Black Friday

OK...so Nancy's Goddamned Diet has taken a short holiday siesta to allow for your usual holiday fare and family-like traditions. For me, these include a tremendous amount of forgetting, some cooking, and at least one panic attack because I'm so fucking broke. The forgetting seems to occur mostly at the grocery store at which I spend a freakin' massive amount of my time because I can never remember to get everything at once. Managing to get it all at the store is only half the equation because the rest involves getting it to wherever I'm going. This means at least two trips back to the house........and it's getting worse as I age! As for the panic attacks.....I'm an equal opportunity attacker......I can have them at any time but seem to prefer festive holiday occasions.

This Thanksgiving included my first foray in to the "Black Friday" morass of......what?.....humanity maybe? Hilary talked me into going with her. We headed out to the stores at the un-godly hour of 8:30 a.m. Do real people get up this early on a day off??!....really??? Some obviously mutant forms of human beings actually head out at midnight!!!!All for the acquisition of that must-have holiday item. I have to admit that I actually got in on a doorbuster that was more my speed.....one that lasted from 9:00 a.m. til 1:00 p.m. It required that I walk past the display, read the sign and pay for my purchase at the sales counter. Done and done. Thank-you and goodnight.

Our drive in was about as usual. Hilary fussing at me to stop pressing buttons. "Mother, what are you trying to do!?...would you please stop touching things!" "I was just trying to turn off the radio" "Well, you need to stop because you are just fucking up the bass" "Well how do you turn off the radio!?" "You ask ME to turn it off!" "Mother!! what are you doing now!" "I'm trying to turn the heat down" "You just turned on my freakin' four-way flashers!....ok...ok......STOP!!" We have a great relationship Hilary and I. No really......we do.

Our first stop was Kohls. This was also our first mistake. Kohls is where all the large herds of crazy women go to stampede. The earth rumbles as they scurry past pushing undersized carts full of coffee makers and blenders and bread machines. Their eyes are glazed over as they defy the laws of gravity by balancing 8 feet of towering crapola in their little 2 foot carts. They are on a mission....they are clearly possessed by the dark lord.......and they have the unlimited credit that's only reserved for the wives of short, slope-shouldered, balding men who's only refuge is their work......God bless-em! Purchases secured, they head for the check out. I could actually see cob webs beginning to form on some of the people trapped in a line that wrapped around the store more than once.

What I did not see was a weak-link member of the herd. You know...the one little, sorta scrawny looking lady standing in line with one pair of isotoner gloves. I think the others would have smelled her weakness and devoured her on the spot. She was smart and stayed well hidden. The lines were made up entirely of booty laden herds- women. While Hilary was off checking out the great prices, my job was to take a number and wait at the jewelry counter. I mistakenly took two numbers. This is me we're talking about here after all. Little did I know the pandemonium soon to ensue.

Once our number was called, Hilary went off to look at her choices and I made the rookie mistake of offering my "gunna-be-called-next" number to whomsoever wanted it. Lets just say I was happy to have my hand back because for a split second there, it was touch and go. The lunge for my laughably inexperienced hand caused a ripple effect that could be seen around the store like a tidal surge.......all I could hear was the sound of rushing feet and somewhere off in the distance, a coffee maker falling from a great height. The rest is a blur.