Holy Crap!!!

I'd like to say I had a really relaxing and pleasant holiday weekend (4 whole days!) I would, however, sort of be lying. It has been a tradition in Jonez's family to go out and shop on Black Friday since before I was adopted in. Now, I'll admit the first year I was intrigued... What is this Black Friday, and how does one go about it??? Yeah. Just in case anyone out there is as naive as I was way back when (11 years ago). Unless you are well prepared, prepare to go down.

I have never witnessed any tragedies (for this I am VERY grateful), however, I have witnessed many acts of rudeness (I'm talkin to you line cutters, pushers & shovers) complete & outright Bitchery (yeah, that's you, stealer out of cart lady), and strangely enough some real kindness (thanks for the use of your phone, unknown lady, when forgot mine).

But this year has to take the cake... instead of going out all early on Friday, we decided to be really stupid and go out on Thursday night. Um... can I just say Holy Crap again?!? So we all (there was 6 of us) piled into a mini van at 11pm on Thursday to go to the outlet mall 70 miles North of us for their Midnight Sale. Kripes! That was nuts. We almost managed to run this guy over in a parking lot cause he just ran right out in front of us. Then we had to wait in line out side The Children's Place because they were too full. There was a woman out shopping who thought it was a wonderful idea to bring her 2 month old along. And some really grumpy pizzeria owners (to be fair we did go in just to use the restroom). And that was just the first place we went.

We spent enough time up there and driving that when we got back to town we were right on time to get to all the 4 o'clock openings (yeah, we didn't really have a plan, totally flying by the seat and all that stuff). So like some geniuses we went to Kohl's (don't do this without a map, list & several friends) and got stuck in line for like an hour (probably only 20 minutes but still - Time Is Money People!) Then we went to Meijer and shopped like we had all the time in the world (by this time it was like 7 and we still had loads more places to go). We left Meijer and decided to break for breakfast... mmm... Then we thought Menard's would be a good spot cause they had been open for a while and should be quieter... yeah I think everyone else had that same idea. That was the idea from hell I tell you. We almost wrecked into like three different people who wouldn't stop long enough to let us get out of their way. Aghhhhh. So we left and went to the South (insert your own scary sound effect here) side of town - also where we were all from anyway (duh some times we can be so slow) and poof... every one was nicer, and dude it was way calmer. So we hit Menard's, Walmart & K-Mart all in like 3? hours, maybe? I don't remember, by then we were laughing at shadows, at one point we almost hit a racoon, a deer & a bear (yeah, the bear was a bush & mailbox but that doesn't mean we didn't see a bear) all in like a mile long stretch of road.

Then we went for the big finish at Darlington Farms (no website, but they're a place where you can get all of those things in the fundraisers your kids bring home for $1.39 each). We finally got home at 1pm on Friday, tired & happy. with a whole bunch of crap!

Also for anyone who read this all the way through, go see this, it's a super fun game (all four chapters).