Do YOU Have a Christmas Pet Peeve?

Nobody Knows---

How I hate to Christmas shop. Really. It's because I never have enough money to buy anything. I even had to skip my usual DAVE BARRY desk top calendar present to myself this year..due to the tough times.

(I know, leave me alone.)

What? You don't buy things for yourself at Christmas? Hey---it's the only time of year I have an excuse.

I also have a hard time going into little specialty shops, ones that I've known have been struggling all year, and they see you come in, and you can just see the pain on their faces...they need sales so bad, these small shops.

I went into at least 25 specialty shops today, just because here in Missouri, there is a very quaint and probably one of the last, of the historical "main streets" in the United States. It's a main street right off the river, (The Missouri) where Lewis and Clark started their journey to explore the West, and it's called St. Charles.

Let me tell you---if you can't get in the Christmas spirit walking down St Charles's main street, you will never get it. You know..red ribbons on every pole, candles, hundreds of Santa's and ornaments---smells of cinnamon, and coffee, flocks of geeze flying overhead, tons of pine needles...etc. Lights in every window..the horse drawn buggy...which is more often than not lately...empty.

All the shops have tons of stuff you would never ever dream of seeing at Wal-Mart. In fact, there is so much "stuff" you just can't take it all in.

So, I thought up something I thought was rather clever. Every store I went into, I would go up to the owner and I would spread out my arms...and say as loud as I could---

"I'm on a personal quest! I'm looking for a very fancy letter opener! Do you have one?"

And since NO one sells letter openers anymore...I always got a smile, and they felt better knowing that they didn't have to feel bad when I didn't buy anything, because after all...

"SHE IS ON A QUEST!"

And they would all tell me where to go maybe, and then everyone would smile, and I could look at all the wonderful stuff that I couldn't afford to buy without feeling bad, and a "Merry Christmas" was felt by all, just because there were...well...smiles and good wishes.

God knows we all need them.

From St. Charles, I went to the local "Mall" and stood in a line of over 40 people, just to get a bargain on a box for a friend...(the box was five dollars.)

I hated it.

When I got home, I realized, the box was all wrong. I bought it because it was the right price.

Oh well. It's NOT like I'm going back to that store to take it back and wait in another line for over 30 minutes...because tomorrow I have to go change the car oil...because my husband got mad at me when I got home for NOT changing the car oil, even though, he said yesterday...

"If you're going to shop, better do it tomorrow, because bad weather is on the way...

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh!"

Yes, that's me above, and it expresses just about how I feel about Christmas shopping.

I'd rather have sex.

Unless of course, you have a really nice cheap letter opener to sell me..