HappyTrails

People must be having second thoughts this year, and are finally out shopping for Christmas gifts.  Traffic was awful and backed up everywhere just like a normal Christmas gift shopping year — but about 3 weeks later than usual.  Everyone else must have also been holding off on spending their money this year because there were only about 20 cars parked in front of one of the bigger stores last week.  Hopefully, at least some parts of the economy will be moving a little better.

After returning home and resting for a short while, it was time to go back out to another shopping center and more stores.  This time I dragged the Hubs with me  — and oh, how he just hates heavy traffic and mobs of shoppers doing what they do best, shopping!  By the time he was finally done complaining that I had planned this as a way to torture him, we had finally made it into the parking lot and found a space.

Anyway, I’d like to offer some good advice to these idiot stores playing the most HORRID “holiday” music available that meets politically correct guidelines.  It STINKS BIG TIME and only serves to get me out of your store in a hurry, whether my shopping is finished or NOT.

Why be so stupidly politically correct and annoy shoppers to death with totally inane lyrics and annoying cacaphony while the only reason the stores are so well stocked IS BECAUSE THEY WANT OUR BUSINESS AS CHRISTMAS SHOPPERS!  The poor people who have to work there and have to listen to it for hours on end are likely being driven out of their minds.

The stores could at least be truthful and acknowledge the real reason why most of the shoppers are there — Christmas gift buying time.  Sanitizing the music of the Christmas season to pander to everyone is annoying, and I would truly applaud the retailers who play real, actual, honest to goodness Christmas carol music — if I could find any.

If they cannot be honest, my shopping will hit the sales throughout the year and they will not continue to torture me in December with hideous selections.  Other than going to the stores, the internet retailers often have great deals and sometimes free shipping — all without assaulting customers’ eardrums.

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League does a great job of parody on how stupid the politically correct “holiday” songs sound, and is very likely representative of what many Christmas shoppers really think — um, something along the lines of “take this song and shove it, I ain’t shopping here no more….”.   The second video is about a Monster truck caught in traffic — and do not tell me that some of you have not wished you could do this….personally, I would settle for a car that was also a helicopter.

Hubs always gets up earlier than me and he makes the morning coffee.  Good thing, too, because it is just too much for me, I want a hot cup right after I open my eyes.  Hubs will either let the pot grind and brew or he will grind it himself first.

Neither of us cares too much for coffee left on the pot heater.  If you do not drink it within the first half hour, the flavor begins to deteriorate.  Can you tell we just love our coffee?

We finally took a quick trip to our local Bed Bath and Beyond store and got a couple new thermal carafes.  Heck, just one was not enough because Hubs wants regular coffee and I want the decaf version.  I can tell you that only my coffee would have been the one to stay hot if we only got one (LOL),  so we “compromised” and bought two of them.

Just warm your milk, mix in the sugar and shut the lid.  The carafes keep the coffee warm until it is time for the next pot to brew.

If you have a coffee addiction too, join the club with the rest of us.

Does anyone help you cook your holiday meal? 

Perfect food is my passion, probably passed down to me since I am mostly German.  Everything has to be just right down to the smallest detail and that includes the bread.  There is no rule here that anything has to be an ethnic meal, it just has to be very, very good.  I always insist on doing everything myself.

Our local Sam’s Club has great bakery style breads, and this year we decided on sour dough.  That was simple enough to foil wrap and reheat to a crispy crust when the rest of the meal was just about finished baking.  It was so much better than the common bake and serve variety in a plastic package that the grocery stores sell.

I really miss the home made breads my mother and grandmother always used to make.  My sister uses Rhodes Bread that can be found in the freezer section of most groceries around here.  Her holiday dinners have to be perfect too, and these were really good.

This really sounds like a project I could get a family member (like Hubs) to do ahead of time and reheat.  What is really neat is the different shapes you can make according to the holiday.  Armed with a batch of dough and scissors, I can imagine Valentine hearts, little Christmas trees, or even bunny shapes for Easter.

Watch the video on how to make these cute turkey rolls.  It is not difficult at all.  You really would not need to add any extra ingredients to the dough.

It figures, today was one of those days where a thousand things needed done, and I barely got off the couch.  Just too tired.  We had cold and rain weather today, the kind that chills your bones.

Fibromyalgia is one of those diagnoses the doctors give when you have been examined over and over because of prolonged and recurring weird symptoms and tiredness.  As I have gotten a little older, the symptoms hit more frequently, continue for longer periods of time and the muscle pain can be pretty awful. This has been very hard on the Hubs and family as well as myself.

With my doctors’ help with medication and some physical rehab treatments, symptoms are much less severe. One of the more troubling symptoms is difficulty sleeping.  Eight hours sleep can still feel like you had none for the last couple of days.  Fortunately, through trial and error and surfing lots of websites, it was easier to find what helps.

One size does not fill all, however, and any individual suffering the symptoms is best advised to try many different things under medical supervision.  Making a journal of all foods consumed and symptoms present or not sometimes helps too.   One site said to remove nightshade vegetables from your diet.  That was way too hard for me to give up potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant.

So many people have fibromyalgia, research really needs to be better funded.

You would think Hubs would have become accustomed to me after all these years of marriage.   When you do not have money to redecorate, simply rearrange everything.  It makes him cringe when I want furniture brought between the first and second floors.  There were even a couple exchanges of furniture with the basement level.  Hubs hated that switch the worst.  It was just moving the home office to another location, but that furniture is really heavy.

To make matters worse, it was impossible to carry it up the steps to the first floor.  The only way to make the switch was to take it out through the family room, all the way up the driveway and back into the house using the front walkway.  He has already been anticipating my usual 3 year itch to redecorate.

At least he has a sense of humor about it.  I got an email with links to movers and how to check prices, and this Weird Al Yankovic Link to a YouTube video — very funny, but I got the message, call movers or forget it.  You will have to click the link on this one, but it is worth it for the laughs.

YouTube - Weird Al Yankovic-Living With A Hernia

Hubs was being very good to me today and agreed to take me shopping.  He HATES to take me shopping.  I like to thoroughly search and get the best bargains out there.  He wants to grab whatever is on the list and get out of there fast.  It is always a big deal to go shopping, but I usually try to entice him with going out to eat as a nice break, but we did not have time for that today.  Three stores were on the list and lots of traffic driving to each one.  That is so tiring in itself and Hubs had no shortage of complaints about sitting in traffic.

He is still complaining about the traffic we endured this evening.  Better to go now and miss out on the real traffic when Christmas gift buying frenzy buying really intensifies.

My saving grace was showing him how much cold cash we could save while going to three different stores, that perked him right up.  Coupons saved us $20 on $60 worth of Christmas gift items at Bed Bath and Beyond and one of the items came with a $10 rebate.  The parking lot at BB&B was pretty full but that was our least longest stop.  I had called ahead of time yesterday and our order was waiting for us.

Our local grocery was next for the specials on buy one, get one items, and then Sam’s Club was last.   All the parking lots were filled with cars and the stores had lots of shoppers almost as if people were there because stores were giving away things for free.

I’ll make him feel better, he’s complaining about the traffic and time we spent going from store to store yet again.  At least he will get a good laugh out of this:

We have an account on eBay, but would probably do better putting items up for sale on Craigslist.  Last time I looked, there were no fees.   The Hubs wants to use eBay so we can just pack the stuff and send it out.  That would eliminate a lot of strangers stopping by to pick up their items.  If we continue to pare down, that would either be a lot of packing and shipping or a lot of strangers.  We have done actual yard sales, but only in the summer.  Those are hard to plan outside when you have to do advertising two weeks in advance.  Worse yet are the times when we had done major work, only to have to drag things back inside because of thunderstorms.   Hubs gets to pack and ship if he insists on eBay instead of Craigslist.  Maybe I can just put up the items for sale in another area and send them instead?  Oh, Hubs thinks the eBay set up is better and sends me a Weird Al Yankovic parody…take a look at what I have to endure below to get the Hubs to help clean out.