Shopping. The ritual that binds all of us women together, or so I thought, until I tried it with my own daughters. Okay, pushing hormones aside for a moment, I thought to myself yesterday, well, Eldest goes shopping all the time with her friends and she always comes back with hilarious stories.  Youngest goes with me and it isn’t an unpleasant experience. Why don’t the three of us go shopping together and create a moment?

Well, it was more like the moment from Hell! Honestly, whatever possessed me to get those two in the car at the same time, to take them  shopping for BOTH of them at the same time, to expect them to be civil to each other? I DON’T KNOW! 

Nostalgia crept in as I thought back to when my mother would take my sister and I shopping on Saturdays and how much fun it was. Oh really? Wait a minute. I also remember being a whiny complaining little sister because we were done shopping for me and now I had to wait while mom shopped for my sister. In all fairness (imagine tongue in cheek), what was a little girl to do when her much older sister was shopping? Her section wasn’t nearly as much fun as mine. Argh!

Uh oh! I was doomed to repeat history with my own children. Good times. Youngest was in rare form, touching everything, annoying her big sister. Eldest was in rare form with her lovable teenage attitude. Did I say lovable? I meant obnoxious.I thought they might have been synonyms, sorry.

“Can’t the two of you just get along for five minutes?” Who was I kidding? They used up that five minutes three years ago!  After a couple of hours of putting out fires between my lovable daughters, one dress bought, dozens of shoes tried on and left behind, I was ready for the loony bin (please interpret that as a bathtub filled with tequila).

Shopping lesson learned: Divide and conquer! And have some tequila anyway!

Hugs,

Deena Remiel