My Signal is Out

Any female above the age of ten can go into any city, and beeline it to the mall. We all seem to have a built-in GPS for shopping. Well, it came to my attention today that that's just one more of those things that goes once you reach 50.

I toured the Baltimore Harbor today with my cousins. We found a nice restaurant, got seats with a water view, and proceeded to sample the obligatory lump crab. Mmmmmmm good! Nothing like that breaded concoction they pass off as crab cake in New England.

Bellies full, we head off to explore and ended up breaking into smaller groups, based upon level of patience for standing and gazing. I took off with my cousin Squeak, who like me, could see no point in standing still.

Off we go. "What do you wanna do"?

"Is that a Filene's"? "Let's go".

Filene's was a big bust. Lot's of cute clothes in ittty, bitty, sizes. Oh, well.

We leave in search of more stores. We see a big box book store, a chain steak house, a chain dessert restaurant, a chain Italian restaurant, a chain phone store, a big box electronics store, everything except for a chain clothing store, which I would have settled for at this point.

As I grow older, I go to bed earlier, my waistline has expanded, my shoe width is wider, everything I eat really stays with me, and that innate ability, to always find the best store with the best bargains, the trait that I thought was passed down from mother to daughter throughout the generations, that ability to seek out bargains where no man has gone before, that distinctly feminine trait that is our sixth sense, is just gone.

It seems that my GPS signal for shopping is out.