Really?

Tonight, I live to tell the tale of an all-day Christmas shopping feat… Oh, you didn’t know that almost every store is open until 11pm or later this entire week before Christmas day? Well, apparently everyone and their brother’s wife’s first cousin has abandoned their job, taken their children out of school, and travelled in zombie-like hoards to the various stores/malls across our holiday crazed nation, no matter the time of day. Today, and with no exaggeration (as Edward can attest to), I visited Tyson’s with my mother and younger sister (in HEELS, no less! What was I thinking?... Oh right, I wasn’t, that is correct.) The amount of automobile/people/stroller/shopping cart/mall security golfmobile/animal traffic that flooded the streets of Tyson’s Corner was alone enough to turn me from a happy-go-lucky Martha Stewart marshal of Christmas joy to a bitterly misanthropic and suspicious Scrooge. The amount of temple rubbing and expletive hurling that commenced between arriving at Tyson’s and finding a parking spot was pretty foreboding with regards to the state of affairs inside the actual mall. I was primitively pushed, I was brutally butted in front of, I was given deliberate dirty glances, and I all but died from the lack of goddamned oxygen in this enclosed shopping arena wherein the sheer amount of physical bodies was too plenty to allow the proper air flow in for all who walked the crowded thoroughfares.

This generally apocalyptic atmosphere carried over into the shopping venues of Frederick, Maryland tonight where I continued on shopping until 10:55pm. Every single store seemed to be rapt with rabidly roving shoppers who would stop at nothing to ensure they were getting the best deals, even if it meant stealing something from out of my momentarily unattended cart. Not to mention, most of the big-box retailers’ appearances are so ungodly unkempt by this point that it truly looks like a scene a la Stephen King’s mini-series, “The Stand”—every aisle appears to have been raped and pillaged by god-fearing citizens who bought up rolls of wrapping paper like they were bunker kits of water and batteries. I mean, really?

Basically, and without any rambling here, I’m just done. Actually, my tired feet are so beyond done, I need a new word for done at this point. I want to stay indoors, preferably by a fire and in pajamas (with slippers!), watching stream and reading while refusing all efforts of large-group socialization. I really, truly do not care if I never, ever, ever do any shopping again for the rest of all eternity… or at least until after New Year’s Day. Care to show some solidarity anyone?