Shopaholic

You know how I haven’t had anything to write about? How I lost my zing and the spring in my step?  Well what a difference 24 hours makes.  Today I have something to write about, and it is shopping for household goods.

You might think (and when I say you, there is no you, which is the crazy fun part about this particular blog) that this sounds even more boring than my job.  Au contraire!  It was the most exciting thing I did all day (not counting Dutch Bootcamp.  I would write about that, but it’s exactly the same as British Bootcamp, other than being yelled at in Dutch instead of English.  Only notable thing is that apparently it is A-OK to blow snot rockets during group fitness activities here in Amsterdam.  This disturbes me greatly).

But now back to shopping.  So what could be so special about shopping in Amsterdam?  It’s that even though you’re shopping for hand soap and tulips, you find yourself in front of large displays of dildos and marijuana.  That’s different, right?

Let me tell you, hand soap is tricky to find here in Amsterdam.  And it’s not that I needed it that badly, but after several failed attempts, the elusive cleanser of digits became my quest of the day.  Hand soap is the kind of product that could be sold in many different types of stores – say a grocery store.   But it appears that in Amsterdam hand soap is not in high demand (knowing this and the whole snot rockets thing makes me cringe).   But what really annoyed me during my hand soap search were the things I found that didn’t make sense.   Let’s take dildo’s for example.  Because every shop – and I wasn’t in sex shops people, I’m talking main stream pharmaceutical, health and beauty stores  – had dildo displays.  I’m just going to go ahead and assume this is for the tourists to keep up the sex and drugs mystique about Amsterdam and it has nothing to do with supply and demand.

As for the marijuana, this was more of a learning experience.  I mean, when you go to a flower shop to buy tulip bulbs, who would expect to have a variety of potted cannabis to choose from next to the cactus?  I knew it was tulip planting season, but I didn't realize it’s pot planting season too!  I did manage to plant about 40 tulip bulbs today and I don’t even think I’ve killed them yet. 

After all this excitement today, I have to say, the spring still isn’t in my step and I’m missing my spunk.  And I'm relying on another week of work to bring me out of this funk.  Uh oh.  I might need more ideas.