Four years ago our friends Ryan & Laura got us hooked on Black Friday. Before that I just knew it was some crazy day when everyone mobbed the stores. I just didn’t get it. Now I am the mob. Well, I am not crazy like the year Ryan went to stand in line at Best Buy on Thanksgiving after dinner to get those flat screen TVs, but I sure do enjoy my Black Friday now. My friends, with whom we spend Thanksgiving, think I am odd when I show up for dinner Thursday with my backpack full of newspaper ADs, a couple pens and highlighters, and a notebook.

This year we didn’t really need anything, but there were a few big ticket items someone else wanted us to pick up for them (vague on purpose since the recipient of one may read this). Two years ago Claire was so young that she mostly slept through Black Friday, weighing down our arms as we stood in lines all morning. Last year there was no way I was taking a 2 1/2 shopping. We asked our former school nurse to watch her over night, and that was perfect. This year Donna wanted to take her with us. Oh boy. I tried to get the regular babysitter to take her but she was busy with family, I wanted to call another younger sitter, but Donna said no. I even tried to leave her with friends, but Donna just said we’d take her with us. I wasn’t thrilled. I told Donna it was her fault if Claire flipped out, and that she’d have to deal with her. Donna agreed.

3AM comes early when you’re up at 11PM. I must’ve missed the alarms and it was after 3:30AM when Claire and I rolled out of bed. She was wide awake. Donna wasn’t. We dragged Mama outta bed and was out the door a little after 4AM. Our first stop was Walmart for those big ticket items. We pulled in and people were streaming into the store. The sale wasn’t until 5AM, but it was a 24 hour store. People were getting into lines and huge piles of sale items were being guarded by employees. At first, an employee had me in the wrong line for 15 minutes before I loved to the (much longer now) correct line. At 5AM a wave of rushing, ripping and groaning rolled across the store as people broke into the piles of good stuff. Black Friday had begun.

I stood in line for that big ticket item for 2 hours and it killed me to not be running around the store with everyone else. Donna and Claire were hiding with our buggy in the bedding aisle, near where a display with $30 bed sets was devoured in minutes. I began texting her to make sure to grab everything else on our list so we could run when we were done. I thought I was getting a good deal on these big ticket items, but later in the day I saw them in two other stores for the same price! Ugh.

We moved from store to store throughout the day. Occasionally we stood in line, and mostly the customer service wasn’t too terrible (except a few ladies in Walmart who spoke no English and had no idea where the sales were in the damn store!). We picked up 20+ DVDs that we didn’t need, and I got an awesome 16G USB drive for like $30 (the day after I saw the same one at Radio Shack for $150. WTF!)

In the morning we left the house in the dark, and by the time we headed home it was dark again. This was 14 hours later. Even though we really needed nothing, we spent a grand and partied like rockstars all day long.