Day 68 — Ugh x 3: Shopping Futility

Day Three in what seems like an unend­ing string of “ugh” shop­ping days. I seem to take one step for­ward and then one step back and I’m def­i­nitely not fol­low­ing my own shop­ping advice.

Mar­shalls — ($32.41)
The Hus­band and I had an errand to run up north so we took the oppor­tu­nity to stop by Mar­shalls to return The Son’s bas­ket­ball shorts and track pants.

Tar­get — ($21.61)
After drop­ping The Hus­band off at his office, I pro­ceeded to Tar­get to return the pic­ture frame I’d purchased.

Tar­get — $126.02
Last Sun­day the Tar­get sale flyer listed pic­ture frames as being on sale so I wanted to make sure I returned my frame and looked for alter­nate frames by the end of the week. The sale was extremely dis­ap­point­ing but I was deter­mined to find just one frame for an 8x10 of the kids together.

I ended up buy­ing two frames. The first was a large frame with a dou­ble white mat that fits an 8x10 photo ($17.89). But it turns out I only have one 8x10 with a black back­ground — a really cute close-up photo of the kids lying down look­ing straight up at the cam­era. Though this photo is adorable, it would not have been my first pri­or­ity for fram­ing. I’m still unde­cided as to whether or not to keep the frame.

The sec­ond frame is one of those really cool “float­ing” frames — the pho­tos are sand­wiched between two panes of glass so it looks like the photo is float­ing ($29.99). But in this case there are two sep­a­rate lay­ers of dou­ble glass so you can float a photo col­lage on two dif­fer­ent lev­els so some pho­tos float above and oth­ers behind each other. It’s a great con­cept and look but I think it would be more effec­tive with group pho­tos of var­i­ous sizes and var­i­ous back­grounds and sub­jects. Ugh!! This frame was not on sale and will def­i­nitely go back.

I hereby resolve to take my enve­lope of pho­tos with me on any and all future photo frame shop­ping trips!

But wait the Ugh fac­tor just gets big­ger. On my way to check-out, I passed the kids’ cloth­ing depart­ment and, because I just can’t leave well enough alone, I detoured to see what they might have in the way of “swish” pants for my nephew. Wouldn’t you know it, I not only found swish pants with func­tion­ing draw­strings (a must for this skinny mini), but they’re lined with soft jer­sey knit fab­ric ($9.99). And I found a stray black hooded wind­breaker on the sale rack ($3.74) that will coor­di­nate per­fectly with the black “swish” pants. Nat­u­rally, I bought them both but now I have to return the “swish” track pants I bought for him at Mar­shalls. Yes, the very same Mar­shalls I’d made two returns to just mere hours ear­lier; the very same Mar­shalls that’s way, way north of where we live. Can we say UGH!?

The final two Tar­get pur­chases were a very hand­some Timex Expe­di­tion watch ($44.99) with an ana­log face and a small dig­i­tal dis­play. The Son des­per­ately needs a new watch for Christ­mas. This sum­mer he pointed out that he can barely close the band of his several-years-old kids-sized Timex watch around his expand­ing wrist. He didn’t want a new watch for his birth­day but chose to wait until Christmas.

The new watch is beau­ti­ful (I hope he likes it) but the band is a leather and buckle affair and I’d bet dol­lars to donuts that he will only accept a watch with the same sporty web­bing and vel­cro styled band that he’s used to wear­ing. So I also picked up a replace­ment band ($9.99). It has the added ben­e­fit of fea­tur­ing a lit­tle med­ical sym­bol on the band and includes a wal­let card for med­ical notes. As The Son is aller­gic to peni­cillin and has asthma, I thought the spe­cial watch­band and wal­let card would be a great idea.

Cash — $2.00
Two hours’ worth of park­ing on cam­pus where The Son attended bas­ket­ball practice.

I did man­age to take my own shop­ping advice once today — after leav­ing Tar­get I stopped in at a local cam­era store to research sub-compact dig­i­tal cam­eras which is what we intend to get The Daugh­ter for Christ­mas. I looked at the var­i­ous mod­els avail­able, han­dled them all, and talked to the clerk but I left the store will noth­ing but info — no pur­chases. Whew, at least I did one thing right today.

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