Shopping Lists and Watch Bands

"Are you ready?" Andrew begged, rather than asked. He almost always manages to be ready before I am.

"I think so," I said, going over the mental list of things to remember.

The baby was ready, I had a diaper, I had the stuff for DI, I had the shopping list. Oh, wait.

"What did I do with the shopping list?" I asked. I had just finished writing it down. I checked my pockets. It wasn't there.

"What did I do with it?" I asked again.

"Retrace your steps," Andrew advised.

We walked all around the house looking for that blasted list. I had brushed my hair so we checked the bathroom. I had gotten Rachel pants so we checked her room. We walked all around the house checking every room. That list was no where to be found.

"Are you sure it's not in your pocket?" Andrew asked.

"Yes," I said, checking again, "It's not here."

I sat down, wrote out a new shopping list, ripped it off the pad of paper, folded it in half and stuck it in my pocket. As I did so I felt something already in my pocket so I pulled it out.

There was the other shopping list.

"How did that get in there?" I asked, "It was not in there before. I checked. Twice!"

"Yeah, I'm sure it wasn't in there. I was holding onto it and just slipped it into your pocket when you weren't looking..." Andrew joked.

Seriously I have no idea how I checked my pockets twice and didn't find the list in there. I suppose our shopping trip would have been fine with either list. They were exactly the same except for one item on each list and we probably could have lived without either item.

While we were out shopping we went to get Andrew's watch fixed. Again. I have been to that same watch store four times in the last two months.

I first went in a few days before Valentine's Day to get Andrew a new strap. His watch tragically broke our first day in Jordan and he had been without it ever since. He'd mentioned his sad watchless state probably at least once a month for the past two years, perhaps more often than that even, so I finally broke down and went to get it fixed. When they returned it to me they gave me a free coupon to get it sized since Andrew wasn't there with me that day.

We returned to the store to have it sized. They ended up having to put the band on all over again because whoever did it the first time did it backwards. Andrew was very happy for a few weeks.

Then a few weeks ago Rachel was acting up in church so Andrew gave her his watch. She loves anything shiny and it made her quiet so we let her keep it and chew on it for a while. The next day, the pin fell off the strap and although we found the pin we couldn't find one of the sprigs, rendering the watch useless once more.

It sat on Andrew's dresser for a a week or more until we took it back into the store to have it fixed again. We mentioned that we had just had the strap put on and they fixed it for free.

Then last week Andrew was on campus, rushing between classes. He opened a door and walked on through, but his watch got caught and broke. Again. Both of the pins were bent so we had to get new ones. We went to get it fixed when we went out grocery shopping on Saturday.

I told Andrew this is the last time we're getting it fixed. It's starting to get a little embarrassing heading to that store every other week. We're almost on a first-name basis with everyone in the store and at some time they are bound to recognize a pattern and charge us with watch abuse or something.