H oliday stress, it’s here!! Every year I tell myself that I am not going to stress out trying to get everything done for Christmas. I vow to start early and stick to a budget. Well, here I am less than 2 weeks until Christmas and I am starting to feel major stress and have officially entered PANIC mode. I didn’t want to get to this point, but I’m knee deep in it now and there’s no turning back. Got to get things done so I can enjoy the Holidays coming up.
We went away on Thanksgiving and that threw my whole routine off. We didn’t get our decorations down until a week after Thanksgiving when usually we spend that holiday working on getting the house decorated. I am also one of those crazed day after Thanksgiving shoppers. I love the challenge of getting up early and finding the deals. Didn’t happen this year. I only started shopping this past weekend. I would say I’m a little over half done. Crap – I usually love shopping but when you cram so much, and I mean hours upon hours per day for several days in a row it really starts to suck to where I hate it.
When I do serious marathon shopping, I always wear these ugly pair of shoes that were also my most comfortable. I know everyone has a pair of these. I would wear them only to shop. They don’t make my legs and feet feel like they have been through battle. I’ve had them for years. On my first day of shopping on Friday I walked around from 10:30 to 5:00. Around 4:00, I noticed my shopping shoes were falling apart. I mean literally falling apart. I blew out the inside seam of my left shoe and the right one I don’t even know what was going on there. The sole split in half – right across the ball of my foot and the heal split. I was actually walking the shoes off my feet. I felt like a real bag lady. There I was carry a bunch of bags and my shoes where falling apart and flapping as I walked. So what do you think I did – I started shopping for a new pair of comfortable, ugly shopping shoes!
All I wanted was to find some shoes and I didn’t find any. I spent the next hour looking. My problem was that it was the end of a very long day of shopping and I wasn’t in the mood anymore. I went from store to store looking for shoes and nothing was what I wanted. I wasn’t even sure at this point what I wanted. I was prepared to wear them out of the store when I bought them but I lost my mojo and couldn’t do it. I gave up, sloughed out to my car and drove home. When I showed my family the torture my shoes and self endured for them, they all started laughing. Really – thanks…where is my sympathy??
The next day I headed out again wearing flip flops (I live in Florida) since I had to throw out my old bag lady shoes. I was on a mission to find myself new comfortable shopping shoes. I got lucky, I found some and a pair of great looking boots also. Hey – I deserve to treat myself. I am the one doing all the shopping and enduring the pain and stress of it all.
To everyone out there – Happy shopping and try not to stress too much and don’t forget to treat yourself to something while you’re out doing all that hard work.
Got any good stories to share?
Shari – I Want It All
