My Preferred Way to Shop: Not At All

IT'S GO TIME.

Our second level has been painted and looks great. Desmond is happy and (pretty much) healthy and excited for his party. My parents are on their way. My other relatives will be arriving when the shindig starts in the early afternoon tomorrow. Food has been ordered. The cake and cupcakes have been ordered. I'll pick up some other treats tonight. My husband has the day off and has already cleaned our top floor where my parents will be staying. And after I write this post, we're dedicating the next few hours to getting the second floor ready for my four other guests who'll be staying overnight. Here's all the stuff we need to move out of the guest bedrooms and back into the main living area and my office:

Later we'll start turning two floors of our house into Radiator Springs. We may be up until 3 in the morning, but everything is on track.

And guess what else? I ALSO finished and put away one load of laundry, have another one in, called People's Gas and scheduled a guy to come out and fix our squeaky meter (this thing has been sounding like a wailing cat for the past few months), got word that Desmond has been accepted into the local (and in demand because it's actually good) pre-K program even though my unorganized ass was a week late in applying, AND I also already picked up the associated required forms from his pediatrician this morning. Plus I managed to get dressed, feed the dog, let out the dog, and feed Desmond. It's only noon and I am in The Zone and feel like this is one of those days where I can take on the world. Those days are few and far between. I'm going to relish it.

But I knew I needed to pick a quick and easy topic to post about today so I can get back to the other stuff. As I've been cleaning this morning I moved a stack of shoe boxes and the perfect idea popped into my head: I need to talk about how much I hate shopping.

While I didn't always abhor shopping as much as I do now, I've never been like a lot of other women in that I just do NOT enjoy buying new shoes/clothes/bags/what have you. I view it as a chore that I dread. Once I find a brand I like, I very rarely stray from it because I know what size fits. I wear as much black as possible so everything can mix and match. And while I used to love going out to the malls when I was younger (and would drag poor Nerdy P around on the most crowded day of the year until we couldn't walk anymore), now that's like my worst nightmare.

But this year right before Thanksgiving I realized that I really needed some new clothes. We were at my parents' house in Michigan and there's this huge outlet mall there. So they stayed with Desmond while I went by myself to the shops. Here's something I found out: the day before Thanksgiving has all of the same deals as Black Friday, and 1/10th of the people are out shopping.

So I was like, "Oh, yeah, I'm getting EVERYTHING bought today." And so I did. I was carrying so much by the time I left that I was soaking with sweat when I got back to my car in the parking lot. But it was worth it.

 

Then one day in early December I was shoveling some sloppy wet snow out of our alley and felt the grossest feeling of all time. My boots had leaked and my feet were sopping wet. I went inside to see if I had any other boots, and I didn't. DAMMIT.

I knew I had no choice but to go shoe-shopping, 'cause there was going to be a lot more snow and rain and "wintry mix" in my future. But I decided I was going to minimize my pain by buying all of the shoes and types of boots I foresaw myself needing. So I sacrificed an hour at DSW and got gym shoes, brown tall winter boots, black tall winter boots, rain boots and short black snow boots. I also threw in some gym socks and called it a day.

I should be good for at least a year, I hope. So I WON'T be seeing you at the mall!

 - e