Shopping on Black Friday--Holy Cow!

I have strategies for getting my Christmas shopping done in the most comfortable environment I can create for myself. I do some of my shopping online, but I still have to venture out for the majority of it. So my strategy is to get up early every Saturday morning and be down south before the masses get there. That means that I am usually there by 8:00 a.m. (no later than 9:00) and most stores I want to shop at are open by then. I don't mind the shopping, but I do mind being in the crowds and standing in long lines.

This Friday, the girls thought it would be "fun" to go to Target early and just watch and do some minor shopping. Since I didn't have much else going on and since I don't mind getting up early, I was game. (I did have to be reminded of why we were thinking this experience would be "fun" a couple of times as my palms started to get sweaty in the bumper-to-bumper traffic.)


























As we were in the turning lane to enter the Target parking lot, Kliss suggested I put my 4-wheel drive vehicle to good use and jump the curb, cross the grass, dodge a tree or two , and get a parking spot. It didn't matter that it was a mile away from the store, it was a parking spot! My what a full parking lot it was. We thought we were getting there as the store was opening but we missed that fiasco. It had already been open an hour when got there at 7 a.m.

We streamed into the store with fellow bargain hunters only to find there were no carts available. How is a person supposed to do serious
shopping without at shopping cart? We should have gotten a clue about the long (read slow) checkout lines when there were not any people giving up their carts as they were leaving the store. As we were deciding what to do about the
dilemma, Matt's cousin, Angie, came through the doors and we gladly invited her to join us in
our adventure. While we were just there to get whatever, Angie had a few items she was looking for.


I couldn't help reminisce about the simple life of Christmas shopping pre-department store days. I remember as a child shopping at Kings and Porters. Kings had aisles of merchandise that were no higher than eye level, unless you were shopping on the outer walls which may have had merchandise higher up. I can't recall that exactly. They had a Toyland downstairs which was the same way. Pretty much what was on the aisles was what you could buy for Christmas. You could do mail order from the Sears and Penneys catalogs which would offer more variety, but that was pretty much it. We were quite limited comparatively speaking. Now it's practically floor to ceiling shelves full of merchandise giving you much more choice, and many more decisions to make.

I think of all the merchandise that just one store like Target carries, then think of the WalMarts, KMarts, Toys R Us's, Sams Clubs, Costcos, ShopKo's, etc., etc., etc. We live in a whole different world from when I was a child and even a young mother with just a couple of kids. It's ironic that even with all the merchandise available, you'll go out shopping and still say, "I wish they'd make ...." or " Why doesn't someone come up with....." or "I've looked all over town and I can't find pink Christmas lights anywhere."

Anyway, cheers to the brave souls who were waiting in lines at 4 and 5 in the morning. May you find peace, goodwill toward men and that $325 laptop you were hoping to buy!

Holy Cow! What a Job!

In preparation for Thanksgiving, I am doing some housecleaning. All ambitious last Saturday, I had a long list of To-Do's. The first thing I did was clean the oven. I wiped out the inside of all extra drippings (time: 5 minutes) so it wouldn't smoke up the house when I turned the oven on to the 1000 degree self-cleaning. It took 3 hours for the oven to clean itself.

For some reason I had to get something out of the freezer and I decided that it was now or never to defrost the freezer since there was quite a bit of frost buildup and it was a pretty decent day outside. This wasn't even on my list of To-Do's but it had to be done so I budgeted 2 hours for it. (The reason it didn't get done this summer was because there was so much meat in it and the heat of summer wouldn't be the best for frozen meat.)

I unloaded the contents into a large picnic cooler, a small cooler, a blue IKEA bag, and the empty fridge next to the freezer. The last time I cleaned the freezer, there was water all over the floor of the garage even though I had placed pans to catch the dripping thawing ice. This time I wanted to avoid that so I got quite inventive. Pampered Chef has a tool that has several tines on it to hold meat and such while you cut it. It was the perfect thing to use with the meat tenderizer to chisel away the ice which would then fall into the cookie sheet to be emptied on the lawn outside. It really did work quite well, but when you have 5 shelves of frosty ice buildup to chisel, you soon start to relate to Michaelangelo (sp?) as he carved statues out of marble. My budget of 2 hours turned into 4 hours and 45 minutes of chiseling ice.

The other smart thing I did was to lay used bath towels at the very bottom of the freezer to soak up the inevitable water I couldn't catch as ice. Then I just put them in the washer and I didn't have to worry about the water all over the garage floor. The not-so-smart thing I did was to have Brandon move the fridge out so I could unplug the freezer while I defrosted it. I was really bugged at having to do this. When Dad got home and asked about the fridge being out of place, I complained about how inconvenient it was. He took me out in the garage and showed me the knob on the inside of the freezer that rotates to the Off position. I was so busy whacking away at ice, that I didn't even see it.

Once all the ice was chipped away, I reloaded the freezer. We have at least 120 pounds of holy hamburger in there. I was so tired by the time I got done, that the rest of my To-Do's have been postponed until another day. Holy Cow, will someone please invent a self-cleaning freezer?!!!

The Blessed Time Change

Fall has been beautiful this year. I have probably enjoyed it as much as I ever have. But every Fall I have to have a talkin' to myself to be able to handle the coming months of Winter. If it weren't for Winter coming, I would really enjoy the Fall. One thing that I do look forward to in Fall is the end of daylight savings time. I get my hour back. I have to play a game with myself with daylight savings time. In the spring, I have to keep telling myself that I only lost one hour so getting up an hour earlier just happens one day and then you just get up at the same time every morning after that. However, when Fall comes, I tell myself I have an extra hour everyday. Then, when I get up at the usual time of 5 a.m. from daylight savings time, I am really getting up at 4 a.m. but I don't even feel it. So now I have an extra hour to cram whatever I want into it. (If this doesn't make sense, forget it, I can't explain it any better.)

Last year I crammed usually about 80 minutes of exercise every morning, scripture study, books, and some cleaning or ironing. I was really bummed that for all the exercise I did, I had little (or should I say a lot) to show for it. So here I am again this Fall, getting up at 4:00 in the morning and starting once again with the exercise, scriptures, bookwork, etc. Even though I didn't see much weight loss, I felt so much better so I am going for that good feeling of accomplishment and we'll see what kind of results I'll get weight wise. I'm not expecting much, so maybe I won't be disappointed.

Anyway, welcome back Standard Daylight Time. You bring nightfall earlier which is a bummer but I forgive you because I love my extra hour in the morning!

Nag Sandwiches

I had to document this! Logan has an assignment in his foods class to cook a meal. I have had to nag, nag, nag to get him to get it done so he finally broke down and fixed steak sandwiches.
Here he is pounding the meat to tenderize it.














Here's the meat on the grill.













Here he's trying not to gag as he spreads
mayo on Dad's sandwich.













And finally, the Nag Sandwich is ready to serve!













Now this is documented so his teacher (our cousin Robyn Eastin) will believe he did the assignment. I printed off pictures for him to take to class. Now I will probably have to nag to get him to turn them in.