A Love Story

If you have ever visited my home then you are well aware of my love affair with Pottery Barn. While all of my furnishings may or may not actually be from Pottery Barn, I like to think they have that Pottery Barn-chic look to them. I also desperately need my daily fix of "PB smack"(as I like to refer to it.) Whether it be reading PBkids, PBteen, PB Bed & Bath, or plain ol' Pottery Barn catalogues, or my weekly visit to an actual store. (Now that I've limited myself to spending $50 a week, however, these visits have become quite masochistic-for all you psych-majors, that would be in the non-sexual sense, of course.) But I need it, I crave it, I must have my Pottery Barn!! I would hook myself up to an IV of PB smack if I could. (On the opposite arm of my Diet Coke IV, of course, since the mixture of the two could be dangerous, if not fatal.) Without my weekly dose, I've been known to suffer "the shakes," irritability, nightmares and hallucinations.

Pottery Barn at my local mall is like my Cheers Bar, where everyone knows my name (as they so playfully call me "the crazy lingering lady.") They know me so well there, they sometimes like to play little practical jokes on me. Like the one time they called mall security and had me thrown out for loitering. Funny guys!

I have a feeling my daughter doesn't share my enthusiasm, though. Each time we cross the threshold into the store, she hops up from her stroller, stiffens her legs and tries to immobilize my forward movement with the rubber soles of her jibbitz-covered, pink crocs. All the while begging, "No, Momma, no Potty Barn! No Potty Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaarn!"

"It's okay, honey," I say to her. "Just a couple of minutes and Momma will bring you to the quarter carousel."

"It'll be alright," I tell myself. "She'll learn." In a few more years she'll be just as Pottery-Barn-obsessed as me. (That or she'll be mediating the newly-formed PB-Anon at the local "Y")

Disclaimer: Events may have been exaggerated for comical effect.