This is a reprint of a blog I posted on Christmas day 2015…

Whew! Are you like me, boys and girls of all ages? Do you really mean well but find Christmas shopping to be a very, and I mean extremely time consuming, almost tedious waste of your mental resources and physical energy? I am not trying to be a Grinch here, but I just recently was out Christmas shopping and I am exhausted from the effort! The crowds in the malls, the bitter infighting and multitude of near collisions in the parking lots, the long lines, the items that were out of stock, or under stocked…I know it is all worth it on Christmas day, and that is what drives me to do it….(This is a reprint of my last Christmas blog, but some things never change!)

But like many people I am a habitual procrastinator and I always wait till the last minute to get anything done, and Christmas shopping is no exception! And by the way, where the heck did this month go anyway, I mean it is already the 24th of December! How did THAT happen? Actually, this whole week has been a blur, a whirl wind of activity that I usually am able to spread out over several weeks….

Anyway, I finally began wading through all the other normal chores I had to do on Friday, before I could even start shopping. Like a routine doctors appointment, dropping off my prescription at the local pharmacy, and then went Christmas shopping after that since I was up and about…Oh, I almost forgot, this day was such a blur, the minute I got in my car to GO to the doctor’s appointment, which was 20 miles south of here and involved freeway driving, the oh so clever Judas dashboard light came on and indicated I had low tire pressure!

OMG! Well I am not going to drive on the freeway with under inflated tires, so my very first stop was the local gas station to pump air into my tires, funny thing they were all 4 of them under inflated by about 5 pounds, reading 25 psi when they should have been 30 psi, so I am very glad I heeded that potentially life saving dashboard warning…(I have to confess I did not even know what the correct tire pressure was supposed to be, so I called my car dealer and he gave me the very useful information that the correct tire pressure is located on a label on the inside of the driver’s seat door, right on the frame when you open the door)…I absolutely NEVER knew that factoid!

 

I did not know that, and am just including this particular snippet of information for fellow travelers like me who just expect their car to be perpetual motion machines like I do, and are always amazed when there is a malfunction….But I digress….Anyway, once I got the tires properly inflated and the doctor’s visit and the pharmacy stuff taken care of, as noted above, I went to the mall and another store to get SOME of my Christmas presents…I also picked up a small amount of Christmas cards, another holly jolly tradition I always put off till the very end…

I thought that was it, except when I got home I saw my girl friend had texted me a picture on my cell phone of the PERFECT item she wanted for Christmas, so after I unpacked the car I hunkered down in front of my ancient PC, (no fancy lap top or tablet for this baby boomer,) and proceeded to Amazon to do a little on line shopping…

I know, I know, a lot of you are laughing at me and my ignorance, and probably deservedly so, but the online shopping was WAY harder than I thought it would be…I was working off a cell phone description of a certain item, but since I am tragically unhip I could not order the item she wanted on my cell phone and had to relocate the EXACT same item on my PC…

 

Which I eventually did, but just placing the items in the cart was a hassle, and then I inadvertently ordered 3 items instead of the 2 she had requested, so I had to go back and manipulate and massage the keyboard like a crazed mad scientist to remove the unwanted 3rd item from my cart…

Well this took well over a half hour, and then I also had to constantly check my email to make sure I had removed the incorrect item and left the 2 proper items in place, and there was a flurry of confirmations, cancellations and verification’s in my email about this supposedly simple order….

Well the good news is that I finally got it all done, and I have to still say that online shopping is better for me than actually going to the stores…You just have to be patient, (like in that Guns and Rose’s song “Patience”.) Now I had at least half the items I need for my family.  I am a procrastinator by nature and long habit, and I will once again be super busy…

Anyway! I finally finished off the rest of my Christmas shopping, then wrapped ALL the presents and boxed them up, and since I am a transplanted Mid Westerner, from Chicago, I had to cart them all the way to the post office and wait in line to mail them off to my family who still lives in the Mid West before I finally concluded my Christmas shopping experience for yet another year.

Finally, I will be able to breathe a huge sigh of relief and sink into my chair and watch whatever sports is on TV and congratulate myself for another last mad dash, careening, lurching, staggering trip down Santa Claus lane….I don’t know why, but I end up doing my Christmas shopping like this every year, and there is always that glow of contentment to bask in afterwards, and the righteous knowledge that I have done the right thing again after all is said and done…

Maybe it’s not like that for everyone, for all you organized, think ahead, planners and plotters and savvy online shoppers, (and I congratulate you on your foresight) but I know for a fact that is what Christmas shopping is for me….And I have the sneaking suspicion that I am not alone…There is more madness than method to my Christmas shopping, I will cop to that, but somehow, some way, every year it all get’s done.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but didn’t Christmas shopping used to be a lot easier and less frantic? Who cares, it’s here now, let’s celebrate! This is the day! For anybody who reads this blog, a very Merry Christmas Day and Happy Holidays to you all!

 

For more blogs by John Whye, see http://www.johnwhye.com