In the past 24 hours we have managed to begin and complete the Christmas shopping for seven children; our three and my sister's four. That's a lot of shopping for you who may not know.
For the most part the shopping was pleasant. Most of the shoppers we encountered were pleasant and polite except for the rude wench at Target who decided she was going to squeeze through the aisle with me and my cart on one side and a lady who was standing on the other side. She didn't fit without scraping her cart past mine. Did she bother smiling at me, saying 'excuse me' or 'I'm sorry'? Heck no, not a word did she mutter, mumble, or utter as she forced her way through. It wasn't as if she couldn't have, she had plenty of time to do so. Master and I were both just appalled at the lack of manners. I said, loudly enough for her to have heard "I just can't believe the lack of manners in some people." Perhaps I should have confronted her as she was muscling her way past. Given the woman's apparent age, I gave it up as a lost cause. If you don't have good manners by that age, you never will.
At our last stop, the huge new mall, I eyed the kid's play area thinking of how good kids have it these days. The only cool things kids had to play on in my day were escalators! Oh, and the animal play land at Richman Gordman. Stores would do well to have play lands for weary parents to take cranky children for a few moments of full out playing madness. Kids are much easier to shop with when they've had a moment to blow off some steam. Maybe that would work for the frazzled adult shoppers too, send them to play for a few minutes and they'll be a little nicer, a little more mannerly, and definitely less aggressive.
I'm looking forward to next weekend. I can't wait to see the happy grins as the kids unwrap their gifts. I really enjoy their enjoyment. It all starts with the covert inspections of the gifts as they lie under the tree. The older two joke about letting the ferrets run loose "Oops, look Sprite opened this present!" They throw guesses at us hoping they'll trip us up and we'll give something away. Then it culminates on Christmas morning as they open their gifts, their eyes light up, a slow grin spreads across their faces and squeals of delight gush out of their mouths. Yeah, that's happiness right there.
After we'd just bought a gift for the youngest, a gift that will end up being *the* gift in her eyes, I told Master we were going to get the Parents of the Year award for that gift. I chuckled then and said "No, it's not really about that, about scoring points... she's really going to love this and I can't wait to see how happy she will be." It's that simple.
During the course of our shopping Master and I came upon a beautiful nightie and robe set that would look so very sexy on me. It was fun watching him it was obvious he was picturing me wearing the nightie it was also obvious that he was enjoying what he was imagining. He's so cute when he does that. But don't tell him I said so, he always blushes when I comment about his cuteness.
