Here we go, the weekend after the day after Thanksgiving, which has become part of what I call creeping holidayitus, in that once it was just Thanksgiving day itself which was the holiday, and then the day afterwards slowly became a part of it, too… and then the holidayitus began creeping in from the other end of the week, so basically kiss off any serious business being done for the last week in November unless you work in retail … or maybe law enforcement crowd control.

My daughter and I had our Thanksgiving Day dinner at home this year, and carefully calculated what we would have so as to minimize the quantity of leftovers. I mean, we really don’t like baked sweet potatoes all that much, and stuffing gets progressively more disgusting every day after T-day that it sets in the refrigerator, and so does leftover mashed potatoes. So – baked 3-pound turkey breast on a bed of carrots and turnips, a single cooked ham slice, oven-roasted Brussels sprouts with red onion and kielbasa, and cheddar biscuits, with the usual corn relish and cranberry chutney. For leftovers the night after I made mashed potatoes and a small quantity of gravy from the reserved drippings … all much, much more appealing. And the cheddar biscuits made a divine breakfast paired with sausage. We toasted to all that we had to be thankful for this year, and hope that by next year we will have cause to be just as thankful.

Best of all, our family shopping obligations were wrapped up by 9AM, courtesy of various websites, especially Fischer and Wieser’s – where they were offering a 50% discount for about six hours on everything on the website. Mom is getting a gift basket of their delicious sauces and condiments. Look, I did retail sales in a mall, the first year that I was retired and had a job on the sales floor of a high-end department store, and after that experience wild horses wouldn’t drag me out on Black Friday to a mall, or to any other big-box retail venue in the wee hours of AM. No, getting into a knock-down drag-out fight over some cheap electronics or whatever from China is not my cup of tea.

Besides, I usually have already picked up sufficient inexpensive or marked down gifts during the year and stashed them in the gift closet… this is what we have done for our Red Hat Ladies group – a tea pot and a cookie jar, filled with some appropriate edible goodies, and there we are. This year it’s cookies for the neighbors that we know, as a change from the flavored oils and vinegars, and home made jam.
Next week – Goliad, with Christmas on the Square, which I hope will be as popular a shopping venue as the Christmas market in New Braunfels was last weekend. In a way, I am still doing retail … just not the usual way.