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| English: DC USA, Target, Black Friday (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
I have to start this post by making it abundantly
clear – I HATE SHOPPING! And, by that, I
don’t mean just Black Friday, although it has a special place on my list of
things I detest, but shopping any time.
When I need to buy something, if I can’t find it on the Internet, I make
a list, research the stores that have what I need at the price I’m willing to
pay, go to the store, enter, buy, and get the hell out as fast as I can.
Having said that, this year, my wife finally
discovered Black Friday, and wanted to know what all the hype was about. All day on Thanksgiving, she threatened to
wake me up at oh-dark-thirty Friday and drag me to the nearest shopping mall to
join the mob. Needless to say, I didn’t
sleep well Thursday night, and the lobster, turkey, and all the other goodies I
wolfed down had nothing to do with it.
I got up yesterday at my usual time, 6:30, and made
my breakfast. As usual, I tippy-toed
around the house, hoping I wouldn’t wake my better half up; she likes to sleep
in and hates eating breakfast except on weekends. At 10:30, her usual wake-up time, I breathed
a sigh of relief when she got up, did her shower and makeup, and plunked
herself down in front of the TV with a cup of coffee to catch her favorite
Korean soap opera. At noon, she pried
herself away long enough to make two bowls of noodles for our lunch, and went
back to the afternoon news shows. Never
a word about Black Friday shopping; could I be that lucky, I wondered.
I didn’t really relax until six in the evening. All
day, she’d not said a word about going shopping, and it was now time for her
favorite evening shows to start. No way
she misses them unless the house is on fire, and even then I wonder.
But, we went to bed last night, and not once did she
say anything about shopping. So, I was
able to get a bit of writing done – starting the editing phase of my NaNoWriMo
entry, which is a lot of work and requires the ability to focus. Of course, now I have to worry about whether
or not she’ll decide to see what’s left on the shelves the day after Black
Friday – a day I’ve taken to calling Gray Saturday for the somber mood of
everyone who went through the torture yesterday, and the appearance of the
stores with shelves nearly bare from the scourge of locust-like shoppers
yesterday.
I’m a bit happier, though, after looking at the
sky. It’s a grey day here in suburban
Montgomery County, Maryland. The wind
blew hard last night, dumping tons of leaves on our recently raked lawn, so
instead of shopping, I’ll get my afternoon exercise moving leaves from the
grass to the tree line behind our house.
That I don’t mind; it’s a good way to stretch the muscles after sitting
here at the computer for several hours, and it’ll set me up for a late night
writing session. I might start my new Chronicle of Pip of Pandara book
tonight. Or, maybe I’ll do some more
sketches for planned projects. What I
won’t be doing, folks, is shopping.
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