I hate shopping. [editor’s note: no really- she hates it.]

And I especially hate it on a beautiful summer day when I could be doing a whole lot of anything else.

Nevertheless, sometimes you have to go buy a few things, and in North Adams if it isn’t Wal-Mart or The Dollar Tree then it’s a trip to Target.

My husband and I like to call these outings a “date.”  This is supposed to make us feel happy and in love instead of miserable and filled with dread as we consider if we have enough gas to drive the 15 miles to the store, or whether we could have postponed buying laundry soap and toilet paper just one more week.

This trip would be brief. Rod would go in his direction and I in mine. Zip, zip, meet at the register and done. And it went just that way.

Once at the register Rod gave me a Visa gift card that he wanted to use toward the purchases. There was $10 left of the original $25. We ran the card and the cashier blandly stated, “It says the card’s no good.”