Baby products are not meant to break the bank when you don't even have a baby.

Kevin will kill me when he reads this, but I dropped $70 on a baby gate yesterday. It is packable and is made of canvas and mesh. It's totally sporty and also came with a spiffy travel case, which I thought would be pretty clever if we were to take our little book-chewer to one of our fellow bibliophiles' houses.

When I get to the register at Target, the chick rings it up and I almost freak when my bill comes to almost $100! Instead of saying "No, I don't want that," I go ahead and buy it. I justify it on the way home, though. I do. I think of those cute little babies we will have some day and how it will eventually come in good use, and how it's almost like a piece of our outdoor gear....I mean, we certainly don't balk at spending that much on a trip to REI.

I stuff (hide) the receipt in my purse. When I get home I assign Kevin the task of assembling the new purchase. I make guacamole. I hear him mutter "this thing is a piece of shit" and I gasp. Is it really, baby? I better not have dropped $70 on a freaking faulty baby gate!

This morning I put Lucy in the kitchen behind the gate and damn if she didn't look just like the picture on the box of the forlorn little puppy peering out from behind the mesh. Once I get to work I think about that gate, pick up the phone and give Home Depot a ring, and 3 hours later I'm driving in my car home on my lunch break with a perfectly functional baby gate that cost $12.99.

So now I'm all hot and sweaty from driving all over town in search of the perfect, cheap baby gate. The moral of this story, if you're wondering, is that I hate shopping. I suck at it. I get frustrated and tired, make poor decisions, and usually return the shit I buy anyway.