Our local newspaper has been pridefully advertising that our Thanksgiving Day paper will weigh more than five pounds and is more than 600 pages and growing. You can bet I intend to weigh it just prior to throwing most of it in the recycling bin.
I remember one past Thanksgiving when I dined with friends who had also invited some other friends. That couple spent most of their time pouring over the Black Friday ads. Very rude!
The first thing I do to the Sunday paper is to strip it of all the advertising supplements (right before I begin the crossword puzzle…the news can wait as I have already seen it on T.V. or online).
I have never and do not plan to ever participate in the ritual known as “Black Friday.” Nor do I plan to shop on whatever they are now calling Thursday when many stores plan to be open. If brick and mortar retailers rarely see me the remainder of the year, they are not going to see me either of those days or any day thereafter through the end of the year.
I hate the mall. I grew up in the pre-mall era. We shopped at our neighborhood stores and managed to find everything we needed and wanted. Our first mall was constructed when I was a pre-teen and these multi-store mammoth money pits mushroomed from that point forward. As teens we did not hang out at the mall. We had so many other activities to keep us occupied, and those did not include video games. But I have gone a little off track as I sometimes tend to do.
Cat cyber genius, Giulietta
My husband, Tom, and I have a rule that we never go to the mall after Thanksgiving! So all those ads are of no use to me. If I don’t finish my Christmas shopping by the end of August (which I didn’t this year), I hit the “Cyber Monday” sales. Always having been a catalog shopper, taking up online shopping was a no-brainer. Some of my friends shun it as they do not want to pay the shipping and handling charges. But I think they are worth every penny to have the items delivered to my front door or the door of my recipient.
Calista Josette, who’s ready to shop, protests my puzzle solving by covering the entire keyboard.
And besides, what could be more fun than shopping with kitties helping; though, they have been known to add unwanted items to my cart such as a side of beef, a giant catnip bush, several heating pads, or a bushel of live mice. Or they cancel my entire order just prior to me hitting the submit icon.
Even with those inconveniences, I’d rather skip using up my very expensive gas hunting for a parking place, elbowing my fellow shoppers as I try to pass them in the store aisles or standing in endless lines to make my purchases.
Tom will be in Argentina for Thanksgiving so I intend to spend Thursday and Friday working in the yard as the temperature is predicted to be an unseasonable 61 degrees. Enjoying the world God created for us seems infinitely better that suffering the worst of human nature as other people struggle to purchase even more items made in China!
If you haven’t checked out Giulietta’s cyber skills, click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkrfD77YMIY.
