Lowe's

Lowe's is great.

I don't want this post to become a commercial for Lowe's, but it's like a giant candy store for men. I go in and my eyes blow up like basketballs, there's so much good stuff in there. You got your lawn care stuff over there (see previous post about m'lady in the yard), your tinker tools over there, your paint over there, your lumber over there....aaahhh.

I could go into a Lowe's anywhere and spend a fortune. Sometimes when I go just for fun, I leave the wallet at home or in the truck. Can't stand the temptation.

Got a tip yesterday that Lowe's was marking down all their patio furniture. The good ol' clearance sale. Jeannie and I have been lusting after some patio furniture for nine months now, ever since we acquired a home that had, well, a patio. It's a concrete slab out the sliding glass doors, but has become a gathering point for various sporting goods -- baseballs, basketballs, volleyballs, all kinds of bats, both wood and aluminum, badminton junk, you name it. It has been placed on my new patio at some point or other, right next to the grill.

Seeking to restore order, Jeannie and I couldn't let the sun go down any more. We hooked 'em over to Lowe's in my trusty 13-year-old Nissan, affectionately monikered "Ol' Blue Eyes," with Abby in tow, Thursday night. Coby isn't a shopper at all -- you can't get him in a video game store without needing some cheese for the whine -- and Melody, while enjoying shopping for girl stuff most of the time, wasn't in the mood to spend an evening out with mom and day and little sister. So with Aunt Nona's pool readily available as always, they elected to stay behind while we went looking for a deal.

After a quick dinner at McAlister's Deli, we hooked it over to Lowe's. The tip was that the swing we wanted was regularly priced at something well over 100 bucks, but it was going for around 85 or so during the clearance. We quickly grabbed one and got to the cash register and -- bam! -- the price came up at 62 American dollars!!!! I couldn't pay fast enough, fearing some kind of mistake. But hey, the customer is always right.

Loaded it up, got it home, and my lovely wife put it together this morning. (Hey, one of us has to work.) Now we have a lovely swing to go on the patio when the temperature actually gets to the point again sometime in November when you can actually sit out there and not melt.

The toughest thing about last night was that she wouldn't allow me to look for anything else. I made the comment about taking a man into the toy store but not letting him touch anything. That's what it's like shopping at Lowe's, you know.

One more thing about greatness -- I got home last night and my front yard was neatly clipped. My help mate had decided to, well, help me out and she trudged herself out in the yard yesterday and completed about one-fourth of the yard work. That's a lot.

So yes, Lowe's is great. But the man's superstore can't hold a candle to my wife.