Friends Don't Let Friends Drink And...

Something about the flyer was bothering me. I couldn't stop thinking about it. The Macy's One Day Sale. Oh.My.God. I had to be there. I was sure I had seen these flyers in the mail before, and more than sure that this one day sale happened more than one day a year, but regardless, I was committed.

It could have been the red wine. It could have been that I was watching "Friday Night Lights" on its regularly scheduled Tuesday night time slot. (I mean, come on! Is "Saturday Night Live" on Thursdays? No! Now stop. It's confusing.) I don't know what it is...but something about "Friday Night Lights" makes me want to get married, move back to Kentucky, and get domestic with some polyester shorts wearing football coach. I picture myself proudly beaming in the stands, as I watch my husband down on the field, yelling until he is red in the face and the veins are sticking out of his neck, "Pass the God damn ball, Fletcher!" I have no idea who this Fletcher is, or why he isn't passing the ball but he definitely has a solid, southern name. In hindsight, I have no doubt that this fantasy was fueled by the Shiraz.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up at seven, hopped in the shower, grabbed my foldable shopping cart, and got to Macy's by eight in the morning ready for the bargains I had circled in my flyer. I got there and it was a madhouse! Macy's had only been open for 10 minutes but people were tripping over one another, screaming, and sweating as if they had been trapped in a dark coal mine for days. Why had I never heard of this phenomenon before? I went straight to house wares because according to my domestic delusions from the night before, I decided I needed/could not live without a set of pots and pans. Who was I becoming? Yuck.

Apparently I wasn't the only one drinking during "Friday Night Lights" because the place was packed with homemaking ambitions...there were lots of foreign people yelling out shopping strategies in their native tongues, confused husbands and boyfriends clutching shopping lists and politely asking any woman that would give them the time of day, "Is this what I'm supposed to get?" as if we knew how to decipher a stranger's handwriting on a crumpled list, and off-duty doormen who had been bribed with the promise of a "healthy holiday cash bonus" if they stand in a miserable line with "said" purchases for their upper east side building occupants.

By the time I was done, it was a little after 10 in the morning. I still had to get to work. I had left with a set of 12 brand new pots and pans and an impulse purchase of an 18 piece set of glass Pyrex bake ware. Ummmm...I have never baked in my life. I don't even have a mixer. (Who is this person who woke up needing kitchen things and where did she come from?) I think the only meals that are going in those dishes are things that require layers of cheese to be melted. As I dragged my rolling cart of kitchenware to work, some ass on the street chimed in with, "Hey baby, I want to come to your Thanksgiving." What did that even mean? Was he assuming that because I’m dragging kitchenware across town, I love cooking, and I can't wait for Thanksgiving? Did it even occur to him that maybe I was just a drunk with a bad idea?

As I rolled my cart into work, sweating, panting, and extolling the virtues of my amazing savings, it was pointed out to me by several sources that you can shop at Macy's online and still get the same discounts. Oh. Ummmm...didn't think about that. Good laughs were had by all. At least when it dawned on me that I had forgotten to get the set of knives I had circled on my flyer, it wasn't so traumatically heartbreaking or physically challenging. All I had to do was point and click...once I sobered up.