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Days like today remind me why it's so hard for me to leave the house sometimes. I had to make rounds and pick up gifts for Phil's mom, sister and brother, which landed my in Pier One, Hobby Lobby and Target. Good lord. Scores of shoppers with that glazed look of disbelief and confusion everywhere. Cars aggressively vying for parking spots. Annoying children putting their grimy hands on everything they can possibly reach. Oddly enough, my excursion took about an hour. When I'm a woman on a mission, I can get things done real quicklike.

I had an odd encounter with a fellow human being (?) at the gas station. I'm innocently and silently monitoring the pump as I watch my money dwindle away, when I catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of a man cleaning the pump off, eyeing me. So then he comes over to me and asks me how my day is going. Fine; yours? A generally rhetorical question, right, but he launches into some discussion of how lucky he is to be alive because back in 1974 his skull was crushed by a big truck and he had to have the thing reconstructed with a metal plate.

But he can't get disability because he's a caucasian male, which is, according to him, the biggest handicap of all. So he's taking his case to the Supreme Court and suing for $1 million or something. I don't know. I tuned out by this time because he was totally invading my personal space, and I kept trying to move back but was pinned by my car. By this time, our conversation is nearing five minutes. Ick, what a feeling. His eyes were completely screwed up -- not on a linear plane at all. So as I am silently freaking out, he non sequiturs and tells me a blonde joke. And then another. And then, I'm like, "Uh, I should really go pay." And then he tells me the one about the five blondes lined up being a wind tunnel. And I run screaming inside. OK, maybe not audibly.

But I get inside and there's some other crazy guy arguing with a flustered clerk about losing his car wash token and wanting another one. So I try to sneak around their fight and pay for my Cokes and my gas. But it has just now, as of this writing, dawned on me that she didn't ring up my gas and neither of us noticed. Perhaps we were both distracted by the crazy men that seem to make things infinitely more complicated.

So that's what I get for venturing into the world. I think I'm done with my xmas shopping. I didn't buy anything for either of my grandmothers, though. I think I might do that on xmas eve morning, as I will be in Jackson with my dad and possibly the rest of my tribe. Dad has an MRI that morning and then we're going to see LOTR. Maybe we can sashay by somewhere they sell grandmother gifts.

I'm excited to give my nephews their gifts. I put together an art kit for Casey, who has told me for months now that he wants to be an artist. I got him a big carrying case/portfolio, some oil pastels, sketch paper, watercolors, and neat markers. I want to encourage his creative endeavors. I can remember a birthday one year that my grandmother bought me a ton of art supplies. That was an awesome gift, and I'll never forget it.