"Did you find everything you needed today?"

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Yes, thank you, but it took all afternoon wandering through aisles and aisles of stuff that I don’t need now or ever, and getting stressed out that I was losing precious time I wanted to spend with my family.
This happens almost every time I go into Walmart or some other mega-store. Our local Walmart is big enough to be a village. Seriously. I’ve been around the world, and some ancient villages really and truly would have fit inside the Walmart, with room to spare.
Yesterday’s holdup: birthday candles. After getting misdirected a couple of times, I did find my way to the party section: FIVE aisles of cards, hats, dishes, decorations, and more party favors than you can imagine. I was feeling pretty good with myself because I’ll be throwing several kid birthday parties in the next couple of weeks (I have 3 kids and they all have February birthdays) and I was stocking up everything I needed for all of them. Forward thinking, right? The mom next to me in the party aisle was also thinking in advance – she was stockpiling stuff for next Halloween. I guess foresight is a matter of perspective.
Anyway, I eventually saw the candles and found myself sorting through all the sparklers, Spiderman candles, animal candles and trick candles to finally grab what I was looking for: regular, good, old-fashioned birthday candles.
So I always smirk a little when I arrive at the cashier and they ask “Did you find everything you needed today?” Yes, I did. I have sore feet. I wasted a lot of time. I have a chain of text messages back and forth with my husband explaining why things were taking so long. But yes, I did find everything.
Continue reading at Eyes On Heaven.

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