I'm Not, I Promise

I promise I'm not usually a Grinch, but boy did I feel like one today. And it's all the fault of....


I'm amazed that I ever used to love shopping. I detest it now. Jim and I headed out to do some errands. K's Merchandise is going out of business, so we wanted to see what they had in the stroller/car seat/play yard/high chair arena. The store was crowded, but it wasn't bad. People were polite. Someone asked if we needed help, and even answered our questions. How sad when we are thrilled with the most basic attempts at customer service?

The problem came with stop #2, Target. I should know better, but we had to stop. We needed gift wrapping for a birthday party tomorrow, plus we needed a lamp for the living room. Our lamp died a sad and horrible death, and we've been living in the dark for far too long. We're going to put a light/fan fixture up, but decided to wait until after Christmas. I couldn't take the dark anymore, so we bought a temporary lamp that we'll move to the guest room when we get the ceiling light.

Crowded I can handle. It's the rude and stupid that drive me insane. Like the woman who came to a dead stop in the middle of the aisle to stare blankly at the endcap. She managed to bring three carts, mine included, to a dead stop. One woman actually screamed, "arghhhhh." This finally snapped the daydreamer out of her daze and got her moving. People were just cutting everyone off at the aisles and pushing their way through. We had a list of things to get at Target. After getting cut off a few times, Jim looked at me and said let's get out of here. We paid left and decided to try one more stop.

We headed to Borders because it's always calm there. Even when it's busy, it's calm. I like to walk the store, pick up some things I'm interested in, head to the cafe for a drink, and sit at a table going through and deciding what to buy. If the tables are all full, I can usually find a chair somewhere, but not today. I walked that store several times and no one was moving. There was one college-aged guy at a table for six with his homework spread out and not a single Borders item in sight. Not even a drink! I remembered how frustrated I used to get when I was one of the managers there with the students who used the store as a study center during the Christmas rush. We paid for the one gift we found and headed home.

This is why I prefer to do my holiday shopping online. Since both of our families live in other states, it's easier to ship that way, too. We still need to grocery shop, but I'm not going back out there today.

Now to bring the tone of this post up, how about something for free! I don't know about you, but I love Jiffy cornbread. It's the one I've made for years. It's cheap, easy, and tastes great. They're offering a free cookbook if you visit their site. So go already!