Shopping sucks

I can't believe that some people (including my sisters, in a big way) love to go shopping. I went to the mall today, the big mall on the west side of Madison that I try to avoid because I don't have the store locations memorized.

I always end up parking at the wrong end of the structure, which is the pits, not because I don't need the exercise of walking but because if I carry a reasonably heavy shopping bag in my right hand for any period of time, my fingers go numb (old tendonitis thing).

And there were an insane number of people in this mall for a Friday afternoon. It was quite obvious that at least half of the city's residents that got gift cards for Christmas were there, using the cards up before they started losing value (that's been on the news a lot lately, but I think they're talking about cards unused after a year, people, not after a week!).

I'll admit that the reason I was at the mall at all was to return a few things that Greg got me. I now have a new favorite store to hate--Coldwater Creek. They had two women working at the checkout/return desk and it literally took half an hour for me to get to the front of the line and do my return.

There were people in line both in front and behind me who were not even doing returns. They just wanted to buy something from this store. You have got to be freaking kidding (guess what word I wanted to type there, but my mom reads this blog and she hates swearing, let alone the "f" word).

I was very, very happy to get out of there. Breathe in, breathe out.

Now I can concentrate on looking forward to doing Christmas with my family this weekend. Just what my children need--more toys! I'm kidding, I'm incredibly grateful I have a family that wants to give my children gifts (did I mention they're the only grandchildren?).

We're going to rent the storage locker for all the new stuff on Tuesday.