McDonnell Planetarium Christmas Decoration on a Sunny Day

Today was a very rainy day. In fact, it is still raining. I started my Christmas shopping this morning. Yeah, it is getting down to that now or never time. I’m not as young as I was and prefer not to brave the Christmas Eve scrimmage anymore. I went shopping right after the stores had opened, but it was still crowded, with lots of traffic and almost no parking. I thought shoppers only camped out for Black Friday? Pedestrians were crossing Brentwood, walking to the Galleria in the rain. I guess because the lots were already full there. I wasn’t foolhardy enough to brave the Galleria myself, just some of its auxiliary malls, like Galleria Pointe and Brentwood Promenade, one was very hoity-toity, the other slightly less so.

Next, Anne and I did the Christmas dinner grocery shopping together. This is always a test for me. Normally, I do all the grocery shopping myself and like it that way. When I shop by myself, I just use a hand basket and dash in-and-out of the store as quickly as I can. When we do these big meal shops, it’s a much, much bigger production. First off, we get a cart, which makes sense, because we are going to be buying a lot of food, too much to carry. It is the big cart though, not the smaller, more nimble cart that I like better. I guess what I chafe under the most is the shopping list. Anne mainly draws up the menu, although I do consult. She then translates the menu into a shopping list.

When we arrive at the store, she knows what we need, but I know where most things are. What happens next is she gives me a few items on the list. I go off to get some of them and tell her where the rest are. After acquiring said items, I then start searching for Anne. Fortunately, she was wearing a bright red coat today. It made her easier to find. Actually, everything went quite smoothly today, with one exception. When I asked one of the grocers where the fresh cranberries were, he told me that they had sold out of them, two hours ago.

At the store, the Perma Bear texted me, “The hull is breached”. Actually, what he transmitted was “The hull is reached”. I just point this out, because he is always doing the same to me. I guess he has finally figured out that he won our gas bet. Next year, Don, next year. Dave answered my text and said that he was passing Champaign. Doing all this texting, while I was looking over my glasses, an older (63) more rotund man came up to me and proceeded to bend my ear about all things eyesight related. After this little interlude I was ready to finish our grocery shopping.

We returned home with our haul, stuffed the refrigerator and pantry, then I turned around and headed back out into the rain again. I only had a mile to drive and I never came closer than a mile to the epicenter that is Galleria, but the traffic and the intensity of the shopping experience had already been dialed up a few notches, like to eleven. I did find the elusive cranberry. Normally, we buy two bags at Thanksgiving for just this eventuality. This year we forgot.

Dave just arrived in town.

When I originally posted this post it was mistakenly untitled, hence the title.