His New World V

Costco was always a nightmare and I'm not really sure why I expected it to be different here; it's actually more stressful when one has to try and stumble through their grade nine french to interact with the cashier.  We bought almost everything he needed for his dorm room including a small fridge and for some reason the four of us were standing at his Civic shocked that it wouldn't fit the four of us and all of his new stuff including a fridge.  I looked over at Karen who was holding hands with my daughter who appeared to be wearing a new sweater that resembled the one she had under her arm.  "Karen where did you get those sweaters?"  She looked at me sideways like I was the one who was crazy until I pointed to my daughter and pulled the one out from under her arm.  "I didn't even see you go through  cashier".  Well clearly there is a reason for that...because she didn't, and made my daughter an accomplice no less.  None of us could stop laughing at this point as we had things in a cart piled higher than the car and Karen was accidentally teaching my daughter to shoplift.  My son and I walked the fridge back into the store so they could hold it for us until we came back this evening to get it when it was only the two of us.  I think Karen was going to go back and pay for the sweaters but by the time they were finished packing the car and my daughter was in her car seat we had forgotten all about it and were on our way to Ikea...the second worst place on earth that day.  It didn't matter though.  I would have gone to a thousand stores and waited in line for hours just to have this opportunity with my son.  This was important to him and I wanted to make the experience one he would always remember and look back at over the years as a time we spent together; I felt sad that his father couldn't come along too so I took a lot of pictures so he would at least have the visual.  Karen and my daughter tested beds and couches as we pushed the cart around and filled it with everything he needed and a lot of stuff he probably didn't.

It took half a dozen trips to get everything in the house and we all flopped down on the couch hoping at some point the wind would blow through the windows.  We were discussing dinner arrangements in old Montreal when my daughter came around the corner carrying a dinosaur I had never seen before, I looked over at Karen, "You have got to be fucking kidding me".  Not one of us even noticed her walk out of Ikea with the stuffed toy...Karen was on probation for the rest of the trip...