My afternoon at The Lowe's.

The Lowe's is full of items that will make your life better better better, such as pesticides and herbicides and cedar mulch and paint chips and rollers and frog tape and drop cloths and dishwashers and stainless steel-look refrigerators and hydrangeas. Full of such items, arranged in long, tall rows, each of which will cause a person to reevaluate an aspect of his or her domestic arrangements, such as, "Our blinds are stupid and one window doesn't even have them." Or, "Are the edges of our paint sharp or blurry?" Or, "Why is our expensive refrigerator so lame?"

The people, today we went to The Lowe's. At The Lowe's we:

• put a "recall" on a new swamp cooler. This means that an installer guy will call us tomorrow or maybe the next day to set up a time when he can come give us a bid on how much it will cost us to install the new swamp cooler. Which we will, at that point, still have to buy. And then that guy or maybe one of his "crew" will come and install it. Do the math, and I think you'll see that it will be next November before we have a swamp cooler in. While we were doing the math, we moseyed on over to
• the paint pavilion, where we took our green chip, our lavender chip, and our blue chip, got satin and semi-gloss paint, and ordered up three gallons, which, while the paintmasters were a-mixing them up, we sauntered down the
• paint accoutrements aisle, where we gathered up a canvas drop cloth, plastic sheeting, frog tape, edgers, rollers, and brushes, after which we
• investigated the dishwashers. We had an enlightening conversation with the appliance guy who explained the virtues of the nylon coated racks and the way the "dirty" interior would prevent rust (not sure I am buying this point), after which we signed some paperwork for
• a guy to call us tomorrow or maybe actually Tuesday to set up a time when he could come install the new deluxe dishwasher, which we hope will actually "wash dishes" as opposed to rinse with hot water the dishes I have already buffed to a sheen under running water. The dishwasher itself needed to be ordered. Do the math, and I think you'll find as I did that we should be getting clean dishes by about August 15. After this we
• went back to PaintLand, and found that the green and the lavender were ready but the blue was being difficult. I noted that the historian was possibly appearing a little pale due to the intense retail experience of The Lowe's. He assured me that he was okay, so we
• waited some more. For the blue paint. And then,
• the blue paint turned out great! so we
• went to garden center because: cedar mulch! we needed more! So,
• then we took our now-be-laden two carts and stood in line for a cashier who
• frankly wasn't really a cashier--more of a paint mixer--but who gamely rang up our purchases and asked multitudes of questions of "Jackie," who must have been a cashier stylist, because she knew what to do with the "recall" and the "work order" (dishwasher). Finally,
• we left The Lowe's only about an hour and a half after we got there, with a receipt about a yard long in hand, and stuff to
• improve our dishwashing experience,
• paint our bedroom and bathroom,
• and possibly be cooler and more energy efficient sometime soon, oh please! Soon!