Turtles and Lima Beans

Shopping is weird for me. There was a time when I could go into any store, find the item, walk straight to check-out, and return back to my car before forgetting where I parked it. Now, I have lost the ability to be quick about any of this. And I always, always forget where I park. It doesn't matter what item is in question- shoes, yogurt, sharpies, whatever-I'm at least a 45 minute girl, walking back out into the parking lot hours later in a fog, not making eye contact with anyone because somehow they can all see into my soul and know I had been in that store way longer than was socially acceptable.

Just today, while running errands with entire family in tow, I made my husband take me to a bead store (gift card from Christmas-we're moving on Tuesday, I'm Last Minute Mary). It's a very pretty bead store but shit, it's just a bead store. And it's maybe as large as a two-car garage. Would you know I walked in there with the knowledge that I was picking something out for "free" because the money had already been spent and is now circulating America, probably cruising the strip at Wildwood, NJ for the holiday weekend? And yet, AND YET, I still had two missed calls from my husband (who, P.S., was parked in our minivan about 50 feet away in the lot stranded with our Toddler Cranky and our Tylenol-Teething Baby Cranky) because I was in there for 45 minutes!! Doing what exactly? I'm glad you asked. One has the right to know...

You'd think I was sipping on a nice lemonade spritzer while getting a foot massage and trying on some lovely glass beaded anklets. You'd be mistaken (optimistic but mistaken just the same). You'd think I was in their back room taking in the latest Dane Cook live show while fastening wire necklaces and gem-saturated bracelets. You'd be mistaken once again. You'd think I was turning over every single last pretty little bead in my hand wondering, "What the poop can I make with YOU!" Bingo. While these beads were deliciously glossy and supremely colorful, I was terribly confused. It was no place for me and my recent inability to make a split decision out of the home to save my kidney. Probably there is a term for this. Domestic Amnesia? MommyDoesn'tDecideWellDisorder? SplitDecisionHomeMakermyalgia?

Finally, after chatting with the owner's daughter for a good 37 minutes over round-nose, flat-edged, and I'm pretty sure a serrated kind of tweezer/plier thing, I decided on some jewelry. Already handmade jewelry. How hard is that?

Apparently it's get-lost-in-DC-and-never-get-out-of-the-grid-city-nightmare difficult. Not that I've done that.

It must be because I'm only accustomed to doing 17 things all at once that this one single task, hell CHORE, was too much for my hyper-functioning gray matter but I did not choose wisely. Since we snuggled and spooned and logged in so much quality time, this bead store and I, you'd think I would've selected some nice accouterments as my going away gift. Not so. I picked out the worst of the best. I'm showing you. Seriously, take a look and decide for yourself.

A purple ring I like to call "Turtle" and these earrings. They don't have names yet; they are that ugly. The Cabbage Patch of danglies perhaps. Maybe I'll call them Lima Beans because if there's one awful thing it is a lima bean. My husband said it best. He says, "The ring, it's fine. The earrings? They're so busy and...well...yellow." He's right. They're yellow. In the store I had myself convinced they were classicaly sage or heirloom chartreuse. They're not. They're hideous and worse yet, pearly, and weird and not at all what I had in mind. Panic purchase.

So, to celebrate today's monumental indecisiveness, I'm keeping them. Better than that? I'm wearing them right now. Take that, right side of my brain. You have left me all alone with yet another gift card panic purchase and now you have to look at these cataract avacados all day long. That'll teach ya.