I was just frontin.

For three weeks, I've been sweating a fancy, on-sale ice cream maker, but in a twisty conflicted I-don't-need-this-but-it-might-revolutionize-my-life way that required input from a friend, a husband pleading with me to buy it (not because he really cares or wants it, but because he recognized my twistiness) and a preliminary trip to scope it out.

It's easy to get swept up into a lifestyle when you find yourself in a well-to-do area and rubbing elbows with the people who are.. well.. well-to-do, but its hard for me to swallow.

Somewhere along the way, I realized the value of a dollar. And that I don't make them anymore. And I don't scour clearance racks for sport.

It is with purpose. It is with a level head. It is with a nod to the future. It is with common sense.

And yet, I found myself pushing a stroller through the copper-hued palace of overpriced kitchenware and dreamily smelling the deliciousness of the demonstration kitchen - a lemon scone? yes, I believe we will - and fingering the stylish aprons and mentally placing that yellow bread basket on my dining room table for Thanksgiving and filling it with rolls and almost. . . . . drinking the Kool-aid.

But I was just frontin'.

As I waited for an apron-clad gentleman to find the model I wanted and box up my ice-cream maker (!!), Harper got fidgety. And then some woman broke something in a different part of the store requiring chivalry of immediate proportion on the part of said-guy-helping-me. And then before I knew it, I had been bouncing a toddler and trying to entertain her for 10 minutes so she wouldn't break anything - all the while, not being helped - and watching two other store workers blankly watching me waiting to buy an over-priced, half-priced ice-cream maker that was only going to give my butt an excuse to get bigger.

My resolve began to falter..

Ok, really? I felt the heat creep up my neck, characteristically brewing a full-on Mom (my mom)-in-a-department-store-when-they-wouldn't-let-her-return-an-item-fist-pounding rage attack.

And the straw that broke the stay-at-home mom's back?

Still playing the part of the never-flustered Martha, I effortlessly and simultaneously hoisted Harper to my left hip, straightened my skirt and switched shoulders with my handbag to free up my right hand - so that I could examine a deliciously breakable jar of cherry pie filling. For a split second, my mind drifted to the quick and impressive dessert I could prepare that night and. . . ((turns jar upside down)). . . for the low cost of $18.

Frontin'.

And then as swiftly as ballet flats on buttery wood flooring may pad, we hustled on out.

To Target. To be among my peeps. And $2.00 cans of cherries. With principles fully intact. . . until the next Williams-Sonoma sale email.