JUST STAY CALM & BREATHE. THEN SHOP.

So I'm bored.

I decided to fill up the car with gas, and then do some exploring. It should be easy enough, right? I mean, I've got a map. So I fill up at the seedest gas station I've ever been to, and then pull out onto the road, just looking around to see what there is. I'm staying in the middle lane (of 4) so that I don't accidentally get on the interstate or anything.

You know that sceen in Clueless, when Cher is driving around with Dionne and her boyfriend (his name escapes me right now) and they 'accidentally' get on the freeway?

I just totally re-enacted that scene, sans all the people yelling at me (and sadly, there was no little old lady to flip me off). I just got of on the next exit, and had to get help from a trucker, 'cause the road was so clogged that I couldn't see across the road. Fun, right?

My spidey/designer- senses are finely tuned though because what should I happen to come across after I got off I-75 at some random exit? A place called Garden Ridge.

Holy. Shit.

There really are no words. (Except holy shit, of course.) Picture Michael's, Marge's, Nelson's, Old Tyme Pottery, Pier One, and Party City in one gi-normous building the size of the Boeing airplane hangar. I actually felt like crying upon entering (although that could have been a reaction to the greeezy lunch counter smell you get when you go through the door, thanks to the greezy lunch counter).

I managed to excape fairly unharmed, although a blue and white pitcher, a ceramic dish with three bowls just like I was drooling at at Crate & Barrel, a Country Home magazine, and the absolutely coolest wood block stamps from India, some of which still have the ink on them from printing on the fabric decided that they needed to come live at my house.

I'm still feeling a little weak from the experience so I'm just going to go to Barnes & Noble for a cafe au'lait and some free book reading until I regain my emotional balance. From the store, not the interstate. I'm fine with the interstate.

Foofty.