Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Yarn Shopping I Must Go

Thanksgiving Day? Actually, if we think about it, it's more like a week. The holiday is officially observed tomorrow, but anyone looking at my town can tell that a holiday is being observed.

What we used to call Thanksgiving Wednesday, I'm told, some schools now call Dead or Blackout Wednesday, from the look of a dormitory with all the window lights turned off. It's similar to the way some Seventh-Day Adventists and Orthodox Jews observe the Sabbath: The day of rest starts at sunset on Friday, so at least Friday afternoon and sometimes Friday morning are reserved for doing all the work people need to celebrate their day of rest in the way they believe is appropriate. Shopping and cooking and cleaning and driving and putting fresh sheets on the guest beds have to be all done and out of the way in order for the celebration to begin.

My morning walk down to the paved road is usually a quiet reflective time. Not on Thanksgiving Wednesday, it's not. The woods are full of visiting relatives hoping to bag a deer, because why bother with a turkey if you can have fresh venison for Thanksgiving dinner. The hills resounded with gunshots all the way. I put on a fairly loud (for me) orange sweater and thought, as I walked, that the cotton has faded to an unhelpfully well camouflaged shade of cocoa-brown...

Whatever people are doing, they're not shopping. Some people shopped yesterday. Some will shop tomorrow. Today I've seen a total of three people on the sidewalk, and one of them was a sick patient out for the exercise.

So certain storekeepers, of whom I'm one, are about to close up and make our last runs to the grocery store before we start making merry...I was thinking about how much updating a pre-written blog post needed when someone else said "I want to go home." Right. I want to go home too. I'll update that post on Friday.

This Friday is what U.S. merchants like to celebrate as "Black Friday," the day they traditionally started writing the day's total in black (income) instead of red (investment). My home town has a long tradition of using Black Friday for road trips to Kingsport, Bristol, Big Stone Gap, or all three...but, for those who want to spend money at home, I have a tradition of joking about Black Friday by offering discounts on all black merchandise. Person who was fingering the black sweater, please take note.

There's another...it's not really a tradition, because the weather is hard to predict, but it's happened several times...kids always hope that the Monday and even the Tuesday after the Thanksgiving weekend can be celebrated as First Snow Days. Currently the weather is sunny and warm, but the young can always hope.

Anyway, I just picked up my Michaels giftcard in the mail from Yougov, and I can't miss a free ride to Michaels. I'll add an Amazon link "tomorrow," whichever day that means for the web site, probably Friday but who knows.



Happy Thanksgiving, Gentle Readers.