Christmas Shopping with the Shanleys

All the pre-Christmas chaos makes me crazy!  I don’t know about you but I think holiday stress bends your brain.  You get caught up in the frenzy of it all – especially the shopping.  And I can’t even blame my old friend perimenopause for turning me into a bit of a she-monster!

My husband and I took our annual Christmas shopping trip to Canadian Tire last Sunday.  I was so excited I had visions of Clark Griswold dancing in my head.  We found the aisle with all the colourful Christmas lights and heavily congested with assorted customers but the vultures had picked the shelves clean.

“Blue lights,” my husband hisses loudly in my ear.
“Blue lights?  We’ll be lucky if we get any lights.” 
We spot the section of blue spotlights.  To my husband’s dismay, there are only two boxes left.
“We’ll never get them,” he whispers in a panic.  “You wanted the cart and there’s a guy standing in the way.”
I silently size up my opponent.  Swiftly darting through the zigzag of carts, I snatch the two boxes from the shelf in front of him.
“Hope you weren’t looking for this colour.  Have a lovely holiday!”
Poor man.  Didn’t stand a chance. 
Before he lifts his jaw from the floor, I’ve propelled my husband from the Christmas lights aisle to the nearest checkout. 

Nora Krank would have been proud, I think to myself as we race to the car.  I love the holiday movie, Christmas with the Kranks. I cried when her very expensive Hickory Honey Ham was pulverized under the wheels of a passing transport truck.  I’m praying for a great big old transport truck to come by right now because I can’t imagine what my husband is going to say when he finds out I just bought the last two empty boxes of blue floodlights.