Betcha can't guess what I did this Friday!!!

To the left of me.

To the right of me.

I would've written this entry earlier, but my lack of sleep made it so I was having issues forming verbal sentences, so writing an entire blog entry was totally out of the question. It's about 48 hours afterwards, and I'm still foggy, so forgive the rambling post. :)

Jonathan and I both had our own Black Friday stories last night, but we went out separately, kind of dividing and conquering. Let me start out by saying we had a wonderful Thanksgiving, my first away from my family. The food was excellent, and the company was even better! Jon made his pumpkin cheesecake, I made green bean casserole, and we enjoyed two deep fried turkeys, a ham, hershey pie, corn pudding, and Trisha Yearwood's very own sweet potato casserole (her recipe, at least). We were all in a food coma for sure after that feast. Goodness. And we were definitely thankful for the food, the friends we spent the day with, and the opportunity to talk with our loved ones at home!

Anyway, during the festivities, the question was raised about what everyone was going to get at the Black Friday sale, which at some places of business, started at 10pm on Thursday. I have never, ever shopped on Black Friday. I always figured the prices breaks wouldn't be worth the resulting broken nerves. But last night I made the decision to go out with the girls. We would start out at Walmart, head to Kohls, and then possibly Targét. We'd scouted out the ads for the things we wanted to purchase. We had a plan. Sort of. That was really all we needed, right? So after a quick power nap, to try to use up some of that glorious turkey tryptophan, we started on to our first stop. 

I have never seen a Walmart parking lot parked so solidly that folks parked their cars on the grass-covered medians at the edge of the lots. Inside, we double-checked that we had our pepper spray (for protection, never used offensively!!). I'm not sure what I expected to see - I'd had visions of frantic mothers in winter coats having a heated tug of war competition over a Tickle Me Elmo. What we saw was a swarm of shoppers, exhibiting the worst traffic patterning skills in the existence of the world. The getting of things wasn't too bad - we were able to grab our goodies (the ones that hadn't yet been snatched up by the earliest early bird shoppers) in about 30 minutes. Finding the checkout line... now that was the fun part. We spend double our shopping time standing in line. And because of that night, I've decided that one of the things our society despises most is standing in lines. For some reason, standing in a line, no matter the reward at the end of that line (ie. a driver's license, Space Mountain, or even, I don't know, excitingly cheap stuff?!) we really hate the lines. Also, we feel we must build rapport with the other line standers around us by remarking on the length of the line, our dislike of the line, and how the line is so completely unnecessarily slow. Why do we do this? I don't know. But it builds a bond between us - until someone tries to cut in front of other people in the line. Then people get really nasty. They start talking about how they've been waiting in line longer than ANYone else there. They've even been waiting in line longer than the store has been open. Basically, middle-aged folks who are very responsibly mature in every part of their lives revert to fourth grade name calling. It's kind of fascinating. I should've been a sociologist. 


When we finally escaped the store (without needing to use the defensive pepper spray at all!), we headed over to the nearby Kohl's store. There, we got to experience the Black Friday ritual of standing outside, in the freezing cold wind, waiting for the front doors to open at midnight. It helped that we had wonderful husbands to bring us hot drinks on the way to their Best Buy trip! We only had to wait for about 30 minutes, and then were ushered inside pretty quickly. Unfortunately, it was the fastest we moved all evening. Still, it was less crowded than the previous stop, and our fellow shoppers were able to maintain more of their civility towards others. (I did get cussed at once, but it was for an entirely weird reason - to be brief, let's just say that, you shouldn't be surprised if someone looks at you oddly if you loudly announce, "OMG! I have underwear that match those pants perfectly!" It's just a little attention-grabbing. You know? It would be odd if I didn't look at you, right? Anyway.)


 We shopped for about an hour, found a few nice items, and again, we stood in the checkout line for double the amount of our shopping time. I won't bore you with more details, but by the time we got through the line, at 3am, I was pretty sure I was done with Black Friday shopping. For a few years. I definitely saved some money, got some nifty Christmas presents, and got a great deal on a winter coat, but the next time I try Black Friday shopping, I think it'll just be online. In my pajamas. In my warm house. With a cup of tea. And no lines. Lines are horrible. Forever. :)

Christmas in November

We're having an early Christmas this year. We got bored last week, so we went out and bought a new little artificial tree, some colorful lights, and ornaments. We brought it all home, and decorated. The crazy things you do when it's 1 a.m., you're really bored and wide awake.

You learn a lot about someone when you go Christmas tree shopping with them for the first time. Especially when you have to agree with them on what kind of decorations you want on your tree, after you've agreed on what type of tree to get in the first place. Ours is 4.5 feet tall, with fluffy bristles. We both liked it from the start. That was the easiest part. We discovered that Jon is a colored lights kind of person, while I prefer white lights. He picked out a large, fluffy bow tree topper. I picked out a slim, copper-colored star with cutouts in the metal. He grabbed some fun, multicolored glass ornaments. I showed him some charming cloth toy ornaments. Neither of us were really enthusiastic about the other's finds. So we put it all back.

We ended up getting the white and colored lights, and some red, gold, and turquoise glass ornaments. Oh, and a red ribbon for our "garland." We didn't know how it would look together, really, but we figured it looked all right together in the bottom of our shopping cart. So we spent too much on it all, and drove home. Once we arrived, we pulled all the parts out of their boxes and set about combining them into what we were going to call our very own Christmas tree. The most daunting task of the entire project was choosing which setting to use for the colored lights. There were 12 settings to choose from. Most of them belonged at a rave, with a blinking strobe light and a mirrored disco ball. But we finally found one that didn't make me wonder if I was going to have a seizure.

We placed the finishing touch of our tree topper at about 3 a.m. It's a silver heart, with an engraved ribbon made of metal across its horizontal axis. "Our First Christmas - 2011."