"You're just a bad shopper"

I just got the silent treatment on the phone.  My wife is a little upset with me or, more likely, she's upset that she knew hours before she was upset with me that she was going to be upset with me.   She knew what was going to happen.  I knew what was going to happen.  And it so frustrates her that it still happens. 

I'm in Salt Lake.  I drove here for work.  I had plans to go to Ikea to get some stuff for the house.  This evening I called Sarah to say I was on my way to the Swedish Megastore and wanted to know what to get.  She told me not to go.  She said she didn't yet know what the house needed and we didn't need to spend the money.  I scolded her.  "How could I be in Salt Lake and not go to Ikea?"

And if she didn't know she was going to be upset before that, then she certainly knew now.  

I went to Ikea.  I was only going to eat some meatballs, get a toy for Q and a bracket for a kitchen cabinet.  But I ate and while eating got sad.  This is Salt Lake, where people have lots of kids.  It's weird, I'll see twelve kids under the age of five and only one set of parents.  It seems biologically impossible but the adults shout out to them as if they all belong to them:  "Tyler, Britney, Emma, Jacob, Jebediah..."

And it was all these kids that had me missing my guys.  I gravitated to all brightly colored kid things and put them in my cart.  I got a cool little crane.  A set of moon and star wall lights.  A red rug.  (A rug?  Wtf?)  So I wandered the store and I got lost.  Several times I even went against the arrows. 

I bought shelves, a purple lamp shade and stuffed rabbit driving a carrot car.

I had a plan to sift through my bounty and see what I should take back.  Just then a voice over the loud speaker said I had five minutes before the store closed.  I sprinted to the checkout.

I got back to the hotel and the valet guy asked how my trip to Ikea was.  I told him to look at my back seat.  It's filled with junk.  It looks like a grabber machine.  

I called Sarah and, with a glimmer of hope, told her everything.  I thought there might be a chance she'd encourage me to bring it all home. 

Phone call is over.  I'm going back to Ikea.