There are two days that I try to avoid shopping. The first is the day after Thanksgiving since that is typically the day that everyone on the planet goes to the stores making it impossible to find what you are looking for or if you do find it you are likely in line to pay for at least three hours. The second day I try to avoid is the day after Christmas since this is the day where everyone is returning all the items they bought the day after Thanksgiving because they don’t work, are the wrong size, or you just have no idea what the person was thinking when they bought you this item. For that reason I typically try to preplan my Christmas gift purchasing to make sure that what I am buying is the right size, color, style, thing so that it doesn’t need to be returned. Usually that means that I buy from the team shop since no one would ever return an item from the team shop.
Because of my buying habits, it is usually up to Trina to buy those gifts that are not from Chase Field. This has two effects. First, she has to go to a lot more stores than I do and hence has more of a risk that something she buys is the wrong size, color, style, or thing necessitating a return. Second, it means that she has to deal with a lot larger crowd than I do. This season when I made the few trips that I did down to the stadium I found that there were perhaps five customers in the store during my shopping time. There were longer lines at the women’s bathrooms during the play-offs than there were in the Team Shop at Christmas. So when today arrived we found that no one needed to return any of my gifts to them. They all seemed to be the right shade of red or black and they all seemed to fit or will fit by the time Opening Day arrives. Trina on the other hand was not so lucky. She found herself having to cart the girls out to the likes of Target and Wal-Mart with a side trip to the mall to find something that we somehow missed. So while the girls left on what was bound to be a day long excursion, Dakota and I sat at home contemplating how my planning had been perfect when it came to Christmas gifts.
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