Shopping $ucKzz

I hate shopping. Not in a perfunctory way or on principle. I like buying new things or getting new things just as anybody else. It's not that I don't like spending money either. I just cannot stand spending a long time stuck on a shopping trip. I hate shopping with people who will take ages to choose what they want or to find that perfect thing, and I hate it when I cannot at once find something I need. Because then I'm like, okay, is it here? Nopes? Okay, I'm off. Seeyalatah.
I tend to pick and choose rather quickly instead of dithering over this or that. In case I can't decide between two things, I'll ask the person with me to quickly choose and instantly stick with their decision the moment it's out of their mouth.
This behavior is highly annoying for the people who have to spend their shopping time dragging me around.

However.
There are two places that I can be taken to and that I can spend an unidentifiable amount of time in.
The first: a bookshop (no surprises there).
The second: a lace store.

I only realized this second one the last time I was dragged off by my mother and sister to match cloth and get other odds and ends and all those other pretty essential non-essentials of daily life. We entered the shop and I was like wow...I haven't been here in a while. And then I leaned over each counter like that observant little child waiting on the side while its mother busily carries out transactions, and just drooled. Laces, ribbons, buttons, brooches, net, silk, crochet, colors - the burst of colors and rows and rows of shiny and dull and sparkly and deep and light and bright - I could spend all day there looking at and fingering each and every one. Threads and laces are among my favorite things in the world. Never mind that the tiny little rectangular stores (we went to several so my mom and sis could find the ones they needed) were tiny and crowded and I could occasionally feel some part of someone's anatomy brush against me (I can't believe I totally forgot to add that as a chief pet peeve of mine with this whole shopping business: the presence of other people, in every way possible), I was lost in the stacks and piles of threadbundles.

I also paused in my perusing once (only once, mind you) to lament the absence of a camera, because I needed to capture some of it to show here since I had already felt the urge to share this overwhelming experience on the bloggityblog. This is someone else's picture, but it's a close, slightly paindoo version of what I am talking about.





Currently re-reading: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Temptation, fish-style.

When you are part of a shoal of fish and suddenly this big, nasty net comes and catches you gill-side and you find yourself trapped against dozens of your flailing brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts and other relatives and then pulled out and slapped unceremoniously onto a hard surface while you desperately try to breathe...
I mean, that's not really your fault. You were just swimming along, minding your own business and hanging out with your numerous shoal-relatives when that net comes out of nowhere and hauls you in. Isn't that so?

But when you are a lone fish and you see a dangling, tantalizing nibble that appears to be just hanging around in the water in front of you and despite the tingling of some natural instinct passed down from your fishy forefathers, you decide to wrap your mouth around it and - floooshhh - you didn't notice the line attached to it and the hook may or may not be embedded through your lip and you're pulled up and tossed into a bucket and left to flounder until you are dead, wondering dimly why you didn't listen to your parents or pay more attention in school.

Really, I wonder, how often do you be that lone fish that gives in to temptation, and then have no one else to blame but yourself?