HOLIDAY PREPARATION: A week out and counting . . .

I’m saying it’s because Thanksgiving is a week away, because the weekend will have the grocery stores chockfull out the door with shoppers, because there are sales upon sales on all the holiday food goodies. That’s why I brought home a truck load of food today.

My husband said it’s because he told me last night that he will be laid off all next week with only the two days of the holiday being paid--and therefore, I tend to panic we’ll all starve, and load up on food until there are not cupboards, shelves, refrigerator, nor freezer space to hold it all.

Clearly, there is a difference in perception here LOL.

If I were to buy in to reincarnation, I would say I must have starved to death in a number of past lives. The end must have been grizzly, agonizing, painful, and frightening. If there isn’t such a thing as reincarnation, well, all I can say is, I’m one sick puppy, because I have missed very few meals in THIS lifetime without expressly choosing to do so--and I, therefore, have no excuse for this panic buying of food stuffs. Of course, that’s assuming my husband’s assessment is correct.

NOW, a possibly more likely scenario would be, I’m an “impulse” shopper. You put something in those bins close to the register, and it is all I can do not to dump a few of these ridiculous items into my cart. They all look like such “good ideas” and the “deals” are stupendous. Who doesn’t need a really tiny little cute brightly colored flashlight that goes on your keychain? I mean, you would NEVER have thought of it while walking through the regular aisles--BUT, right there, just as you’re waiting in line to put your items on the conveyor belt--PLEASE, it makes perfect sense and a deal at twice the price (Ok, maybe not twice--but a deal none-the-less).

When I got home and my third shift hubby had to wake up and get warmly dressed in order to carry in the Haul--LOL--I found out the supervisors and schedulers had thought the whole thing over, and decided they could not possibly be without my son and husband all those days. We will not be without a good paycheck for next week. My son and his family won’t be over “borrowing” (a quaint term for “Mom, you’re never getting any of it back, after all, you are a mother, are you not?, so you feed the world, right? Especially your first born, etc.???).

Am I dismayed I spent two weeks’ worth of budgeting money on all this food? NO, an emphatic NO! A resounding NO! These items, almost across the board, were on SALE. I had COUPONS! You do not pass up sales AND coupons that can be combined. So the budget will be a little tight for a few weeks. So some of the food is like, well, ten boxes of scalloped potatoes and cheesy potatoes, and two flats of vegetables, and twelve cans of crème of mushroom soup, and it will take weeks and weeks to use it all. It was on sale. I had coupons.

Really, it’s self explanatory, right? Right.

Of course, I am going to have to put some of the canned goods under the bed for a few weeks, but it’s a small sacrifice really.