I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas shopping. I love finding things for people even though i am admittedly bad at this. I hate dealing with crowded malls, crazy shoppers, bad christmas music, long lines and impossible people to buy for. Every year I do my best to get all my shopping done early.. and have little success; naturally this means I am faced with the worst of my Christmas shopping hate list.
Yesterday I took my mom out to help her get her Christmas shopping and to say it was smooth would be a lie. Number one on the to buy for list Grannie and wouldn't you know she wants a unicorn. Not actually but as she is apt to do she picked something about impossible: a size 2X, black, ribbed, turtleneck in a synthetic fabric. First issue, pretty sure they don't even make ribbed fabric in anything not mostly cotton. Secondly, anything in black is going to be in high demand at a larger size for the slimming effects. We did manage to find her something fitting most of the criteria but not with out set backs.
Stop one on the Kate and Mom day of shopping find not turtleneck but do find something kind of jazzy for her to put over one when we do find. GOOD STUFF. Go out to the car, it won't turn on. BAD STUFF. Thus begins the waiting for the tow truck and serious worries about the cost of this car repair, but as luck would have it as soon as the tow truck arrives about an hour later the car starts! Tow truck guy says this is just something that happens with these cars in that type of weather and we just need to give it more time to cool in between start ups. So we are off to stop number two.
THE TURTLENECK OF LORE IS FOUND. Problem though, it's found too fast so we can't start the car yet, so off to another store to show Momma what to get me for christmas, yayaya. I picked out a few items I liked and tried them on for my mom and told her what were some options for what to get me. Next stop the mall....
Packed does not begin to cover the mall, ugh. Stepdad wants a watch for christmas though so it is the most logical place to look for it. The Bay, no luck. Sears, jackpot. Now for me to try and find some last minute gifts and give Mom some more ideas on what to get me. A few stores later though we are both just exhausted by, the recycled mall air, hoards of people and general Christmas mall madness.
Overall the day broke even for me. Not all the parts were a brilliant experience but, I did like spending time with my mom and we both made a bit of headway with our shopping. Today I am going out to do some more shopping, the elusive boyfriend gift is still needed and somethings for my two best girlies. Hopefully I don't encounter car problems but, I know the malls are going to be 100% worse today. Let's hope to break even for shopping experience today... fingers crossed.
, 
, 
... anything... I never intend to buy anything and I never do, but sometimes just hitting the "add to cart" button holds a certain satisfaction. Just seeing the total all added up for my purchase in another reality where my 
holds numerous hundred dollar bills and a black card, sigh. For this reason I think I should basically stay away from credit cards and avoid the temptation of following the "add to cart" with "check out now". However, even though I know many of these items I know I will never see, due to availability or price, I can take some comfort in loving items online and seeing the less than stunning reality.
Christmas gifts, wonderful at this credit for this talent goes to my grampie for sure though
for the holiday season
, no good at painting my nails but I am