Yesterday, my friend H and I played hooky from work in favor of taking my father’s car for a joyride and spending the day together shopping. Now, I didn’t really steal my father’s car, he’s in Florida right now visiting my grandfather and gave it to me to use for the week while he’s away. Right now, my father’s driving around in a Mustang, he literally just sent me pictures, and as much as I love his car, I must admit, I’m a bit jealous.

So, I picked H up from her place before noon and, after a pit stop at DD for lattes, we set off to our first destination of stores. H had to exchange something in VS, so that was our first stop. We must have been there for over an hour easy and though we both walked out with a little pink-stripped bag, I definitely dropped a lot more money there than she did.

Our next stop was Pier1 to browse and so I could look at the snowflake ornaments that I had been coveting online. I probably would have ordered them, but I had seen in the item description that they were five and a half inches in circumference and I figured that they would be better to see in person first and then decide after. It was a good thing that I hadn’t purchased them, because they looked nothing like what I thought they would and, very easy breakability. Alas, there will be no snowflake ornaments for me this year.

After briefly walking into a few other stores, we were running out of steam and decided to hop back in the car and grab a bite to eat at this delicious Japanese restaurant called Wild Ginger. It was only my second time eating there, H frequents there a lot, and the food was just as good as I remembered it to be. The one problem…I don’t eat fish or seafood, which is fine, but the Japanese restaurant in my neighborhood makes, what I like to call fake sushi, or as they call it, spicy chicken rolls. Of course the chicken is cooked, because otherwise that would just be gross and, might I add, highly unsanitary, but my point to this is that I cannot find this anywhere else. So, aside from that, I really do love Wild Ginger.

Next, we got back in the car and made our way to Crate & Barrel so I could pick up the ornaments that I had ordered from them. After walking the entire length of the store multiple times and after I had retrieved my box of ornaments, which although was big, was so light I swore that there was nothing inside of it although I had in fact viewed the contents, we walked back over to the register so that H could pay for her items. Midway across the store, I asked H what she had thought of this vase that I had been eyeing practically the whole time we had been there and she really loved it. There was no price so I asked a sales associate to help me and, when I found out that it was about half the price that I had thought it was going to be, bought it immediately.

We briefly attempted to go into one more store, but we were pooped and decided to retire back at H’s place for a while, we had in fact been shopping for nearly five hours at that point.

About half an hour later, I left H at home and headed down to Wantagh to have dinner with my Aunt and Grandmother, in heavy traffic and was jealous of H being at home. After good conversation and a nice dinner, I headed back out on the road for home and was so happy to see it that I vowed never to leave it again, but, it’s a good thing that homes are so forgiving, because I broke that vow already.

The first thing that I did last night once I was home, was immediately open up the box containing my vase to make sure that it had not broken. It emerged from what looked like a sea of packaging paper in perfect condition. I hugged it to my body, put it on my table and have been staring at it ever since.