Day After Thanksgiving Shopping

This morning I got up and went shopping with the other lemmings, though I did not get up as early as most of them. No, I didn't even leave the house until after seven, spent about twenty minutes in the store, picked out a few things, grabbed a bunch of snacks and sodas, paid for all the stuff, checked the receipt, and briefly went home to unload some of the stuff and make sure that my husband was awake enough to go to work.

Not even eight o'clock yet, and according to the receipt I've saved almost seventy dollars, which would have been about twice as much as I'd have spent if I didn't decide to go back for three packs of Dr. Pepper. And that was just at a drug store. But it went so well that I decided to go to another one and do most of it again (minus the sodas) on the way to the mall.

Then I'm wondering if I should maybe just skip the mall. I don't really "need" anything there, do I? But I've got my list, and I keep going.

By taking a side entrance and heading for the Michael's instead of the mall parking garage, I get the car parked without too much trouble. It's a nice day, so I can just walk.

There are still people hanging around the mall customer service area. I had thought I was too late for whatever early shopper thing they were doing, but there were still a lot of people waiting for something. But I decided not to stop. Even if I'm in time for whatever it is, well, I don't know what it is, and finding out would delay my getting to the stuff I actually came to get.

There are a lot of people at Bath & Body Works, but not too many. Which usually means that they've already run out of the good deals. But no, there's still plenty on the shelves and someone is bringing out more boxes. So I pick out my freebie that I'm going to get if I spend thirty dollars, and then I go and get four wallflowers, which is the big on-sale-before-noon thing that we all got the email about. So then a try a sample of this and that while I decide what to spend the rest of the thirty-bucks on. I pick up a twelve dollar hand cream, but then someone brings out some candles that are also on sale before twelve, so I buy two of them instead. Then I get in line, and there are about eight people directing traffic and such. There's a couple of people offering to massage your hands with some aromatherapy thing while you wait. Another guy hands out little samples of lip gloss. A couple of others are reminding people that if you spend thirty dollars you get this freebie thing. And they're not just trying to talk people into spending more, they're actually telling people that they're already carrying thirty dollars worth of stuff, so if they want the freebie thing just say which one and someone will go and get it for them. And then when you get to the cashier, she says that there was a limit on the sales items, but they're not going to run out before twelve, so if you want to buy two more and also get a freebie thing, someone will go and get that for you.

Nice people.

So I've got my on sale wallflowers and my on sale candles and my freebie thing for spending thirty dollars and I still get to use my coupon for ten dollars off of thirty dollars. Nice. Two bags of stuff with price tags of over ninety dollars and I got all that for twenty plus tax. And I got two more coupons when I left, so I'm probably not done yet.

This is so much fun.

Next, I had to go and buy a sweater. Just a sweater, for me, to replace something that really doesn't fit right now. It was on sale for about a third of what it normally costs. This was at Sears, and I'm not going to complain, it wasn't near as bad as it could have been, but the much shorter line took a lot longer to get through, and no one offered to massage our hands, or get us a freebie, and there were no lip-gloss samples. So despite only going in to get the one thing, and only stopping to look at the one thing, I was in the Sears just as long as I was in the other store, and by the time I got out I was tired and hungry.

Well, that's okay. I'm probably pretty close to my spending limit for the day anyway. I decide to skip the rest of the list and head out. But if I'd have thought about it a little more, I'd probably have eaten in the mall and gone through the line at Bath & Body Works a second time. That was such a pleasant experience.

I stopped for lunch and noticed I was right next to an Asian supermarket. And that was something I needed anyway. I have this lame idea that I'm going to make one of those online copycat recipes of an oriental salad dressing from a restaurant my friend likes, and if it turns out okay I'm going to give him the recipe card and a bottle of all the ingredients. I don't know what else to get him that someone else hasn't already thought of. His wife is getting something from Bath & Body Works, but somehow I don't picture him happily unwrapping candles and body cream.

So I got all that shopping done before twelve, including the Asian market stuff that I had forgotten about. And then I didn't do anything useful for the rest of the day. Nice.