The ShugaBowl: Deck Them Halls and All That Jazz

Monday, January 02, 2006

Deck Them Halls and All That Jazz - Part Two

Ok, I did say that I would eventually write about what we did after the holiday was over. You know that time between Christmas and New Year's Eve? It's usually a blank on the blog. At least, from surfing other folks' blogs, it seems to be.

Monday, December 26

It was a Monday. Mondays are bad enough, but when you have to be to work an hour early so you can plan your strategy against the teeming mob already lined up outside the front door, you know it's going to be the ultimate Monday.

For three hours, we fought the customers. Ladies. No men. I'm telling you it was unreal to think that only two days before there was not a woman to be seen in the store who was not wearing a red shirt with khaki bottoms. (Hallmark uniforms.) And now there wasn't a man or child to be seen. All these women were dead set on getting the best deals before the other women got away with them.

Ugly little felt Christmas trees that we hadn't sold one of before Christmas were dwindling in number by noon. The singing Snoopy suddenly became the cutest thing they'd ever seen. It's amazing what someone will buy, simply because they know it's the last one, or because someone else just put it down.

It's unreal.

Three hours. From 9:30 straight through until 12:30. Two ran registers and two bagged purchases. We two bagging were also responsible for finding boxes. These boxes were right there on the shelf next to the item they picked up, but of course no one bothered to pick up the box as well. We were responsible for ~~retreating to~~ ~~hiding in~~ making our way back to the store room to see if that snowman on the shelf really is the last one we have. Then coming back out to assure the customer that, yes, we did check again and, yes, it really is the last one we have.

Then at 12:30, people stopped coming in. "Hurry, Gina! Eat your lunch before more people arrive!"

At six, it was "Hurry, Deb! Lock the door!"

And we all went home.

Tuesday, December 27th

This day's events were described in the previous cookie baking post.

After making all those cookies, our guests arrived. We had the Slack family over for a long overdue get-together. Joy was home from training and David was spending the holiday in NJ, too. Emily & Christian brought their sweet little Charis over. It was the first time I'd seen her. She's already four months old and looks just like Christian. I would pass along pictures, but I don't have any. We were all busy having a great time that no one wanted to spend time messing with the camera.

We played Apples to Apples. What fun! I bought it for our family for Christmas. After a few rounds, it started to really get silly. I decided that flowers & candy are sophisticated, thus winning David a green apple. I am bound to silence as to whose decision it was, but Richard Simmons was deemed flamboyant and flannel shirts were described as cut & dry. Johnny Depp personified sickening and up & coming was exampled by Drew Carey.

Needless to say, we all had fun. I believe David won, but I'm not sure. It was close for a while. Some of us didn't get any green cards. Some had only one.

We ate as many of those cookies as we could in between rice crispy treats. Soda disappeared quickly, but the coffee held out all evening.

We always have so much fun with their family.

Wednesday, December 28th

This day was spent at a very slow store. Scarcely anyone came in all day long. Deb and I worked on getting Valentine's Day stuff out on the shelves which had been emptied the day before of the Christmas stuff.

Thursday, December 29th

I know I already posted about the gorgeous walk I had in the rain, so I'll tell about the evening instead.

Hooray! We took a trip to Deptford. All of us. Five in the Honda. It was kind of cramped, what with our heavy coats and all. Then it became kind of warm. We had a difficult time extricating ourselves from those heavy coats.

Hit the mall. Not as much fun as at other times for the only stores I struck were JCP, the Icing and, oh, some computer game store that I can't recall the name of. I towed James along with me to Icing.

"Do you like this one?"

"That's nice."

"Ooh! This is pretty."

"Mm-hmm."

He looked like a fish out of water.

"Oh! Look at this purse! Tinkerbell! I so love it!"

One raised eyebrow.

"How 'bout earrings?"

He followed me over there.

Finally, after much deliberration, I settled on a necklace and earrings. Black and white stones. Cute, but pretty at the same time, with the added bonus of James' approval.

"I don't know. Do you like it?"

"Mm-hmm."

At the register- "I don't know, James. Do you really like them?"

"Mm-hmm."

Out the door.

James- "Ok, now let's go to this store over here."

The first time I got a whole sentence out of him, he wanted to take me to the computer game store.

The grown-ups had stayed in Penney's to return sizes and find other deals, so we headed there again when we were finished. We spotted Dad going out the door, but we couldn't catch him before he was gone. We hung around, assuming that he was goin to pull the car up for Mom and Grandma, but we didn't see them.

What I did see were some more cute purses and after ooh-ing and ah-ing over them and getting James to try and figure out how the cutest of all of them opened, I spied the perfume counter.

It's no wonder he doesn't like to go to the mall with me.

I found two that I liked, but he couldn't tell the difference. (Bree, one of them was that Curious that we were so all over. I love it! but he couldn't tell me more than that "it smells like alcohol.") :-b

Dinner at Pizza Hut! Do you know that the last time I was at PH, I was watching Amber order two servings of breadsticks, putting one aside for taking home? That was so much fun!

James and I split a stuffed crust pepperoni. Obviously, we had to take half of it home.

Friday, December 30th

Thankfully, this was my last day at the store. I'm so glad I didn't sign on for longer than the month of December. Don't think they didn't all try to get me to stay, "at least another month, huh?" "Do you want any more days before you go back to Chicago?" "I wish you were still gonna be here."

I almost wanted to stay.

Almost. Not quite.

Saturday, December 31st
New Year's Eve

Mom, Grandma and I went shopping at the Cumberland mall. They are slowly moving up. An Aeropostale here. A Claire's there. Bath & Body Works was the only cool store for a long time. We had to be back in time to make dinner before Dad left for work, so we didn't stay long. I do remember hitting Walmart on the way in? or out?

James and I decided we were going to stay up late. I played the Xbox for a while after dinner. He played after me. I tried calling some friends to see if we could borrow one of their dvd's, but (duh!) they weren't home. So we watched Peter Pan. Then we watched Phantom of the Opera, the old one with Claude Reines? (How do you spell his last name? Is that right?) We only had about an hour afterward to kill so we sat reading the paper and doing crosswords. I had just figured out what a fifteen letter word for hop was when James pipes up.

"happy new year."

"oh. yup. happy new year."

"i'm going to bed."

"see ya."

And that was it.

posted by cori 1/02/2006 11:11:00 AM

2 Comments:

At 1/08/2006 3:03 PM, Anonymous said…

I am sooo going to have to play Apples to Apples! I've heard that it's really fun!
And for James' info, "Curious" does NOT smell too much like alcahol and is one of the best-smelling ladies perfume on the market!
However, James, I do feel for you - being drug around the mall like that. But I really must point out that you have such insight when it comes to ladies' accessories! "MMm-hmm."
At 1/08/2006 6:55 PM, cori said…

That's not insight! That's disinterestedness.