Visiting Dad, shopping our way home

Mama and I left for Chappell Hill after I got off work Wednesday. Our mid-work service had been on Tuesday so we did not have to miss it to make the trip. I felt a little urgency to go and I also felt pressured to stay at the farm over our days off; there is so much I have to get done here. But the bottom line is that there will always be a lot to get done here and Dad will not be around too much longer. As difficult as it is to spend time with him - mainly due to distance - it is all we have to give right now. And it is always worth the ten hours on the road and rough sleeping arrangements at the house in Chappell Hill. Martha goes out of her way to make accommodations for us but when Mama goes with me I have to sleep on the floor because we cannot share a full sized bed having spent nearly thirty years on a king bed. It is typically only one night though. All that for an hour with Dad - which means the world to him; even with his inability to connect.

He was far more tired this time. Mama and I spent about an hour conversing with him but since he was having such trouble trying to converse - disconnected sentences and scattered thoughts - I started reading to him from the Bible. Mama seemed to feel he understood that better. I sang him the song I sang to Mom the last time I saw her and he seemed to enjoy that too. From his broken string of sentence fragments, the best I could gather was that he was trying to tell us about a dream he had - an unpleasant one at that. After we had been there about the hour he began to sit quietly and stare off. That is how we had found him when we arrived. I asked him then how he was doing and he responded that he was “sitting here not really thinking about anything particular”. He went back to that as we left. We prayed with him (He always enjoys that.) and we headed home.

It took us five hours to get there. It took us ten hours to get home. Mostly because we shopped our way home. After we left Dad we headed to one store and waited for them to open -about a fifteen minute wait. We were able to get everything we wanted there, check out like it was a normal shopping day and headed to College Station for another store. That one we had to wait for almost an hour  before it was to open and the line to enter the store was about a thousand people long - really. Mama went in and chatted with the staff at the door while I waited for the line to dissipate. When I finally walked around the building and got in line it was down to about 300 people, but it still took me about twenty minutes to get in.

Mama and I found a few things both on and off of her list and then the dreaded part began. We got in line to check out. I was in line for over an hour to make it to a register to buy what we had picked up as we perused the store. I was a little disappointed that there was not more in the way of really good deals. It was the same way at Lowe’s this morning. Maybe I had high expectations, but nothing looked like it was any more discounted than an average sale item. Not like last year or the year before. Maybe it was just me, but it did not seem worth the effort.

I am not sure how retailers made out overall but it looked to me like Black Friday was no big deal this year.