Home for the Holidays

On the Celebration list today...
Target Superstores.
Target because if everyone else can have a day, I can make-up a day as well. And my day is going to pay homage and ode to Target. How did we live before this monopolizing conglomerate, red polka dotted, mass marketing money making machine? I am not even sure. But long live Target. From the cutest baby section you have ever seen to the wedding registry scanner, the clothes, the purses, the Market Pantry and Archer Farms groceries, to the amazing little greeting cards, stickers, candles, movie section, and dollar spot...today I recognize Target as the best store in the entire world. Congratulations Target, you have been nominated and awarded this prize by a self-professed picky, avid, high maintenance shopper...today i declare you to be the best store in the world.

You should celebrate Target by going on a mini shopping spree tonight, it's an instant pick me up. I did this today. I gave myself five dollars to spend at will...you would've thought it was a million. My purchases? Vintage Christmas gift cards with ribbons from the dollar section that I will use as Christmas tree ornaments, candy cane Hershey kisses, and marshmallows...they smelled so good I had to buy them. And now I feel all Christmassy. Ok, dangit, and a bag of cinnamon scented pine cones with little flickers of glitter all over them and this may have pushed my total up to $10. At which point I rationalized it by saying, as I have been saying since September, "I'll use my birthday money to pay for it later." Which begs the question...what birthday money??? I don't get birthday money. Still...how can you pass up cinnamon scented pine cones? You would have to be a scrooge, or not be able to breath or smell things out of your nose, like my friend Ryan.

(I have a friend named Ryan who basically has a crippled nose. It is useless. Sometimes I wish I could cut it off of his face while he's sleeping and send it to some laboratory where they study aliens and other top secret weird medical phenomenons, and I could give him a new nose. Until then, he can't smell, and he can't breathe. And he sniffs. Really loud. I like to think of it as a secret code language between the two of us. The other day we were in a bookstore together, unbeknown to me, and then I heard the ever so familiar and distinct sniff off in the distance...I perked up, left my book and coffee, and peaked through two shelves...and there he was. Anyways. That's my friends crippled nose.)

Cheers to the brilliance behind Target. You wanna go where everybody knows your name? And they're always glad you came? Target. The one store that I can go to in North Carolina, Chicago, El Paso, Washington DC, probably China, and everything is exactly the same, the same aisles, the same Starbucks, the same products, the same feel...a third home. My third home. Target.
Happy Target Day.