, as a matter of fact.) She selected it to accompany the larger one she brought home from Fox Valley Nursery last week when we picked out shrubs for our hedge. Both rocks will join the sizeable pile that had been stowed in the stroller at Quarry Quest last weekend. Apparently she's a collector.
Next, we made a return at Kohl's Department Store and browsed the boys' clothing for some fall-weather shirts for Child #1. As I spent ten minutes looking at a clearance rack full of polos, she tried on various hats and visors, which she carefully put back when I was ready to move on. Another stark contrast from shopping with a boy.
Our last stop was (I hate to admit this) Wal*Mart, where I shop only when I'm: (1) right next door at Kohl's, or (2) short on time and in need of both grocery and household items. Today, both justifications held true, along with an additional one: our curly girl needed her bangs trimmed, and there's a handy Cost Cutters right inside...along with a handy nail salon, a handy Subway, and a handy automotive center. I guess once they've got you, they want to keep you.
Child #2 sat perfectly still as her hair was cut, and the greeter just outside the salon door had observed this from his post. He rewarded her with a big smile and a small sheet of yellow-smiley-face Wal*Mart stickers torn from his roll. These stickers are used to mark both bags containing returns and the children of mothers who would rather not declare to the whole world that they'd been to Wal*Mart that morning. And now the child in question was wearing six of them. Oh, well.
I discovered as I picked up the two things we needed most--breakfast cereal and milk--that boxes of our staple morning meal are a full dollar less at Wal*Mart than they are at Pick 'N Save, where I normally shop for food. That's one full dollar times two boxes per week times 52 weeks per year, adding up to a $104 annual savings on cereal alone. How do they do that? The magnitude of the savings potential leaves my principles and my pocketbook in conflict. Pesky principles.
Our first stop today was the post office. There she stooped outside the entrance to claim a small piece of granite from the landscaping bed. (It's still in my pocket, as a matter of fact.) She selected it to accompany the larger one she brought home from Fox Valley Nursery last week when we picked out shrubs for our hedge. Both rocks will join the sizeable pile that had been stowed in the stroller at Quarry Quest last weekend. Apparently she's a collector.
Next, we made a return at Kohl's Department Store and browsed the boys' clothing for some fall-weather shirts for Child #1. As I spent ten minutes looking at a clearance rack full of polos, she tried on various hats and visors, which she carefully put back when I was ready to move on. Another stark contrast from shopping with a boy.
Our last stop was (I hate to admit this) Wal*Mart, where I shop only when I'm: (1) right next door at Kohl's, or (2) short on time and in need of both grocery and household items. Today, both justifications held true, along with an additional one: our curly girl needed her bangs trimmed, and there's a handy Cost Cutters right inside...along with a handy nail salon, a handy Subway, and a handy automotive center. I guess once they've got you, they want to keep you.
Child #2 sat perfectly still as her hair was cut, and the greeter just outside the salon door had observed this from his post. He rewarded her with a big smile and a small sheet of yellow-smiley-face Wal*Mart stickers torn from his roll. These stickers are used to mark both bags containing returns and the children of mothers who would rather not declare to the whole world that they'd been to Wal*Mart that morning. And now the child in question was wearing six of them. Oh, well.
I discovered as I picked up the two things we needed most--breakfast cereal and milk--that boxes of our staple morning meal are a full dollar less at Wal*Mart than they are at Pick 'N Save, where I normally shop for food. That's one full dollar times two boxes per week times 52 weeks per year, adding up to a $104 annual savings on cereal alone. How do they do that? The magnitude of the savings potential leaves my principles and my pocketbook in conflict. Pesky principles.
posted by Lisa Strandberg at 10:18 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home