Most of the time, I really am not a huge fan of shopping.

What started out as a quick trip last night to buy my mother a birthday card turned into an all-out shopping spree (at least for me it was an all-out shopping spree), fueled by the thoughts I'd been having all day yesterday that I hated the shoes I was wearing (old, smelly and cracked leather make for woeful footwear). I don't do this often, but about once, maybe twice a year, I realize I hate all my shoes and they hurt my feet because they haven't aged well since I wear them to death, and want new ones. (This goes along with my feeling once or twice a year that I hate all my clothes - especially suits during session - and want new ones.) So if I go shopping a couple times a year for these things, I tell myself it's not so bad. By the time I've been shopping for shoes for about 20 minutes, though, I usually want to just drop everything and leave, but I buck up and make it through. (It's a bit longer for clothes - I can last an hour before I feel the tentacles of Hatred for All Designers, Retail Stores and Other Shoppers begin to slither around my neck. I'm never really sure if the breath-squeezed-out-of-me feeling is from getting mad that I'm stuck in a store with people I don't like, a strange version of claustrophobia or displeasure that my miserly self is spending $$$ on stuff. And yet, once I get the stuff home and I like it, I'm usually a happy camper.)

So I went shoe shopping at DSW last night, and experienced several minor miracles: I don't know if it was the Monday night thing or the economy thing, but the foot traffic was very light. I hate fighting other people through crowded aisles to take a gander at merchandise. Second minor miracle was that they had my size in most of the styles I really liked. Amazing! Even more amazing was that, on average, they were all half off. The shoes I'm wearing today were originally $80 and I got them for 18 bucks. So I feel slightly justified, and I can be proud that I held out against a fifth pair because I realized it looked too similar to two of the other pairs I purchased and went against the sixth pair because there are only so many pairs of patent leather shoes a girl can own. Anyway, I have shoes to wear to work that are not falling apart! Yay! And now I can be free from that place for a good many months.

Add a trip to Target and the post office, and I got all the errands complete, didn't want to punch anything, and even remembered the birthday card, which was the point of the trek-about in the first place.