When you have crappy taste and questionable ideas of what colors 'go together', you can imagine my stress when shopping. Now, when I pick out a clothing item, I generally stick with brands I know. That's at least one-half of the battle. Drake just rolls his eyes when I pick the shocking lemon yellow t-shirt. He just can't believe some of my clothing choices.
Examples: The Christmas gift I wanted the most from him in 2013 was a Flying Squirrel shirt from the Richmond Double A baseball team. I mean who wouldn't want a bright red t-shirt with a flying squirrel stamped on it. The picture sort of looks like the squirrely version of Mighty Mouse. (If you're too young to know who MM is, google him!) Another one of my fav t-shirts is my black shirt with silver emblems advertising the Austin Girls Roller Derby League. I got it at a game. I got a great blog out of that Mother's Day gift, and an even better t-shirt.
Clothing picks have a limited financial downside. Usually, for me anyway, it's less than a $20 risk especially when I shop on-line. In the past, I have had no trouble at all with the non-clothing items I've selected on-line. I've bought cameras, TVs, kitchen devices, beds, bed frames, chairs, as well as the easy stuff like books and CDs. I was confident of my prowess until I started shopping for area rugs for the Arizona duplex.
WOW! Did you know there are more than 5000 choices for rugs on-line? Even using filters and narrowing, narrowing, narrowing, there were more than 1000 to look at. I began to have rug fatigue. Still, I slogged on.
Finally, finally, finally, I managed to pick one. Then I ran it by Drake. That process is pretty much how all shopping goes at our house. I look, and look and look and winnow, winnow, winnow. Then, Drake gets involved. So, I was pretty confident with my choice verified by Mr. Tasteful himself. Then the rugs arrived. Boy, what a disappointment. They were thin and cheap looking, and as the icing, they were damaged. For brand new rugs, they looked like they'd spent about three years in the lobby of a heavily used motel. Feeling without a choice, we decided to return them. Usually, that's when the real 'fun' starts. The process was a pleasant surprise. I have to give Overstock.com high kudos - they made it easy, and even gave me a prepaid shipping label, so we didn't have to pay the return shipping. That's not trivial when the package weighs almost 50 pounds.
Back to rug shopping. This time, I'm less worried about the quality of the rugs ordered than I am about our outside the box choice. Waiting on pins and needles, but at least now, I'm an old hand at returns. Here's crossing my fingers. I'm curious: What's your shopping story?
