Illinois is for lovers

There are two things you can always count on when the Best Friend and I get together: 1) we will go shopping and spend more money than we plan to; and 2) we will consume mass quantities of chocolate and other sweets, often in lieu of a normal meal.

Yesterday was certainly a prime example. We spent most of the day shopping. The closest shopping to the Best Friend is an outdoor mall in Skokie. Yes, that's right, an outdoor mall. I don't know what would possess someone in the suburbs of Chicago to build a mall where you have to go outside to walk between stores, but we braved the cold, all in the name of contributing to the economy, obvs.

The Best Friend and I have a rhythm to our shopping that we can never quite duplicate with other friends. Our endurance is greatly heightened. For some reason being together enables us to hit more stores with fewer breaks. This leads, of course, to greatly increased spending. This used to be a real problem when we lived in the same state, but I don't have too much guilt about it now, since we see each other only once or twice a year (my most exciting purchases yesterday were this and this). For the Best Friend, on the other hand, the buyer's remorse is just part of the fun. Generally as she's trying something on and I'm telling her how good she looks in it (genuinely, too, because one thing we never do is give false compliments), she looks at the price tag and says something like, "I really want it, but it costs x. If it was just a little cheaper I could justify it… But look how cute it is. I love it!" This is my cue to say something along the lines of, "But it's black, so it's versatile. And when you find something that fits you so well, you should really snap it up." If it's a bigger ticket item, it gets put on hold. Then we move on to other stores, occasionally mulling over whether or not she'll go back and buy it. Inevitably she does, which leads us to the justification stage, in which we discuss the many uses for the item she has just bought, all the different things already in her wardrobe that will go with it, and all the situations that it will be just perfect for. All this will be repeated (for/by both of us) when we get home and try on all our new clothes for each other again. It may sound silly, but it's a routine we've developed over 10 years, and it works for us.

After our exhausting afternoon of shopping, there was really nothing we could do except go to Ethel's and eat chocolate fondue for dessert (see #2 above). It didn't hit us that it was Valentine's Day until we sat down.

Nothing says romance like sitting at a table for two surrounded by shopping bags, stabbing a gourmet marshmallow with a fondue fork and dipping it in chocolate.