It's working

Dean had a fabulous birthday yesterday (and thank you for the well wishes!). We had family visiting for the day; my nephew and his wife in from Chicago, along with my brother and his wife up from Connecticut, all participants in Dean's master-plan day of fun (out to lunch at Legal's, all the guys to see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie, a quick stop at Toys R Us to use the gift card from grandma and grandpa, back to our house for some Mario Kart racing, take-out Chinese and homemade chocolate/chocolate birthday cake). It IS good to be 9.

While the guys were in the movie, we women headed over to a nearby mall to stroll -- the weather was less-than-charming (sleet! snow!) and none of us had a particular need or agenda so it seemed the best plan. OK, I sort of had a secret-agenda hope of heading over to a huge fabric/crafts store in the area, but the weather and the fact that it seemed a little too self-serving held me back. Anyway, I was amazed by how easy my resolve seems to be holding -- I really had no desire to buy any clothes for myself and I believe that going a year without clothing purchases is going to work. The only store that almost got me was Crate and Barrel, but even the siren call of kitchenwares fell ultimately on deaf ears. I did get Dean a new battery for his watch, and the Steve Irwin memorial wristband he'd been wanting, but otherwise bought nothing and had no desire to buy anything. My nephew and his wife are expecting their first baby in July, so I stored up plenty of baby gift ideas, but I do now walk through a maze of stores thinking how we just don't need any of it, and it feels freeing. Oh, the perfume lady accosted me in the big department store -- disgusting. Couldn't wait to wash the stuff off. But that's nothing new.... I know I wouldn't have been able to hold back had we indeed hit the fabric store (I even had a dream about Timtex the other night, and about a woman who was telling me about an alternate product that was just like Timtex) so it's just as well we didn't venture there. Guess that will be the real test for me at some point -- to spend time in a fabric store and come out empty-handed.