'Tis The Season To Be Thrifting

    So, the plan had been that Tommy would take all the left-over recital goodies to work on Friday to share. But somehow the box of left-overs got mixed up with my stuff and  ended up in my car and     eventually in my kitchen, and so I ended up having to spend the weekend standing my ground against this:

       I did a fairly good job of resisting, except against these Kroger Mini Pumpkin Cheese Bites that somebody had brought to the recital: 

    These little cream-topped sirens would not stop calling to me until I finally dove in and polished off half a dozen of them at 81 calories each.
    After which I threw the rest of them away.  In fact, I tossed most of the left-over sweets away,

except for the mini-cupcakes that I'd made, which I put into the freezer because I couldn't in good conscience throw these away. I figure they'll keep until somebody comes by to help us eat them.

    But  all the store-bought stuff I had no qualms about throwing away.  I figure that if you eat something just because: 1. you can't resist eating it if it's in your presence or 2. you don't want to waste it, then you're wasting it anyway just the same as if you tossed it into the trash.  So you're better off tossing it into the trash than into your mouth, right?
    So I threw the Kroger Mini Pumpkin Cheese Bites and their sweet cohorts into the trash so that they would shut up and stop calling to me.  And they did.  I have no regrets.
   The sweets off my radar, I was able to get on with the rest of my weekend.
  Some of my piano students and parents regularly tell me that our  Winter Recital (see posts from 12/03/14 and 12/04/14) kicks off the Christmas season for them.  
    Seems that way for me, too.  Maybe it's the rush of relief I always feel in tandem with all the lights and decorations all around that puts me in the holiday spirit, but I was feeling it.  I  felt like going out and walking around the mall, taking in the decorations, the lights, the music, the crowds and basking in the glowing feeling that I didn't have to do any Christmas shopping this year.  Or any year.  Ever. Except for  few little trinkets for my two grandbabies.

    All other Christmas gifting I gave up years ago by mutual agreement among Tom, myself and our  adult children that none of us really needed to give or receive Christmas gifts from each other any more. It was actually quite a relief for all of us.
      Tom and I have never given each other gifts for any occasion - except that one time before we were married that he gave me a pair of army gloves for Valentine's Day (see post from  2/14/2014) - and we decided to stop giving Christmas gifts to friends and family shortly after we were married, much to the delight of some who loved the idea of no more Christmas shopping, and to the horror of others who were appalled by the  idea of no more Christmas shopping. 
    But anyway, even though I didn't have any Christmas shopping to do, I did have some Christmas-related shopping to do.  Our grandbabies,  who will be arriving from warm, sunny Los Angeles to spend Christmas with us, don't own any warm coats or cold-weather clothes, so we needed to do some clothes shopping.
    So after a stroll around Eastland Mall to take in the Christmas sights,

    ...we headed to the place where one goes to get down to the business of serious shopping: 

the thrift store.

    I'd been wanting to check out a new (to me) store in Whitehall (the next suburb over from Gahanna) that I'd caught sight of a few months ago from the bus stop at Broad and Hamilton where  Tom and I were waiting to catch a bus downtown to the Megabus to Chicago (see post from 9/26/2014).

    This place turned out to be a real find among the thrift store phylum, with a mother lode of like-new children's and toddler's clothes:

    Now, back when I told Maria that I was going to the thrift store to buy some warm clothes for the girls she warned, "Don't go crazy!"
    Alas, I went crazy:

    ...to the tune of $59. 22.
    When I told my son Tommy how much I spent he laughed, "How did you manage to spend almost $60 at the thrift store?"
    (Sigh).  'Tis the season.