All chocked up

I’ve been coughing up lovely phlegm balls as part of my recovery from bronchitis. Yesterday was quite ugly, but today things were settling down. I even felt up to the ultimate endurance test, a trip to the jewelry store with Gina.

Gina’s decided to give most of the women in her family Pandora charm bracelets for Christmas, and when she saw that a local jeweler was having a spend $100, get a free bracelet promotion, she hunkered down at the computer to plan her attack. She had printouts with screenshots of each bead on her list. Well-worn Pandora catalogs marked up with our nieces’ requests. Plans to upgrade the free bracelets to the next higher clasp. I’m sure she would have gotten a blueprint of the store if she had more time to prepare. You would have thought we were invading a village.

As General Gina plotted her attack with such precision, we didn’t want to get to the store to find their supplies wiped out. So Gina decided to see if they’d put our purchase on layaway, so we could pick them up during the sale without any resistance. We headed to the store with Ryan in tow, content in his stroller as always, and Gina produced her road map to victory and five upgraded bracelets. She conveniently worked it out that two of the bracelets would be hers, but as the architect of the invasion, she felt herself entitled.

I entertained myself with Ryan as Gina executed her plan, but was called to step in as the financier. The clerk told me the total. My bronchial tubes rebelled as I chocked beside the Pandora displays, but I managed to make it a few steps out the door before I was overwhelmed. I bent over, my hands on my knees, a few yards from the jewelry beachhead, and spit a loogey on their parking lot which will stand for days to come. I don’t know if anyone in the store witnessed my uncouth display.

All Gina had to say was, “Nice.”