shopping=torture

I'm not sure what we were thinking. Actually, I'm not even sure that we WERE thinking.  We actually tried to go to a shopping mall in Houston on Saturday, 6 days before Christmas. It was the worst crush of humanity I have ever experienced. And all of them in their cars.

This holiday season has been a little "off" for us what with a death in the family earlier this month. That put us into a kind of daze. We were functioning, but not with full consciousness, by any means.

So we thought we could go to Memorial City Mall on a Saturday afternoon, 6 days before Christmas. No way we were going to go to the Galleria! We had enough brain cells functioning to realize that THAT would be a disaster. But somehow we thought Memorial City Mall would be fine.

Ha! It took about 30 minutes to even GET there. And then we drove about 1/2 mile per hour for the next 30 minutes, trying in vain to get to any parking space that was going to be occupied anyway. A veritable sea of cars.

If we needed another reason to retire and clear out of this town, we got it today.

Recently I heard that Houston is now officially the fastest-growing city in the United States!  If we needed another reason to retire and clear out of this town....

We never found a space to park. We never got close to a parking space.  There were cops out on the street directing traffic, in contradictory directions.  Wherever the stoplights were, cars were gridlocked. I tried to zen out but I just couldn't do it. 

We finally escaped onto I-10 East and drove to the neighborhood River Oaks Shopping Center. There was traffic, but nothing like the mall. I got lucky and found a great parking spot and the store we were headed to was having a 50% off everything sale. 

In short, fuck the malls. Bring back the neighborhood stores! And we hope you all have a Happy Solstice Season!