We were all thinking of visiting the stores this weekend to do a bit of carefree Christmas shopping, but a microscopic bit of good ol’ Mother Nature decided to whack my son and myself with nasty head colds instead. (So if I ramble a bit — because I never do that, do I? — blame it on the Sudafed)
Going for an hour or two after work some weeknight just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you live far enough from what you city slickers would call civilization that a healthy chunk of that time would be spent just getting to a store (at least one that doesn’t have a tractor parts section 
). So I’m a little disappointed, because even with the chaos that tags along with holiday weekend crowds it is still early enough in the whole holiday rush that they won’t be that crazy out there.
One thing that will be nice irregardless of when we make it out to do our part to boost the economy is that, for the second year in a row, we won’t be going further into debt spreading holiday cheer. Every cent of what we budgeted for Christmas gifts is sitting in a simple little ING Direct savings sub-account waiting patiently to be spent. (Yes, there are online banks that will give us marginally more interest, but at these totals, the simplicity of ING’s site is worth foregoing that extra 43 cents or so we may have earned over the year.)
And once that chunk o’ change is gone, well, we’re done. And honestly, it should be more than enough, even if it’s a quarter of what it used to be. More stuff just means more clutter, and I’m tending much more to a few simple possessions over massive amounts of short-lived junk these days.
The time we get to spend with those we care about is worth more than any knick knack we get or give anyway… 
