I am not a good shopper.  If you want something purchased, tell me to get it and I will walk into the store, pick it up and purchase it.  I will then go to a bar or a restaurant (or maybe Barnes & Noble) and spend the rest of my day.  When I am trying to think of ideas for presents, I don't go to a store and walk around - it seems so inefficient given the thousands of stores available in this world.

But last night my wife and I went shopping.  The proper description is this:  I wanted to go out for dinner and shopping was the price I paid.

Dinner was great - fondue and a bottle of wine.  Shopping was not so great.  It consisted of me following my wife from store to store, getting into trouble while she shopped.  My wife is an excellent shopper.  She knows exactly how to look like a shopper and she knows exactly how to act like a shopper.  She talks to other shoppers and finds out about other deals in other stores - something I would never do.  Here is Kate shopping a a very hip store where the jeans are already ripped when you purchase them and the t-shirts cost $90 (do they think we are idiots?  Answer: yes):



Note the shopping look.  Or is that the look upon discovering that the t-shirts are $90?  Meanwhile, here is me in the same store:

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It is easy to tell how confused I am in my button down, sweater and dark green corduroys.  My shoes aren't elongated like elf shoes (have you seen those?) or squared off on the end.  I obviously have no intention to buy a thing in this hip store so even the clerks were ignoring me amid the loud unrecognizable music and overdone cologne that filled the voids in this place.

I did like a few stores:  Restoration Hardware is nice.  I shopped too slowly in there and upset my wife.  Pottery Barn was okay.  I was able to arrange some candles to form my initials (the clerk did not like this):



I also liked a place called World Market, where I suddenly learned how to shop:



Yes, those are twelve original formula Schlitz beers (a drinkable collectors item) and five Samuel Smith Winter Welcome Ales (along with Guinness and Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, my favorite cold weather brew).  They all now safely reside in my refrigerator awaiting Tim's next visit to enjoy (hurry, up, Tim):



I also didn't mind T.J. Maxx.  If you've never been to T.J. Maxx, it is a hodgepodge of everything from clothes to food to kitchen items, all discounted.  I actually enjoyed wandering around, looking for gift ideas and maybe a little something for myself:



I doubt that I will be invited on the next shopping trip.  My daughter is a better shopping partner for my wife.  Sixteen-year-olds shop really really well.  They share ideas, express excitement about some napkins or a pattern on some piece of pottery.  They agree that a "top" is cute.  And they generally don't annoy other shoppers.  I am safe. . .until I want to eat out again.