Blackish Friday

Nothing has gone as planned this Thanksgiving. Our trip to the In-laws farm in Indiana was canceled because our Dr. thought Hubby might have mono. Turns out he just has some other generic virus and is feeling better everyday.

Little Guy and Big Girl have been playing musical beds and you never quite know who's going to turn up in your room in the dead of night. This crowds out Hubby who has a hard time sleeping anyway, and he ends up going to one of the kids beds. So, I'm usually the only one who wakes up in the bed they went to sleep in.

So, without a holiday plan in place and with nightly sleep interruptions I have been a little foggy. Wednesday Big Girl informed me that Polly Pockets were no longer a toy she was interested in playing with. I have a nice collection of Polly Pockets (some new, some pristine garage saled condition) in a pretty case stored away as a big Christmas present. Oops.
So, I asked what she really wanted. Enter Squinkies. They are tiny rubber toys that look like gumball machine fodder. A few months ago we found a small set of these at Target on clearance. I let her buy them with her own money. Apparently, a few is not enough.
Target is the only store around here that carries them. Target opened at 4 am on Black Friday.

Guess who was awake during the musical beds portion of our evening at 3:30 on Thursday?
I showered and left the building. Driving down the road in the dark I had brief thoughts of how it would probably just be me and a few other people in the store at that hour. Um, pardon my first timer Black Friday ignorance. I had to park across the road at another store. It was cold.
I began to wonder how badly nightly sleep disturbances had affected my rational thinking. When I got up to the sidewalk of the Target I had to walk past the debris left behind from the overnight campers. Bottles, folding chair covers, portable heaters, all tossed aside like a marauding rabid bear had come charging and they had to run for their lives.
I entered the store at 4:20. I left the store at 6:30. An hour and a half of that time was spent waiting in line for a cashier. I got the Squinkies and a few other items others discarded that I picked off the shelves while I waited in the long curling queue thru housewares.
Anyway, that was my first and probably last experience as a Black Friday shopper. Especially alone. Others traveled in pairs or as a family and were able to leave the line to go to the bathroom, get drinks from the open cafe, or to retrieve forgotten wanted items from store shelves. I was a one woman army determined to leave that store with a blister pack of Squinkies which consequently were not even on sale and also in great supply.
Mission Accomplished.