shopping online

NEWS FLASH!!!

Everyone may not be aware, and so I just wanted to remind you that THIS YEAR, Christmas is on December 25th…. Yes, the 25th of December is CHRISTMAS this year, that comes directly after the 24th…

Really. It’s one of the last hold-out, non floating holidays …(Halloween having given up the gh0st in so many localities, we have New Years, the 4th of July and Christmas holding onto the outdated tradition of being celebrated ‘on the day’, so to speak.) Therefore, it will be held on a Sunday this time around.

Now, I realize it’s a sneaky  little holiday—there are, after all, no signs stating such an event is on its way, nor advertisements alerting you; heck there aren’t even any special songs to remind you or anything, so I just wanted to provide this little PSA…. Smile

Black Friday. While I Red heart what I do, pardon me if I am less than enthused to be coming to work at  O’Dark Thirty and keeping a Laughing out loud on my face all the live long day, while you hold me personally responsible for being out of the widget de jour…especially, if while you are looking down your nose at the shop “help” you can’t stop texting Mobile phoneor calling friends to complain about how utterly horrid your EXTRA DAY OFF has been because all the goodies you wanted were gone…because it isn’t my day off, and I won’t get an extra day off and I won’t open my check to find hazard pay on it, either!

See, the thing is, it isn’t even the WORKING—loads of people are working on holidays— in hospitals and airports Airplane, factories and newspapers, IT help desks  and and and… But it’s just the same as any other work day, except they get holiday pay, or time and a half or triple time, or extra time off, and more than the just over minimum that is offered to seasonal retail workers.

It’s the tone of the people you are interacting with—who any other day may be polite and gentle, who may hold the door for someone, or let someone with only a few items get to the register before them.  Who upon arrival at the parking lot begin to behave like hungry piranhas, refusing even to yield a gap in the driving lane to let a car out of a parking space Auto, so sure that someone may be trying to beat them to the deal. The season of Peace and Joy, indeed.

Be alerted also that many, many people consider the 24th of December a holiday, too. Retail does not. Those elves busy filling your stockings at the register on December 24th are not being treated to a paid (or unpaid) holiday. They are scrambling to come up with something at the last minute, to fulfill  orders not due till early January, to prove to the person you are trying to impress that you are, indeed, Santa.

The retail world thanks you.  

About Turkey Day  This links to a blog I wrote two years ago for Thanksgiving. There isn’t much I can add to it…

CHRISTMAS PHOTO A DAY…. Starting up again on DECEMBER FIRST… are you signed up to my photo blog? Do you want to receive these images daily to your email? Have you liked my Facebook page? Are you on the list and you want to be removed? (sniff  Sad smile )   (Contact me to be added or removed)

My photo website—  ALL images Camera are available for purchase, and make wonderful, unique and personal gifts.

This year, I have a selection of Christmas images for personalized Christmas cards!

My Etsy site—   This year I have a few different little gifts Gift with a bow available for sale.

What is left to say?

BE THANKFUL.

EAT WELL,

HAVE LEFTOVERS,

AND MAKE MEMORIES…!

Christmas without Wally…

(Wally-World, that is.) I can do it, can you?

I dislike– in so many ways it can’t be adequately described– Wal-Mart.

So much so that I can tell you exactly when I last set foot into my local WM. It was just over a week before Thanksgiving. So that puts it at what, 49 weeks ago?? I can’t say I’ve missed a thing not being there. Understand please, that it is SO convenient to my daily world that I can see the sign over the front entrance from the window of my job; that their parking lot is across the street from my parking lot….

I just am never HAPPY when I am there. The light is ‘off’, the air moves oddly, the hollow feeling of the place, even when over-loaded with (often cranky) people just bothers me. I have never saved enough money there to make it worth my while.

I have never found it one-stop-shopping enough to make it worth my while. It isn’t more than a lowest-common-denominator kind of place for me.

I have never stood on the check-out line without the thought running through my head, “WHY did I come in here?” (And all this without the first echo of the more overt political, environmental, labor and capitalistic  etc. issues that cause me to simply not need WM in my life!)

Oh, back when I lived on the Island, and the closest WM was over a bridge in another state, AND was a relatively new addition even there, I thought it was a fine thing.  A place I would have to make PLANS to get to. (It was before a Target became available to me, in that same out-of-state, ‘destination’ type of experience that even IKEA was.)

And when I moved here, I did on occasion shop there; before I really became comfortable with the other local grocery stores, and who carried what; before I had learned my way about the area.

It is the only place down here open 24 hours, and coming from a city where EVERYTHING seemed to be open 24 hours (even Home Depot), I felt it was the place to be. However, there is nothing I would need in the middle of the night that I can’t find at my CVS, closer to home and less of a headache.

So, with perfect honesty, I can say, I will not be doing my Christmas-ing at WM. I realize that for some, WM really IS the only ‘local’ alternative. And I feel for you. But, if you are reading this blog, you have within your reach, the entire WORLD.

Use it! Keep your UPS man in a job, and buy online! In your jammies, in the middle of the night, and think about those fools standing in WM at 3 am, cursing the 25 CLOSED cash register lines, while they stand 10 deep at the 3 lines open, waiting their turn to deal with tired, harried cashiers.

And order gifts to your hearts content; gifts far more unique, more whimsical and probably far more personal than the same red and black plaid flannel shirt that exactly 3,550,673 other tired Christmas shoppers tossed into their carts at the last minute, remembering that Uncle Jimmy would be at Christmas dinner this year!

(What? you don’t want to pay shipping and handling?? Well, how about GAS, and TIME, and all the other things that end up in the cart over and above what you NEEDED??)

Where to shop? Well, let me list a few gems:

Photography My photos, they make WONDERFUL gifts…

Collectibles My Dad’s web-site, where you will be able to find one-of-a-kind ephemera and small household collectibles; things that you will remember from your youth, and things that will make you smile…

T-shirts My babiest brudder’s T-shirt site…(he has a more unique view on the world than most, a great site for the teens and young adults you need to shop for…)

And hey, there are a gazillion OTHER sites out there, big and small, that offer just about anything!!! (But, if I were to start picking and choosing…. well, I figure I will just advertise for Us!! LOL)

(Oh, and by the way, I am NO LONGER early, folks. It is NOT too soon to be thinking about Christmas gifting. It is 53 DAYS till Christmas, otherwise known as November 1st, AKA ‘Happy Birthday Kerin and Elaine!’)