Survived Black Friday?

Now we can begin to shop like normal people and not soldiers in full blown combat.  A woman was so out of control yesterday, she had to be tasered by security.  I don’t know what possesses people of Black Friday…maybe black magic, or voodoo?  But, it’s a new day.  Those of us that shopped online yesterday, have no bruises and lots of gifts coming in the mail, right to our front door, in about a week or less. But, many of us still have more things to buy or check out.  There will be plenty of sales in the next month and they better be good if they want me to leave my house.  If I can get the same things online and delivered for free there is no way I am going to a store.

In previous years I discovered that Wednesdays are very slow days at the mall.  They often have pretty nice sales to lure people to the mall and there crowds are minimal, so you can shop to your heart’s content without worrying about landing in a hospital.  If you work and can’t go on a Wednesday, consider taking a day off.  You just might be able to get all your shopping done in one blow.  Ask a friend to play hooky with you and have lunch.  Make a day of it and don’t forget to get wrapping paper, you won’t want to go back out for that later.  

With the shopping out of the way, you can wrap your gifts and store them until it’s Christmas.  Now you can sit back and plan your holiday dinner menu or make travel plans if you are going away.  I like to do things ahead of time because it reduces so much of the stress and then I can also enjoy the holidays.  I stopped sending Christmas cards a while ago.  It used to be one of my favorite things to do for years, but as my mom said, “used to be’s ain’t what they used to be.”  Since the computer allows us to talk to virtually everyone, almost everyday, it doesn’t seem as necessary to send out cards. It doesn’t even make sense to send cards to people I never see or talk to either. Somehow it has lost it’s meaning for me.  

My younger daughter is still in school, her last year of college.  For the past seven years, with both girls in school, it’s been very hard to do any of the holiday preparations together because they were always busy with finals up until the week before Christmas.  Shopping and putting up the tree has to wait until they can breathe.  Last Wednesday, while I was cooking and baking for the holiday, my younger daughter looked at me and sighed.  She wanted to help me make the stuffing and desserts but she has two big exams on Monday and Tuesday and two papers to hand in.  They couldn’t even cut these kids a little slack for the holiday.  I told her next year she could help me with the whole dinner.  It was little consolation, as she sat on the couch with her face in a huge textbook, while all the smells of the cooking and baking filled the house.

Maybe next year we will start new traditions for the holidays.  Maybe the girls will have time to think about what they want for gifts.  It’ll be time for new cell phones, I think they call them “droids” but I won’t have to deal with it.  They can go pick them out themselves.  I’m sticking to my phone…the one that just makes calls and texts without a keyboard.  Some things never change and I’m one of them!