Back to Reality (part four of a series)
Okay, I have to stop lying to myself. While the rain did put a damper on the sun in the first half of the week, I can’t blame it for my sunless mornings. We have officially passed the boundary where the sun doesn’t really come out until I’m leaving for work. As the solstice nears, I might even be so “lucky” as to see the sunrise from the parking lot at work. Never my desk though. I have no windows. Windows are for business people. Engineers get equipment instead of windows. I’ve got lots of equipment!
On Friday morning, I had two pieces of leftover cranappear pie. It has fruit in it. That counts as breakfast. Whatever!
Mike’s mother and sister arrived shortly, and after saying goodbye to the boys and making a valiant effort to get Mike’s aunt’s phone number into Kate’s phone, we were on our way! Kate’s mom drove her dad’s Pacifica, which is a rather large vehicle. Why do I mention that? You can probably guess, even at this early stage of the game.
We drove along for a half hour or so to a major shopping area in southern New Hampshire (I really, really, really wanted to use bovine text there, but I promised to stop that…). Along the way, we talked about various stuff and sang along with the Christmas carols playing on the radio. We were soon pulling up to Kate’s Mecca – the Christmas Tree Shoppes.
Saying that the parking lot was crowded would be the understatement of the century. There were cars and carts everywhere. It looked like a very neat tornado had come through dropping off cars from all over the Midwest. Of course, they really weren’t from the Midwest – the license plates were mostly New Hampshire blue, Vermont green, and Massachusetts white. As is so often the case these days, SUVs and minivans predominated, and our vehicle was no exception.
We excitedly walked three miles (okay, maybe 1/5 of a mile) to the entrance, and Kate selected us a cart. We weren’t even three feet into the store when Kate had found something that she just had to have. I honestly don’t remember what it was, but she really wanted it. Later, that want was taken over by something else, then something else, and finally a ten-inch tall white Christmas tree complete with tiny candy-striped glass ornaments – that one she bought. Kate loves Christmas. She loves it a lot.
When we finally escaped the entrance, we started taking in the deals. Tree skirts, long skinny door pillows to block out the winter cold, cutting boards, Christmas cards, wrapping paper, and some presents. I’m not telling! I got really excited about a huge bag of bows. I love fancy wrapping paper and fancy bows. Wrapping Christmas gifts is one of my favorite things to do.
While we were on a scouting mission in the kitchen gadget department, something horrible happened. We had left our cart, which had 7 or 8 things in it already, on the end of an aisle that was too full of people to maneuver through with wheels. We were returning with arms full of cutting boards and plastic cookie jars, and Kate’s mom goes, “Where’s our cart?”
I am always quick to respond; it’s probably one of my worst qualities. So, I quickly answered, “Right here! Wait. Maybe it’s up one row. No. Did we pass it?” Then Kate found a not-so-neat pile of stuff that looked awfully familiar. As in, it was our stuff! Some mean-hearted person had stolen our cart (so not in the spirit of the season) and just dumped our stuff on the shelf. I heaved a sign and ran off to the front of the store to get a new cart, as my arms were the least full of stuff. We kept a closer eye on our cart as we selected our Christmas cards and wrapping paper.
As we walked out of the store, bags in hand, Kate’s mom realized we had been in the store for two hours. Woops! We packed the bags into the back of the SUV and walked back over to the sidewalk. The Christmas Tree Shoppes here was in a strip mall along with a Bob’s store (sporting goods, not furniture), a Cape Cod Crafters, a Papa Gino’s, and a Kohl’s, as well as some other stuff. Next on our list was going to be Cape Cod Crafters, but we decided to take a peek into Bob’s first, since we figured we would have more bags of stuff from Cape Cod Crafters.
We were rummaging around in the professional sports jersey replicas when we heard something surprising. Bob’s was offering 30% off everything if you just signed up for a store card. We cautiously approached the desk, and after Kate’s mom found out that it was not a credit card, but just a card like for Stop & Shop, we were voraciously filling out forms. They didn’t even make me give my phone number or email address. They just wanted a mailing address to send coupons to. I like coupons!
Now that we were holding a huge discount in hand, we switched from holding a few things in our hands to using a cart and a hand basket. I picked out gifts for a variety of people, including poorly veiled attempts at buying gifts for each other. Kate has apparently known what she’s getting for Christmas every year since she was like ten. This isn’t weird for them, so I’ve decided to just roll with it, even though I find it kind of foreign.
Since we had a discount, Kate and I also decided to pick out boots for ourselves. We were both in dire need. My old boots had a hole in one toe and the heel was pealing off the other foot. I was super excited to find some three-inch-heeled knee-high boots that were two very exciting things: they were size 11 (my feet are huge!) and they fit over my calves! Exciting thing number one was thanks to the store, but exciting thing number two was all thanks to my super-fabulous-awesome trainer-and-nutritionist Donna and our work on making me less fat. Last year at this time, I had to settle for boots that were not nearly as cute because the cute ones just wouldn’t go over my fat calves. I love my new boots.
We exited that store an unexpectedly large number of bags, but decided to trod on into Cape Cod Crafters anyway. Kate’s mom and I each found one cute thing in there (that’s right – one – good planning, huh?). It was coming to our attention, however, that we were hungry. Okay, starving. More than three hours had passed since we got into town, and before that, it had been at least a couple hours since we’d eaten breakfast. It was 2:00 when we dragged our bags into a six-person booth at Papa Gino’s.
I don’t actually like Papa Gino’s pizza very much. It’s greasy and the sauce only vaguely resembles tomatoes. But at that point, I was so hungry I could hardly wait. We got our sodas (yeah… I had soda… with caffeine… yes, I was hyper…) and ordered a whole pizza to share amongst us. We finished it. All the while, people gave us funny looks for our booth full of bags.
Kohl’s was the next stop, but while it was in the same parking lot, our vehicle was all the way at the other end. So we dragged our bags back to the car, packed them in, and drove to the other end of the parking lot. We miraculously got a pretty good parking spot, and went with our newly empty hands into the store…