i hate shopping

I remember when I was a teenager. My friends and I would spend as much time as humanly possible at the mall. I think we were insane. I cannot imagine doing that again, particularly not at this time of the year. Thankfully, my proper holiday shopping is done. Today was all about the groceries...

This morning, I drove my hunny to work at 5:30 a.m., came home, had breakfast, cleaned up my act, made my shopping list and was at the grocery store when it opened at 8 a.m. In less than an hour, I had almost everything that we needed, as well as some stuff my mum needed and was on my way to her place. Now, I should mention that I was doing this in a mini-snow storm. Me, who hates winter driving, drove all over hell's half-acre, in the snow. I feel quite proud of myself for this, silly as it probably seems.

I stayed at my folks' place long enough to drop off groceries and have a wee visit. I basically was killing time until Costco opened. Now, for those of you not familiar with snowy winters, in these here parts (being south eastern Ontario), snow removal bites. I don't know if our municipality plans it's snow removal budget based on the calendar year or if they just don't give a pooh about it but our streets are super narrow because of willy-nilly snow banks and the sidewalks are non-existent in many neighbours. I guess they figure that because the temperature is supposed to rise tomorrow, it'll melt and folks can just walk down the middle of the road in the meantime.

Parking lots, on the other hand, are usually much better than city streets. Unfortunately, when you have as much snow on the ground as we do right now, you can't see the pavement in parking lots. People take advantage of this situation and create their own parking spots wherever they feel like. It made getting in and out of Costco just super fun, as I'm sure you can imagine. Bad parking and horrible roads (not to mention blowing snow) aside, I now have all of my shopping done. Our fridge and pantry are both full and I don't need to go near a store again until after Christmas. Yay!!

The forecast for tomorrow is freezing rain, I'm going to stay home and bake...and bake...and bake. Tonight I'm even going to try to find some low-fat Christmas cookie recipes. Not everything I make needs to be full of chocolate (although that does make it extra good!!). If I find any that turn out well, I'll post the recipe here. Promise!!

Hope all of your holiday preparations are going well!