Holiday Joy Part 1

And she did not write and she did not run. And a darkness fell upon the land and there was no joy and there was no contentment. And a decree went forth throughout the nations, “When mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

For 5 days.This is what happens when I don’t do what needs to be done for myself.

The writing wasn’t going to happen and I kind of knew that. The laptop gets taken by the teenage girl and the iPad gets taken by the teenage boy and I am fine with that because they are quiet. And it’s not like I would have been able to think over the incessant yelling at the many thousands of football games that were on ALL WEEKEND LONG.

Oh the yelling.

I actually did sit down to write a couple of times but thanks be to the Almighty I didn’t publish any of those raw, unfiltered diatribes. Each day was rawer and less filtered because of the other thing I didn’t do for myself for 5 days.

No running.

I started off all wrong on Wednesday – the very first day of vacation. I should have gotten up to run, but I didn’t do it. I was sore from the day before and the bed felt SO good and no one else was getting up at the crack of ass on the first day of vacation so why should I?

Because when you don’t, by three o’clock that day, you kind of want to kill all of the people in all of the places all of the time. Whatever, I’ll run in the morning on Thanksgiving Day – it’ll make me feel better about eating myself into a coma later on.  Then I slept on an air mattress Wednesday night and woke up needing traction or a chiropractor or both. Not only could I not run, I could barely walk. OK – so that only lasted a couple of hours and we didn’t eat until 2:00 but inertia and…well…just inertia. And Jonesboro is hilly. I’ll run Friday.

Yeah.

Remember the cozy bed? And the vacation? And now the inertia? Well, let's just say my running shoes stayed dry both Saturday and Sunday as it rained. And rained. And rained some more. And then 5 days were done. Just like that.

And then my running buddy returned and it was all well and good and I am normal again. 

But let me give you a rundown of what occurred in the meantime.

I had my usual Black Friday meltdown…but on crack. I do not understand Black Friday. I do not like Black Friday. Too many gifts…too many people…too many emails…too many “final” Christmas lists from the children (which are never really final). And what about Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday and OH MY GOSH WHO ENJOYS THIS SHIT?!!!

But we went down to the outlet mall – the newly-opened…like 7 days earlier…outlet mall. I’ll set the stage for you. Husband suggests we just go down and look. In my mind, I know this is never going to happen…but whatever. Kids get excited, I tamp down the anxiety that I feel about the crowds and the no-plan-for-anyone’s-gifts-yet angst.

It’ll be nice just to see the Christmas decorations and enjoy the warmth of the holiday spirit amid all the joyful shoppers and the accommodating shopkeepers.

Oh the lies we tell ourselves.

And I knew it was a lie because I had just read an article about how my state “won second prize” in the contest to see who experiences the most Black Friday fist fights. Fist fights. This has to be a good idea…right?

In the car, husband asks the boy – our human GPS – which will be the best way to go to avoid traffic. I snickered to myself. They hemmed and hawed about it and started to get bickery. And then the girl chimed in. And I said,

“Look. There’s not going to be a “good” way to get there, only degrees of bad. And it’s not going to be calming or uplifting when we arrive because of all the people in a gimme gimme gimme mindset. But it’s gonna be OK if we all just decide to be someone else. We will be a completely different family for the next 2 hours. We are going to put on shells made of our best selves. (To husband) You won’t be the angry, impatient driver. (To daughter) You won’t be the clueless teenager who thinks her parents are made of money. (To son) You won’t be the sullen teenager who thinks we’re only going where everyone else wants to go. And I won’t be that prickly bitch who hates crowds…and shopping…and shopping in crowds. We’re just all gonna be not ourselves and everything will be dandy.”

Traffic…nightmare. Parking…bloodbath. There was a neighborhood across from the entrance to the mall where they were charging $3.00 to park. On a residential street. Owned by the city. A nearby church was charging $5.00 to park in their lot and while I’m sure all the proceeds were going to the Syrian refugees who are being mercifully welcomed by the State of Mississippi, we took our chances and turned into the mall lot. We were still acting like the best version of ourselves rather than our natural selves and maybe because of this, we actually managed to find a spot with reasonable swiftness. It wasn’t close, mind you, but we are all healthy people who don’t mind walking so we called it a win. Bolstered by our good fortune, we headed toward the shops.

It’s an outdoor mall. Praise be. So…fresh air (when I wasn’t around the 70% of the people who were smoking), natural light (or something like it beyond the cloud cover and occasional raindrops), and less concentration of sounds (I could block out the Christmas Muzak and people yelling at their kids.) It was looking like I was going to remain inside my shell of a normal person. As we entered the common area, we saw a sign that indicated the mall had been open all night. That’s ALL. NIGHT. Which means there were probably people who had been working ALL NIGHT. I filed this information away so that I could be extra cautious and courteous toward each and every sales person I encountered lest I get cut.

We ventured in and quickly out of stores. They were crowded and people were completely and totally unaware of the sea of humanity that surrounded them as evidenced by their ability to step on, push aside, and cut in front of anyone and everyone in their paths. 

After getting knocked about a few times and not being able to organize any kind of coherent shopping list in my head, I felt the shell of my normal self cracking under the pressure. Thankfully, the kids asked for a snack and chicken tenders magically appeared in a kiosk before my eyes.

Saved for the moment. But the cracks were already there and, as I quickly learned, the kids’ shells weren’t holding up either. Husband’s was fine because we weren’t in the car and his resilience was about to come in quite handy.

Fortified by our crack-laced chicken snack, daughter and I spied a store we wanted to look in which was serendipitously situated caddy corner from a store that my husband and son wanted to check out. Let’s divide and conquer.

Or be conquered as the case may be – as the case was indeed. These two stored contained twice as many people each as the entire rest of the mall combined.

I tried…so help me I did. We looked at some racks. I fielded requests from the girl about Christmas dresses and black leggings…but all I could think about was the metal taste in my mouth. Adrenaline? Fight or flight?

Flight. I told her I had to get out and she rolled her eyes before reluctantly following. I registered the eye-roll and decided to ignore it because this was clearly the Zombie Apocalypse and a teenage eye-roll was the least of my worries. I barely made it out of there without having a full-on panic attack when suddenly I’m at the doors. Freedom! I push them open to inhale that sweet breath of fresh air and as I do, someone in my path exhales their cigarette smoke directly into my face.

Are you EFFING KIDDING ME?!

No I didn’t scream it. But my face surely said it because the woman quickly apologized and ran from me as though I were Super Fly TNT.

I shook it off and headed to the other store to gather the rest of family so we could all run away from this place as fast as possible. When we entered that store it was more of the same. I think I blacked out for a minute. Daughter actually started looking at stuff to buy and in my daze, I wasn’t able to make words to stop her. I scanned the crowd for any people who looked familiar. It was just more Zombie Apocalypse though. I decided that the husband and the boy were going to have to fend for themselves and I would do my best to just survive with my daughter. I grabbed her arm and my desperate face must have said it all because she just followed. No eye roll this time. As we reached the door, we saw the other half of our party – which sounds much more festive than this felt – and I all but broke out into a full-speed run toward the exit.

I don’t know what happened after that. I think the boys may have actually gone back in and bought something? I have a vague recollection of sitting at a table – all four of us – me slumped over in a chair. My shell had long since shattered and I was just a soft lump of formerly-human material. Somehow we got home. I know this because everyone was present and accounted for when we walked in the door. I have no memory of walking to the car or driving back to the house. I’m just glad we made it out alive. And it kind of gives me a ray of hope that we might in fact survive a Zombie Apocalypse because I’m pretty sure Black Friday is the same damn thing.

So that was the first thing that happened.

The next was that we put up our Christmas tree. You can read about that tomorrow and I'm serious this time because I’m writing it now but you don’t need to read any more about my craziness today when you clearly have more important things you should be doing with your time. 

So, until tomorrow.