You are too much for me, Home Depot! I wish I knew how to quit you.

Last Satruday morning Ben woke me from a beautiful and blissful sleep to tell me that I was snoring. This doesn’t seem so abnormal except that he had been UP AND OUT OF THE ROOM FOR AN HOUR. I’m not sure the exact face I made at him at that time but I know what I was thinking. It was something along the lines of “I wonder how far into his ass my foot is going to be before it starts to register how terrible a mistake he’s just made”. Turned out he just woke me up to see if I wanted to go to Home Depot with him.

I should have stayed in bed.

When we got there we had two goals in mind. 1) Get him a set of calipers to measure my brake roters 2) Pick up a wallpaper remover tool and spray and some paint swatches, both for Cassidy’s bathroom. Other than a slight snag when the tool guy didn’t know what calipers were, we made pretty good time and I even got Ben to detour down the lighting isle to scope out some fixtures for ALL the bathrooms.

Then we got in line to check out.

Then 45 minutes later when we were still in line, actually the THIRD LINE, Ben’s cooling system broke and his rods reached critical mass and I had to slowly step back about 15 feet to avoid becoming collateral damage.

See,the computers were down. The were running around FRANTIC and OMG WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO THERE ARE NO COMPUTERS HOW DO WE FUNCTION!? Because, you know, it’s not like you can actually SELL something if there’s not a touchscreen monitor in front of you telling you how which step of the check out process you are on, what to do next, and the amount of change you need to dispense.

So because they couldn’t use their fancy machines to hold their hands through the process let me tell you the genius system they devised.

Step 1: Stand in line so that ONE girl at ONE counter could write all of the items on a triplicate form while the 24 people in line behind you groan loudly.

Step 2: Stand in another line so that a girl can add prices to the form, then manually add them up, calculate tax and total it.

Step 3: Stand in ANOTHER line to pay using one of the old school swipe style credit card machines.

Step 4: Walk to power tool isle, pick up nail gun, place directly against head, pull trigger.

Of course we were in line #3 and next to pay and get the fuck out of there when… suddenly all the computers started working again! I slammed my stuff down, almost turned around and spit venom directly into the face of the man that tried to line cut me after he’d spent 45 minutes in line behind me and CERTAINLY should have understood that based on line hierarchy, my shit was getting checked out first and if you try to get in my way I am allowed to backhand you with a sledgehammer.

Then the check out lady took the receipt we should have gotten and slid it into her register before she realized what she was doing EVEN THOUGH SHE HAD A COMPUTER TELLING HER EXACTLY WHAT TO DO AND WHAT TO SAY AND WHEN TO HAND ME WHAT AND WHEN.

So it was another 15 minutes of standing there because she had to finish the next sale to open the drawer. Only the machine wouldn’t take the guy’s debit card. And then it wouldn’t take his credit card. So he had to go out to his car and get his check book. And write a check. With his hand. And a pen.

It was sometime between the failure of the credit card and the check writing that Ben’s head started to actually steam and I had to move further away because he was radiating enough heat to melt the plastic bags holding my nifty new $5.00 wallpaper removal tool. From 15 feet away.

When we finally got our receipt and got out of there we weren’t sure whether we should go to Starbucks and treat ourselves for not actually reaching critical mass or drive straight home and start drinking obscene amounts of tequila to forget the entire experience. We opted for the Starbucks.

My love affair with Home Depot is OFFICIALLY OVER.

At least until later this week when we go in to price flooring for downstairs.