Saturday, November 06, 2004
 

Hopeless, Just Hopeless

I went to Target tonight for a baby shower gift. Child-related things, let alone baby-related things, are not my forte. As a result, the Target trip quickly turned into a fiasco.

Most of the items on the mother-to-be's list had already been purchased (I had gotten the date of the shower wrong and had hence inadvertently waited until the last moment to get the gift), so there weren't many things for me to choose from. Of these things, I could only identify part of them by name. Not only that, baby things are so small that the store carries tons of items, and it's hard to locate what you're looking for, even with an item number.

So I became confused. Why does a baby need a dishwasher basket? [answer: tops of bottles etc.] Why does a baby need a bath pillow? What is a baby bath pillow? [never found that one, don't know]

A woman standing next to me in the store was also baby-gift-shopping, as indicated by the printed list in her hand. I finally appealed to her for help: what's a layette? what's a onesie? what does NB stand for?

I think she thought I was more than a little bit slow, but I eventually learned that a onesie is a garment (I was pretty sure it was some kind of clothing) and that NB is newborn. I neglected to ask her about the layette and am hence still not sure what that is.

I eventually purchased a washcloth 10 pack (laundering instructions on the back mention that you can iron them. A) who irons washcloths? B) what moron irons baby washcloths?), a "onesie" (that's a stupid word), and the dishwashing contraption. The gifts bear no real relation to each other, so I suppose I'll just plead total ignorance (which is true) and neglect to mention that I screwed up the shower date and waited too late to shop.

I felt much more comfortable purchasing tweezers and Drano.

Reading: film stuff, students' work, biography of Albert Fish
Listening: Court TV
Current Obsession: unclawggin' them thar drains.
Alice: loves her latest toy, a collapsible cat tunnel.

Elvisette philosophized at 11:06 PM