Shopping shopping ARGH

I don't think I have ever had a Holiday shopping season which hasn't involved time spent at THE MALL. When I was young, I did most of my Christmas shopping there. This was the Garden State Plaza, which was huge, but which grew considerably as soon as I left home. To get around in it, you needed a MAP and I am not kidding. Parking during the holiday season meant a long long walk.

When I worked in Cambridge, it was next to a mall. I ate in the food court, and when I could afford it I parked there. So shopping there during lunch was almost inevitable. I need stuff for gifts, the mall has stuff for gifts, easy.

The malls here are much smaller. And yet, when I attempted a shopping trip this weekend, I spent twenty minutes circling the parking lot before giving up. Today I showed up with Andy forty minutes before the mall opened, and walked around with a bunch of elderly people and women with infants. Apparently a lot of people do this to get exercise in the winter, when they can't walk outdoors. Although how they do it without stopping for a donut at the food court I will never know.

Going to the mall (or to other stores) is now second to online shopping for me. However, online shopping also has its drawbacks. For one thing, you can't SEE what you are buying. What looks like a perfectly good item may arrive a different (and unacceptable) color, or three times smaller than you'd imagined. Not to mention shipping charges and the trouble you might or might not run into having to remember login information - every time I order stamps online I have to dig up this old login and password and I JUST WANT STAMPS! Why the heck do I have to have an account to do this?

Anyway, it's only for a few more days. Because then I'm going to have to wrap, and then I'm going to have to figure out how to get these things to the correct people.