Christmas Shopping Complications

I realize this is after the fact, but I had to squeeze in a Christmas Day entry, so now I need to backtrack a little.

With that in mind, we had some Christmas shopping adventures, though probably not so bad in the grand scheme of the retail universe because we are really not that big on shopping or consumption, other than food. On the other hand, I loathe shopping, it makes me want to hide away until it's all over, much like this guy is doing.

A large part of that stems from the fact that shopping can be a real hassle, and is torture for the kids. It's not so much the act of buying as the crowds and the time spent. Plus, it usually entails a trip to retail hell in W. Leb, which always reminds me of being in LA with all the traffic and crowds, but you do what you have to do, and with Christmas on the horizon, we had little choice.

Putting things off until the last minute didn’t help, and though there were still several days until the big day, the crowds were beginning to grow. We needed to get some final things for mom, but fortunately we knew what we wanted to get, and headed over to Hubert’s. That, of course, did not necessarily mean they had what we were looking for. In fact, they did not. They had some less desirable alternatives, but we talked it over and decided what we thought was best, and the salesperson got on the horn and found it in another store and said it would arrive in a few days.

On the one hand, we were happy, but on the other, it meant coming back to shopper’s paradise a day or two before Christmas. Yikes! Not the sort of place you want to be, but what are you going to do?

We also went over to Stateline Sports and I lucked out and happened upon something we needed for N that I’d forgotten about. Talk about serendipity, though I had to distract the kids so I could buy it in a clandestine manner. This wasn’t too difficult, though they kept asking me questions later why I told them to go to the other side of the store to check on prices for hockey tape. The cashier knew what I was up to and played along, giving me some semblance of legitimacy.

Though we weren’t completely done, we got enough accomplished to feel that our time in retail purgatory was, for the most part, finished. We headed back home where the kids wrapped the goods, hid them from mom, and we got ready for the big day.

Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks to Jess Rosales IV for the pic.