Rug shopping has to be one of the most tedious and unpleasant experiences on the planet, and I must say that the rug sellers of American should invest some time in fixing that. Now, I love rugs, and I definitely love shopping, but standing in front of a towering display of heavy carpet pieces strung up to creaky metal poles and flipping through these giant woolen mammoths day in and day out only to find that every single one is not going to work under the kitchen table in my house...

It's just exhausting, and that's all there is to it.

On the bright side, my mother and I are not afraid to use this as an excuse to treat ourselves to shoe shopping and ice cream cones along the way. That way, the day is guaranteed not to be a total loss, and we get the motivation to continue trudging along through five more stores and to deal with three hundred more disappointments.

In the end, I am gaining a newfound respect for interior decorators, who either have a better system for finding rugs or who have witty counterparts tagging along with them who make brilliant conversation such as this:

Mom: "So do you need help getting that plastic tag off of your flip-flop?"
Me: "Pfft. I am Wonder Woman. Watch as I use my super strength to rip this off by hand."
Mom: "Are you sure? I have little scissors in my purse, you know."
Me: "I got it, I got it. Eeps, though Wonder Woman certainly doesn't leave little clear stickers on the bottom of her shoe."
Mom: "Definitely not. She has a 'W' on the bottom of her shoe."
Me: "Oh goody, there's a sticker on the other shoe, too."
Mom: "Well she has a . . . uhh . . . Wow, I guess she has a 'W' on the bottom of that shoe, too, huh?"