Not A Shopper
I am not a shopper. I never have “enjoyed” looking for the perfect ‘thing’.
Even with the ease of online shopping, it’s still not something I like to do. I might compare a couple items online but it’s not going to be a major quest to find a great deal.
Last week was Amazon Prime days, supposedly offering great values on everything under the sun. I left Jenni in charge of the laptop on those days.
I did get on Amazon once during that time, looking for replacement headlight bulbs for Wanda (the van). I figured that since I replace bulbs almost as often as I have the oil changed, it wouldn’t hurt to have a couple extra on hand. I noted that the current price for a pair was $10-$12 more than what I paid just this past December. One thing led to another and when I was done, I had put an entire passenger-side headlight ASSEMBLY (the entire piece you see when you look at the front of the van) in my shopping cart. Turns out it was such a simple installation; I’ll probably do this for the driver’s side as well since it fixes the sins of the previous owners who butchered the lights and wiring severely.
A few days later was Jenni’s birthday. The night before, I asked her what she wanted to do on her day. “Furniture shopping” was the response. Well, I did ask.
We had been discussing the need to replace our third-hand couch and recliner for quite some time and had half-heartedly looked a few times already. But this would be a serious, dedicated search—no picking up groceries or running errands squeezed into the day.
She was probably banking on me making it through 2-3 stores (my usual limit). But I was ALL-IN that day. We left home around 10:45 AM and fed Annie her lunch portion of food promising to be home for her dinner serving. Jenni decided to test out her new phone app that tracked her steps. When the day was over, we had walked about 3.4 miles.
We tallied eight furniture stores, one wine market, and our favorite Chinese restaurant. One store had chairs that required a second mortgage on the house; others were hard pressed to show us a matching pair. When we did find the matching recliners we wanted, we told the salesman we had one more place to look. He probably didn’t expect to see us again. Ever. We were back within an hour and made his day. (And I must say I appreciated that he didn’t follow us around the store the first time, but rather let us make our own discoveries as we maneuvered the store.)
We pulled up at the house about 6:30 pm, a little past Annie’s supper time but she forgave us as soon as the kibble hit the bowl.
Shopping. Not my favorite thing to do, but it did give me a day with my wife and Chinese food!