Shopping. With A Man.

Shopping with Tom is....

....an adventure.

And that’s just my polite way of putting it.

We went to Kohls on Saturday. Have I mentioned that I love Kohls? Tom tried to stick me with Natalie while he wandered off to look at his things. I told him he had lost his ever-loving mind and that HE was going to take Natalie so I could look at my clothes in peace. See, Natalie is awful in Kohls. For me, at least. She’ll immediately slip out of the cart and run off. “Bye,” she’ll say sweetly and stomp away. And if I attempt to try on clothes she slithers out from underneath the changing room door. I startled this old lady when I chased Natalie in only my bra. At least it was my pink one and not the ugly tattered brown one.

“Fine,” Tom grumbled and took the cart with him. Because Natalie is a perfect angel for him. It’s just not fair.

I had Tommy with me. And okay, Tommy isn’t always patient but at least he doesn’t try to escape. He just trailed behind me as I checked out clothes.

“What do you think about this?” I asked, holding up a pink shirt.

He shrugged. “It’s pink.”

Really? No kidding?

“What about this one?” I held a button up green top.

Tommy made a face. “It’s the color of poop.”

Um. What the hell has he been eating?

By the time Tom returned, I had several shirts and dresses slung over my arm to try on.

“I’ve shopped the entire store and you’re still basically in the same spot,” Tom said, frowning.

“I was looking,” I explained. I mean, that’s what you DO in a store. You don’t just blaze past everything.

Tom sighed. “Are you almost done?”

I held the clothes up. “I need to try these on. And then I need to check out the rest of the store.”

“I already did that. There’s nothing interesting,” Tom assured me.

“I’ll see for myself.” I went into a stall and started trying on things. One shirt made me look totally fat. Another made me look skinny, but I could barely breathe in it. But still, breathing is overrated right? If it made me look skinny, I could deal with not breathing. I tried on several dresses as well because over the summer we always take family photos. I showed Tom one dress and he was all,

“Looks like something your Mom would wear. You could be twins.”

Now. My Mom wears some nice things so I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

He shrugged. “It’s just…your Mom would wear that dress. If you want to look like your Mom, get it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Another man waiting for his wife sucked in his breath. “Wow, dude. Fix it. Fix it now,” he advised.

Tom put a fake smile on his face. “You look lovely, dear.”

But he was obviously just SAYING that. Ugh, I hate shopping with men. I should have gone to the store with Amanda.

I ended up buying another dress. Though when I came out in that, Tom just went, “Mmmm.”

“Is that a good mmm or a bad mmmm?” I wondered.

“It’s great. You done?” All Tom wanted to do was LEAVE. Could he not just tell me what he THOUGHT OF THE FLIPPING DRESS?

After I finished with the clothes, I checked out the other sections of the store. I found this ultra adorable dress for Natalie and Tom went, “Doesn’t she have a dress like that?”

“Well. Sort of. Only that one is in green. This is brown,” I explained.

“She has enough clothes. She probably has more clothes than the both of us combined,” Tom said.

He really makes shopping suck.

I put the dress back on the rack angrily.

“NOW where are you going?” Tom whined as I stomped off into Tommy’s section.

“Tommy needs jeans!” I yelled. He always needs jeans. The kid wears out the knees of his pants so fast. And no, I won’t put patches on them. That just screams NERD, BEAT ME UP in the second grade.

When I started going through the photo frames, I thought Tom was going to pass out from anger.

For the rest of the time at Kohls all I heard from him was: “What now? Why do we need that? We’d never use that. You don’t even DRINK margaritas so why are you looking at a margarita machine? Huh? You’re just looking at it just because? That doesn’t make sense, Amber. You almost done? Wait, why are looking at the flip flops? Don’t you have flip flops? Oh, you don’t have them in blue? Well, pardon me. CAN WE JUST GO?”

“You suck,” I told Tom. “I am NEVER shopping with you again.”

I always say that. It’s never true. It should be true though.

We were headed towards check out and I bet Tom was thinking, “Hallelujah, almost done.” But then I saw a shirt that caught my eye and abruptly turned.

“STOP? Where are you going?” Tom sounded panicked.

“Look. It’s the baby from The Hangover.” I held up a t-shirt with a cartoon baby strapped to the front. “That movie is just so funny, it always makes me laugh and—”

“Haha, great, it’s hilarious, are you ready to PAY?” Tom cut me off.

What an ass. And I was going to get him that shirt, too. Not anymore. I re-folded it and set it back down.

On the way out, after our stuff was mercifully paid for and bagged, Tom was all, “I’m never coming here again.”

But then again, he always says that too.