So they have these insane sales on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in year’s past, though today, you can find a lot of sales online and beforehand, no need to kill people in a rush to get some fantastic prices.

But I was going to write a short story for a promo blog for a review site that is running a Black Friday, or Christmas shopping madness stories for the holidays for Christmas releases. Alphas Unwrapped will be out in December, so I signed up. Then I thought, wait, I don’t have any real life stories about Christmas shopping madness. I often use some real stuff mixed in with the fiction to make it more fun. Oh, and fantasy, of course. After all, cougar shifters…

Well, anyway, so I asked FB friends and fans. And it’s fun to hear others stories. Yes, they did it and never again. No, they’ve never done it. Some work at that time. Some shop online. Some make it a family tradition.

That’s what makes the world go around. Everyone’s different. Then it reminded me that I’ve worked on the day after Thanksgiving! But thankfully not at a retail store. I used to always set up my Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. For years, that was our tradition. We’d eat turkey sandwiches and other leftovers, and just play games or watch movies. We’d make up our Christmas lists.

But once the kids moved out, I saw my son in Omaha for a couple of Thanksgivings, and then this year, my daughter and SIL the weekend before. Which means I’ll be putting up decorations before the real Thanksgiving. I used to go out with my mom to buy at after Christmas specials. Talk about shopping madness.

I found that they had a lot of the stuff I was looking for on sale way in advance, and everything else was so picked over by the day after Christmas, we stopped going.

But one year, I needed a new Christmas tree, so I went to the mall when I was living in Oklahoma, and the mall was in Fort Smith, Arkansas. We stood outside in a long line waiting to enter the store. When we got in, we rushed to the Christmas section. You had to grab a harried clerk and get your name on a tree and within minutes, they were all taken.

Now, when they packaged up the tree, they broke the top. I didn’t open the box until it was time for Christmas the next year, naturally, and when I did, I found my first beautiful tree had to be jerry-rigged so that the broken top could stay on. It was a half-priced tree, a year old, and so there wasn’t anything I could do about it. For nearly 15 years, I jerry-rigged the tree. And by that time, I was also doing the same with branches in support brackets that had broken. But every year, that sad little tree came to life. It was beautiful and no one would ever know that it was tied up, taped up, and whatever else I could do to make the branches and top look like they were there, in place, of their own accord.

Finally, my kids convinced me to buy a new tree, which is already 5 years old. It’s not the same as the tree I so sneakily bought. Not that I wasn’t first in line and deserved to get one. But you see, I’m a writer, and I write conflict into my stories for the effect. But when it comes to conflict in real life, I’m not an extrovert. I don’t go looking for trouble. So I was lucky to have found a harried clerk to pin my name on my tree before a frantic 100 or more other women grabbed him. All the other trees had already been sold. It was that crazy! And the big fat, tall tree was mine. We had it through my kids growing up years. And when I finally bought the 50% off tree at a store that has sales every other week, no need to go through any crazy shopping madness, I took my new tree home.

It has lights on it already, which is really, really nice. The branches are already connected, which is really, really nice. But it makes it really heavy for me to set up because it’s in just 3 parts. It’s not my fat, tall tree. It’s skinny, and lovely, but not the broken topped tree I had to lovingly jerry-rig every year to make it look like it wasn’t broken.

Would I go through that madness again?

NO WAY.

Soooo, do you ever fight the crowds to get your sales, or do you chill out and do something else the day after Thanksgiving, or during the holiday gift buying season?

Okay, so I proofed Taming the Wild Cougar print version, and it should be approved soon. And today I’m working on Billionaire edits.

Have a great day!

Terry

“Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy is reality.”

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