Friday, November 28, 2008

(Not So) Black Friday



Here it is, 4pm on what used to be my favorite day of the year, and I have not left my house. Black Friday was once more exciting than Christmas to me, because it meant I got to SHOP. Shop, a lot, and shop on sale. My three favorite things all in one day. I love to shop. I have always loved to shop. I could shop for 48 hours straight (with bathroom and coffee breaks, of course) if someone (Marty)would let me. I think of it as "the thrill of the hunt" and I try to get the absolute cheapest price I could possibly pay, no matter how much I spend in gas getting there (I know, duh.). At one point in my life, I loved shopping more than TV, and for me that speaks volumes. I used to be one of those people who poured over every ad, I made lists of where to get the best deals, and map out my strategy ahead of time. I used to get up in the middle of the night or not sleep at all, and be all hopped up on pumpkin pie and Starbucks and stand on line with the other suckers (get a life, you may say). Oh, how I miss those days...
Not this year though. I will not attend Black Friday. You see, I (like so many of my fellow Americans), am no where near the Black. In fact, I am so far into the Red I fear I may just spend the rest of my life there. I used to be OK with it, until "The Bailout" was announced. I would like to be bailed out. Where do I sign up for this? Do you think if I let my mountainous debt get into 10 figure territory the American Taxpayers will just pay it off for me? Because if that's the case I'm heading to Old Navy, I could use a new cashmere sweater and they're really cheap today. Not that it matters if your trying to achieve a 1 billion dollar deficit. But old habits die hard. It is totally killing me how cheap everything is today, because no matter how cheap it is, I still don't have any money to buy it, and NO MONEY equals NO SHOPPING!! So here I sit, with a perfect storm of depressing circumstances. Broke...constant televised reports of "the Joneses" (with whom I can no longer keep up with) getting great deals on great stuff interspersed with 70% off commercials from my most frequented retail/wholesale establishments...and a fridgeload of extremely high calorie leftover food just calling my name... Wish me luck, because only something bad can come out of this. I am predicting either a 5 lb weight gain or a breakdown/mini-spending-spree by Cyber Monday, probably both. Stay tuned for further announcements...


4 comments:

Debbie said...

Wow. Look at those lines. I was up - but getting ready to see the band in the parade. I am in awe of you going out in that.

Anonymous said...

I was sad that day too. I wanted to be out amongst the hustle and bustle getting all the great deals. Great deals for people with money. Bummer! I hope you do have a wonderful holiday season though. Great post and pictures. Maybe next year we can go out and be early bird "shopping buddies".

Hi, my name is Kristal said...

wowzer check out those lines! I never did black friday,I do on the other hand love to shop, I could run up a billion doller deficit in one afternoon, but I'm in the red too so if you happen to break down grab me a cashmere sweater too:)

K said...

One word: catalogs. You don't have to buy anything—all you have to do is tear out the pages with stuff you like on them, promising you that you're really, really going to go back and make a decision about some of them. Because you never will. But you'll feel like you've done something.

No kidding. It works.