Shopping for, and with, a Friend

I have made another trip to the Fairway supermarket in Red Hook. First of all, I love any excuse to take a walk to Red Hook. And second, this really is a nice supermarket, and the prices are sometimes great! I have a friend visiting who loves a particular type of honey that costs, [gasp] $18 at the health food store in Park Slope, but only $11 at Fairway. Yes, this is still an obscene amount of money to pay for honey.

Actually, the friend who is visiting is Wanda, the infamous "Belt Girl" who I wrote about in this post. Yes, she likes expensive honey, expensive belts and sometimes other expensive things too-- on this visit, we had a couple of shopping days. On the first shopping day, we go to Daffy's, a discount clothing store. She says she needs a pair of pants she can wear to work. I see a nice-looking linen pair and suggest she try them. They fit her well and she buys them, even though they are not all that cheap. Later we get home and I try them on and they fit me even better than they fit her! These are the only pants I have tried on in months that have actually fit me! We go back to Daffy's the next day to see if I can get a pair for myself but of course they don't have any more. Ok, so that is my problem, not hers, but I can't help thinking "I found those pants and you can't afford them anyway, you should give them to me!"
On our next shopping trip, Wanda says she'd like to look for a cover for her bed. Now, Wanda has been telling me all these stories about how badly heated her apartment is, and how all winter long she had to sleep with lots of clothes on and even wear a ski mask to stay warm because she couldn't afford to run a space heater all the time. So I'm thinking she wants some nice down comforter. But no-- we go into a boutique in Dumbo where she sees a gorgeous embroidered silk bedspead for $175. It's beautiful, it's unique, she loves it. What do I think, she asks. Well, yes, I agree that it's beatiful and unique but I try to delicately suggest that maybe it's not the best use of her limited funds. She struggles with the "but it's beautiful and unique" argument for a while, but eventually decides she'd better not buy it. Then I feel a bit guilty, like I've rained on her parade, but we're both adults, it's not like I forced her to decide as she did.
Anyway, for the rest of our shopping, here's the tally:
Madame X: one CD, one used book, about $8 worth of postcards.
Wanda: 4 CDs, two used books, one pair of pants, about $125 worth of gifts, one pair of $150 shoes, one unframed print, about $30 worth of postcards and a set of printer cartridges.