Furniture shopping

All week I had been promising E that we would go shopping for bedroom furniture on Friday. Yes, I realize it was a holiday, but since when do retail chains pay attention to holidays... especially in a sluggish economy?

Apparently the rules are different in my po-dunk little neck of the woods. Many of the furniture, and other retail stores were either closed, or closed early. Seriously? Do you need to close at 3pm? The fireworks don't even start until 9. Sheesh.

As usual, E was driving. I was navigating. (Which, if you know me and my sense of direction, or lack thereof, you know what a scary proposition that is.) So I was taking the opportunity to try and teach him about highway signs and how they're labeled, etc. Its possible I was trying to teach him other things as well... once I get in teaching mode, its sometimes hard to turn me off. (I know, you're probably shocked by this.)


So we're looking through the furniture places and this is what he takes a picture of:

Not furniture, but the ceramic accessories.

So we're driving along and suddenly we hear a THUD! E pulls over immediately, while I am trying very hard to go into denial. Once in an empty parking lot, the scrape along the door is obvious. Equally obvious is the water dripping from it. We had passed a truck just before whatever-it-was hit us. Either there were kids laying down in the bed of the truck and one threw a water balloon (possible, but not likely), or something flew out of the bed of the truck. E thinks it was ice. It was a shitty truck. I suppose there could have been an open cooler in the back. Either way: crapcrapcrap!

Later, my navigation skills helped us miss our target, so I instructed E to find a place to turn around. We were on a four-lane road. Suddenly I hear screeching tires and honking horns and I realize that E did not look before he tried to change lanes from the right lane to the left. The horns scare him and he instinctively tries to go back to the right lane, again not looking. More horn honking. There was a lot of things I wanted to scream, but I didn't. I calmly just told him to stop so the offended drivers could pass. Still calm, I told him to check and make sure the way was clear and pull off to a side street on the right.

I thought we had checked the "look before you change lanes" box, but obviously I was mistaken. Once we were on the side street, I was like, "You have GOT to look before you change lanes." And he just started yelling... that I had been cramming his head full of useless crap (the highway signs -- 3 or so hours earlier), blah, blah, blah. Needless to say, I took over the driving.

I happened to see another furniture store and pulled in the parking lot. Oddly, they were still open so I asked E if he wanted to go in. "I don't give a shit." Alrighty then. I went in. He's a big boy, he could either sit in the hot car by himself, or he could come inside where it was cool. He was right behind me by the time I walked through the door. While we did see some furniture he sorta liked (at prices that made me think they bought the stuff from the technical institute), he found a massaging chair. I just walked around the store and let him get acquainted with the magical chair. Holy crap, you guys, he was in SUCH a better mood after about 5 minutes! I wonder if they'll kick us out if we keep going back about once a week?

Post massage, we found this sculpture of a guy taking a crap on someone's desk.

Yes, of course I get it. But he was in such a better mood and we thought the sculpture said, "Whoops! I just took a crap on your lawn!" Ok, so we're 5.

Next stop, Sears. Been thinking about buying a new fridge. He was in LOVE with this fridge because it had a space for drinks.
Seriously, how good a mood do you have to be in to take pics of a fridge??!

And THEN he saw this.


Major appliances. Are you feelin' me now?

And then his dad called to ask him a computer question and he was in HEAAAAVEEEEN!

Long story short on the furniture, we never did find anything. So the saga continues.

I'm on a mission from God.