Glasses & glosses

What does a pair of cheap reader glasses and 2 glosses (technically 1 gloss and 1 lip balm) have in common?  H purchased them for me from Walmart one Friday night while we were out shopping for a wedding card to go with the wedding gift we were going to give the next morning.  

The readers are +1.00 magnification, but they don't really work.  See, my normal vision is fine - better than perfect, in fact.  I bought them in anticipation of being called for jury duty in  a few weeks......  I was going to go into more details why, but the paranoid schizo on my shoulder is advising I talk about makeup instead....

In every major superstore I visit, a walkthrough of the beauty aisles is a necessary requirement.  It's a ritual that if skipped will leave me feeling anxious, empty, and irritated.  

So Walmart was no exception - I had to peruse through their makeup/beauty section.  And to my delight I found the new Maybelline Baby Lips in Melon Mania.  I had been looking for the new ones since last year and never found it.  I should have figured, of course, that the product I was looking for would be in the store I don't go to very often, if at all.  Not gonna lie, a tiny kid inside me did a little Flintstone kick when I spotted this.  Yabba dabba doo!

Then.... I spotted the new L'oreal Shine Caresse Stain.  This insignificant, meaningless little thing caused me to have a huge fight with myself in the middle of Walmart.  If my inner selves were recorded on mic, it would go something like this:

Id: O man! That's the new lip stains!  How nice does it look! How wonderful if I could own it!

Ego: It's all packaging.  They make it new and shiny so that I'll want to buy it.  Don't fall for the trap!

Id: It's so shiny!  And it's going to feel great on my lips and leave this glossy stain that will make me look like a superstar!

Ego: Get real - no lip product can make anyone a superstar.  It's probably not going to be glossy and the stain will probably fade quicker than I can return it.  And it's probably so drying my lips will shed sheets of skin.  Remember the incident last November when I needed medical help?

Id: I don't have anything like this, and I really want it, really really bad.  How satisfying would it be to just buy it and have it as my own, when I've lusted over it for so many weeks!

Ego: But I already have so many lip products!  And I already found the Baby Lips - I can't possibly add more.  Let's be good and stick to our plan of not over-indulging.

Id, turned Gollum: It's so shiny!  We wants it! WE WANTS IT NOW!

The super-ego, always the silent mediator, wise but not infallible, listened to both sides intensely.  

Super-ego: I have many lip products, but none the same as this new one.  It's true that I have lusted over this for a few weeks now, which means I won't soon forget about it.  And if I don't get it now, I'll be thinking about how and when to get it in the future, which will be unpleasant for all concerned.  So, I get to pick out one to take home.  And if H is treating, then I am still being good and not indulging myself; he is indulging me!

In the end, of course, the id was very satisfied and the ego was appeased, and I got to go home with a shiny new Caresse Stain in Pink Rebellion.  And all slept very peacefully that night... until the morning when we realized we did not have enough wrapping paper for the wedding gift!