Hell is shoe shopping

I’m still sick. Damn cold just hangs on. Now I’ve got a nice cough that irritates my sore throat.

I thought hell was shoe shopping with my wife. I was wrong. With her, I could always leave her to it and go to another store or another department. But with my 10-year-old daughter, I can’t really do that. Twice since Christmas we’ve gone out to look for boots. Yesterday evening, after nagging about it all day, we set out for the Sprawl-Mart in Norman. Once in the shoe department I realize she is wearing flip-flops. No socks, of course. I scold her for that, but we go ahead and look because on the long, long previous venture we pretty much determined what size she needs. Ugh. I eventually did leave her in the department, along with the 4-year-old girl, and took the boys with me to get food items. We came back to find the two girls sitting on a bench in the shoe department, legs crossed, pained expressions of their faces. Yup. They had to pee. They’d just gone at Braum’s, where we ate supper. And had been told to go before we left home.

Lord, spare me any more shopping with girls. Yeah, right. It’s only just begun to get bad.