The Shopping Blahs

Mom wants to go Christmas shopping this weekend. She seems to feel very strongly about getting a Saturday off in December to go Christmas shopping. To me, this sounds horrific, yet for some masochistic reason I've agreed to go. My one hope? That I have to get home early so that Scott & I can dart off to the dart store like we've been wanting to do for the past few weeks. I imagine a gaping maw of demonic proportions full of empty-eyed, impatient & cross souls hellbent on getting the New Trendy Gift that is The Mall. I hate The Mall. Especially during the holidays. In fact, the last time I was in the Fairfield Mall? Two years ago. Scott & I raced into Eddie Bauer, snatched up a bottle of cologne, and raced back out again. That's it. Plus, I have no patience for shopping, whether at Christmas or any other time, and shopping with Mom..... Sweet Jesus. It's one of the most painful things. I would rather get bitten on the arm by a giant watersnake. I'm a scanner - I can see if there's anything I want just by racing around glancing at everything or sometimes I can scan from the doorway. 2 minutes tops for me to make my determinations. Then I move on. I don't enter stores I don't want to, I don't browse. I hate browsing. My mom is the queen of browsers. She one time pondered a shelf of birdhouses for 15 minutes while I stood by, bored out of my mind. So, I hate to tell her, but shopping with her is the menace of my existence. I remember being a small child & whining, "Can we go yet?" and she'd get mad at me. I still feel the same way. I have a hunch I felt that way as a kid because she would stand around contemplating the prices on the different brands of canned tomatoes for 10 minutes! When we were at Penzey's a couple weeks ago, she did the same thing. I wanted to say, "Mom, you KNOW what they sell, you KNOW where they keep it, why is it taking you so long???" But instead I went ahead & checked out while she flipped through a cooking magazine, noted the new pork spice, wandered..... Also, I'm not entirely sure what we're to be shopping for. I don't have many people to buy gifts for, and the gifts that I do buy will probably not come from this shopping excursion OR from the mall. So, basically it amounts to an enjoyable lunch, and then three or four hours of standing around, shifting from foot to foot, yawning, while she tries to make a decision. I'm dreading it. It's awful but true! The dart store is my out. My gateway to freedom. My only hope to keep me from dying of absolute boredom under a rack of sale items!