I am NOT angry at God. I am NOT ANGRY AT GOD!

Because if I WERE angry at God, then that would be wrong, wouldn't it? Feels like it would be anyway. A forbidden emotion, something the church of my youth wouldn't have approved of. If I did get angry at God for not watching over my daddy, and answering my fervent prayers to keep HIS hand over my daddy's health, if I DID get angry because today my daddy was diagnosed with a large malignant tumor on his pancreas, will fire and brimstone really rain down on me? Because if that is the case, I'm calling Bullshit on that. Fine. Rain on me. Bring it on. I'm standing, looking up in the sky arms open wide screaming WHY? You know what? I AM angry. I am really damn angry. I just don't know that I'm angry at God. And my next sentence is probably going to be... it's just not fair. That was predictable. But so damn true.

I Fought the Garage Door and it was a Draw.

These words should be painted on my garage door. I dashed out this morning to meet a friend for a lunch date... running a few minutes late as I always am, hit the garage door opener as usual on my way out the mudroom door expecting the garage door to go up and what happens? Not a hell of a lot. WTF. The door is just stranded halfway up and the motor to the opener is pathetically whining this little half ass groan. Well, I'm resourceful and remember what that red chord is for, so I pull on it and manually open the door and get my car out of the garage and manually close the door. Exciting stuff, huh? Not so much, really. I would feel so much better about this if I weren't already in a state of disgust about the garage to begin with. For the life of me, I'll never figure out why our "two car" garage barely fits two smallish cars with barely a foot between them. I might understand this if our neighborhood were built in another time, but our 'hood is fairly new, the homes are largish and built in the age of SUV's. Since the hero and I don't drive SUV's, we are one of the few couples on the block who can actually park IN our garage, so why the hell am I even complaining? I don't know. Perhaps I'm still cranky in the head and because I had to fight the garage door and a sidewalk this week. Wow, whine lately Melanie?

I did make it to my lunch date on time and had a lovely Italian lunch, followed by a leisurely drive home in the snow. The pretty kind of snow. Oh, I did get sidetracked at one store on my way home... I found some very cool fingerless gloves to wear inside for my never warm hands and some nifty ear muffs to help keep that nagging Chicago wind out of my right ear.

Tomorrow we make an appt. for the dumb ass garage door opener to be fixed. Of course it is never convenient for things to break, so it is what it is. Like I said, I'm cranky about it and tomorrow is a new day.

Big things happening tomorrow... much much bigger than any old door. My daddy is having some major tests run tomorrow. If anyone who reads this blog prays... please say one for his health. I would be so grateful for your thoughts and prayers for him.

Woman Gets a Beatdown by a Snowy Sidewalk.

One sidewalk. Seemed harmless enough at the time, although to its credit it was covered in a few inches of heavy wet snow. But still, one damn sidewalk. Do you mean to tell me that after weeks of unpacking boxes and lugging furniture around to place it just so, and hanging heavy pictures, and scrubbing every freaking inch of this house top to bottom including the garage, that the thing that finally puts my ass down hard is shoveling one damn sidewalk? Really? Hmmm. I don't really know what to think about that, but it makes my head cranky and I actually just woke up at noon feeling much much older than my age. I'm going to go take some more Tylenol, then I might go kick that sidewalk out of spite, since kicking myself for being so out of shape would be both awkward and likely make things worse. Oh, and once again... Hero told me not to shovel the sidewalk. In his infinite wisdom, he said it would make my back worse. So, true to form I was stubborn. Hero, you were right I was wrong. There. One of these days I might start listening to you.

Finding Ways to Take the Pain Out of Holiday Shopping

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the holiday frenzy has officially begun. Now that we've given Thanks with our families, we've rushed the stores for deals and some folks have generally acted like criminals in the process. I'm sure you've caught the incident about the Walmart worker who was trampled to death on Friday in the news. I won't rehash that, it makes me sick and angry. People in crowds behave like animals. God I hate crowds.

This year, Hero and I restrained ourselves. Our only shopping on Black Friday was in the form of our weekly trip to Costco to pick up essentials, items needed to make homemade dog food and we did end up picking up a couple of books to read by the fire. We put the boys on the train headed for Chicago's Magnificent Mile so they could check out some of the sights of the city and do some shopping. They reported that the stores were not that busy, but they both came back with great deals. My son scored a great Guess coat for sixty bucks at Macy's. A Penguin T-shirt for sixteen dollars, and a sweater for a steal. His buddy got a couple of Lucky T-shirts for seven bucks apiece at Nordstrom. The deals are out there if you are looking for them!

Being on a tighter budget this year, I'm still working out my plan for Holiday shopping. I normally don't buy into the Black Friday panic shopping, except to get into the holiday spirit. It is fun. The prices always go down in the weeks closer to the holidays, with a few exceptions... certain retailers who never do markdowns and do specials only for the Holiday Kick Off. Those are not my targets, so I ignore them. I worked in retailing for many years and witnessed the panic of the companies I worked for trying to meet last year sales numbers. Generally, they try very hard to do this by marking down and moving more product. Its fairly common sense stuff. The mark up is high, there is a big cushion to make a profit. This is the reason I never pay full retail for anything. Everything I'm looking for eventually goes on sale. If it doesn't, I'm not looking for it. I'm moving on.

I'm not an economist, so I won't even try to discuss jump starting the economy by spending money. I don't really agree with spending money you don't have, and I don't agree with overspending through the holidays and spending January depressed and blue with buyer's remorse.

I will discuss being thrifty, looking for deals, being creative, looking for alternative ideas. I enjoy online shopping (hate crowds) and Coupon Cabin offers a good roundup of coupons you can use online and coupons available to print and take with you. Check out Cheap Uncle, as well. If you are looking to enjoy a meal out or would like to gift a meal, or ten, check out Restaurant.com. Amazing deals there and I believe Coupon Cabin or Cheap Uncle is offering a discount code for them right now, making their already amazing deals more so. (Thanks Steph for turning me on to them!). I'm also looking at Etsy this year for some gifts. I love the creative energy I see in the folks who sell their wares there.

Hero and I have already gifted each other this year. We've purchased books and a snow thrower. The snow thrower may come in handy very very soon! After hearing that this area was pummeled with 84" of snow last winter, we decided both our bad backs and my rotator cuff that is on its last leg just can't handle a winter of shoveling out of that kind of snow. I'm sort of exited to fire it up! Right now it is a novelty. I'll hate it in another couple months. I know. I know.

Here's to hoping everyone has a fantastic Cyber Monday!

World Aids Day '08

Today is World Aids Day 08. Bloggers all over the world are uniting to spread the word about Aids. At this time in our history, there is abundant information available yet, still the disease marches on. We can help. We can start by simply making the resources available out there for people to see. We can also donate our time or money. I'm not talented at many things, but I am very talented at stating the obvious. Aids is a big deal. So today, do something small. Wear a red ribbon to raise awareness. Or, do something large. A grand gesture. Talk to a friend about HIV testing, (see Link below) or making a donation, or perhaps just picking up a gift from the RED store online, (Link provided below.)

Information about Aids

HIV Testing near you!

Product RED