only the insane people went out today...

...and i was one of them.

today had so many thing working against it.

it's saturday.

it's the last weekend before christmas.

we've been buried under snow since wednesday and the roads have been awful.

a very large snow/wind storm is predicted for tonight.

did i mention it's almost christmas?

every lunatic in king county was at the redmond fred meyer today, including us.  i had that panic bug going on, remembering 2 years ago when we were without power for 4 days (that time without snow and below freezing temperatures), and felt a strong need to stock up on things like batteries, candles, soup...  i also had this fear that we wouldn't be able to get out much or that stores would be without power, and so i wanted to have all of the remaining christmas presents taken care of as well.  this was not an original idea.

dave and i decided to divide and conquer... i took micah and did the christmas shopping, he took shane and layla and did the grocery shopping (yeah, i realize he got the short end of the stick).  he finished before me and i wound up waiting in line to check out for at least 15 minutes.  it sucked.

then, already flustered, i decided that i HAD to go across the street to target to exchange shane's boots.  i bought them on wednesday (i think) and they already have ripped at the seams in front.  now, these are just $26.99 target boots and i know they're not the best quality, but even for that i expect them to last longer than half a week!  that's still 27 bucks i spent!  so i ran in and saw that the line at customer service wasn't too long (unlike every other line) so i jumped in and returned them.  then i ran over to shoes to grab some new ones, intending to buy a different style than last time in hopes of getting something that would hold up better. 

what was i thinking?

the boot aisle was EMPTY!

seriously, there were like 4 pairs of hot pink boots, one little kid pair, and THAT WAS IT! 

i almost started to hyperventilate as i ran frantically up and down surrounding aisles, hoping i was looking in the wrong place.  i should have known better...  a snow storm in seattle means 3 things.  no more sleds, no more tire chains, and NO MORE BOOTS! 

i'm practically in tears at this point because i've been shopping for WAY too long, spent way too much money, don't want to have to go to any more stores because they're all crazy, and shane needs to have boots.  i can't just send him out in a foot of snow in beat up tennis shoes.  and you can't tell a 9 year old that he can't go out in the snow!  so i got back in the return line (which was long at this point) to buy back my holey boots. 

i felt like an idiot forking over almost 30 bucks for boots with holes in them, but it's my intention to go back and return them (again) when all this craziness is over and they actually have more boots in stock again.

i was SO frustrated.

we needed gas today too... apparently so did everyone else, and it took 3 gas stations before we finally found one that actually had gas.  i guess i can understand that... large tanker trucks full of highly flammable liquid, driving on extremely icy roads doesn't really strike me as a good idea.  but this fact meant that EVERYONE was at that gas station.  i think we waited about 20 minutes for a pump.

but all in all, i guess we were successful.  we made it all in one piece, we have a full tank, and food, batteries and candles.  there's only a few little christmas things we still need, and it certainly won't be the end of the world if we don't get them.

so we're as ready as we can be... it's been snowing a while now (on top of all the snow we already have), but no wind yet.  we'll see what the night brings.  hopefully not much.