Retail Therapy

I got really pissed off at my husband last night, which did some serious damage to my theory that we were going to be different from all newlyweds and married couples everywhere and that the honeymoon was never going to end. Ah well, the bliss was wonderful while it lasted, and knowing Timothy and I, it will make its way back again soon. In any event, I got mad, I went to bed mad (what would Lucy and Desi think?) and I woke up just as mad, if not madder.

I knew that it would be hours before I could talk (yell) things out with my beloved since he and I have extremely different weekend sleep schedules: I go to bed while it is still dark, and get up while it is still light. Tim does exactly the opposite. So with all this time and frustration to kill, what's a girl to do?

I stood in my immaculate kitchen (I had spent the better part of the previous morning cleaning, and re-cleaning to pass the time was too crazy, even for me) tapping my fingernails on the counter, watching Hades and Azrael jockey for the topmost position on the 3-tiered scratching post, and considered my options.

I could read, which required too much concentration for my agitated brain.
I could write, but my miffed-ness would seep into every word.
I could go to the beach, but I had done that once before and it proved to be a sensational pain in the ass.
I had already placed phone calls to the 2 people who may be remotely interested in listening to me vent, and neither had answered their phones.

Tap, tap, tap went my fingernails as I watched the cats streak out onto the patio, the morning sunlight streaming over my white, boring, I could be living in an asylum, walls.

And there it was. I needed curtains. Suddenly. Desperately. Curtains would solve all of my problems. The vertical blinds would no longer look so institutional. The sunlight that was so pretty in the morning, but so harsh and annoying in the evening, would be softened by the perfect curtains. More to the point, it gave me an excuse to venture to the brand new Super Target that had just opened up the street, and curtains would royally annoy Tim. That was an awful lot of birds with one stone. (The last time I had gotten pissed at him I had redone the spare bathroom in fantastic shades of Florida pink and orange. It made him crazy. I regretted it less than 2 days later, but the neon remains simply based on the principal of the thing.)

So off I went, and boy was it worth it.

As soon as I pulled into the parking lot, it was like the mother ship was calling me home. (I have a small shopping addiction. I'm really not supposed to go shopping unsupervised. Especially not to Target. But this was war, and you know what they say.)

It was beautiful. All shiny, and new, and huge.

Needless to say, I found curtains. And a curtain rod. And I decided that it was time to rid the spare bathroom of the obnoxious neon. Then I got jealous on the master bathroom's behalf and bought it new bathmats. The living room also got a spunky area rug to jazz up the boring beige asylum-like carpet. (I don't care that it is a bit pointless to put carpet on top of carpet, I need color damn it.) To top it all off I got flip flops and a new notebook. (I also have an addiction to paper of any kind and all writing instruments. Office Depot and Staples are also very dangerous places for me to be.)

I returned home, hung my new curtains (and I say "hung" in the loosest sense of the word since Tim, once he is all done being irritated with me, needs to screw the curtain rod brackets all the way into the wall), laid my new area rug and snazzed up my bathrooms. By the time I rode my stationary bike for an hour (in my new flip flops) then took a shower, I was like a new woman. When my husband finally emerged from the bedroom I was just beginning to cook dinner, and I sweetly apologized to him for overreacting the night before.

Before the week is over I will more than likely feel immensely ill over the amount of money spent today, but honestly, I think it saved my marriage. (Of course this isn't true, but I can tell myself whatever I want. It's what crazy people with addictive personalities do.)

In conclusion, there's an awful lot to be said for retail therapy. I'm already planning what kind of fight I should pick with Tim next weekend, and then maybe I can finally justify a flat screen TV.