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Consider the value of staying home

By MICHELE MILLER
Published November 24, 2006

Thanksgiving is over.

This morning rolls in with the 5 to 9 a.m. "DOOR BUSTERS!" and now it's on to "Tis the season ..."

To sleep in.

Yeah, I know, I know.

Some of you out there will thumb right by this column this morning, fast on your way to any last-minute "ROCK BOTTOM!" circulars. Or maybe you won't bother at all, having mapped out your shopping strategy with Thursday's weighty Thanksgiving edition.

For some Black Friday is tradition -- like the family recipe for turkey stuffing or the unshelled nuts we lay out every year next to the pickle dish, even though we know those walnuts will hang around mostly untouched, collecting dust till spring cleaning time.

Like a lot folks, I know the value of a good bargain. I'm a Depression grandbaby so I instinctively breeze right past the new arrivals to the clearance rack every time. Frugality is in the genes.

And, evidently, in the air.

While some financial pundits are spouting a rosy outlook, the U.S. Conference Board reported Monday that a recent survey shows many consumers are planning on spending less this holiday season. That could slow the economy. In my own neighborhood, talk between moms at the bus stop has turned to things like how to stretch a dollar. Newspapers, like other industries, are bleeding the bottom line, so my brood has gotten fair warning about the needful rather than wishful gifts that will be under the tree this year.

But the foggy economic forecast doesn't really explain my aversion to the Black Friday blowout.

You see, I've been on the other end of that shopping spree.

The need for a weekly paycheck has placed me in the path of savvy shoppers on a mission -as a reporter doing the "man on the street" thing at the mall, and years before that as a sales clerk working in the men's department of Remick's Department Store in downtown Quincy, Mass.

I remember thinking "These people are crazy" as I picked up strewn merchandise off the floor, folded and refolded mounds of sweaters and hoped the day might be salvaged with a peek at the owner's famous daughter, actress Lee Remick, who, rumor had it, was in town to spend the holiday with family.

I clocked out disappointed and work-weary to ride the wave all the way home on a big heaving city bus, feet aching, feeling the cold and fantasizing about living in a tropical place.

So now I'm here and lately feeling the cold again with that front that blew in making November feel like, well November, to us northern-born folk.

The cold seeps up through the ceramic tile kitchen floor I've been slaving on and into my bones that are fast taking on my grandmother's arthritic characteristics.

As new tradition has it, me and the hubby, who's been busy laying sod in the backyard, spend tired conversations trying to trump each other's cold- and labor-induced aches and pains.

"It hurts from here to here," I tell my husband, sweeping my hand from thigh to knee.

"Well, I'm hurting all over," he mutters, unmoved.

He wins, I concede, because he has a few years on me and I realize that I might want out of a conversation that has us sounding like a couple of old folks.

A couple of old folks with the bones to know the value of sleeping in.

Michele Miller can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6251 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext 6251. Her e-mail is miller@sptimes.com.

[Last modified November 23, 2006, 22:42:48]