Shop til you Drop

Not being a shopper, I can’t say I’ve ever dropped from shopping. I’m more like a sprinter when it comes to shopping – list in hand, fastest way to get from store to store in mind, and let’s see how quickly I can get it done and go home. But on Saturday, I just about fell over from shopping.

Honestly, I have been shopping for longer than seven hours at a time. The Sturm Family Christmas Shopping Day is an all-day adventure. And it’s not like shopping is extremely strenuous exercise, certainly no more than running seven or eight miles in Texas heat. I mean, you don’t even keep a steady pace around a store as you hunt for something. But I could have sworn I ran a marathon on Saturday.

The day began after sleeping in, and waffles for breakfast, and taking our merry time getting ready for the day. (We don’t have many Saturdays like that left, so we’re taking advantage!) We got out the door before noon, heading up to Babies R Us to make a return, pick out a car seat and get a couple of odd things. (Squirting rubber duckies not being on that list, but somehow they ended up in the cart thanks to the new daddy.) Successful there, we stopped by the house briefly to drop those things off because we weren’t sure it would all fit in the back of my SUV as we were now headed to get a dresser to use as a changing table. By this time, it was gaining on two in the afternoon.

Except that Ikea is a bit crazy on a Saturday, it didn’t take us long to get the dresser. Then we stopped by Hobby Lobby for me to get a couple of things for a project for the baby’s room (a project that is now growing…why does that happen?). By this time, we were quite hungry so we sat down to eat. Maybe sitting down was the mistake. Perhaps I should have kept going. But after lunch/dinner, a stop at Kohl’s didn’t seem like a bad idea. And then Ed wanted to go to Barnes and Noble to look at car magazines. That was the stop that broke the camel’s back. By this time, I ached all over. My feet were swollen. I made the mistake of sitting down and almost couldn’t get back up. I don’t think I have ever felt that exhausted in my whole life!

So, I now know what it means to shop until I dropped. Because that’s what I did once I got home and enjoyed a hot shower. I fell asleep early and slept like a rock. But, thankfully, we won’t need another shopping venture like Saturday’s. Now I just need to spend seven hours putting everything away…