Whiteout

I woke on the day after Thanksgiving to a landscape carpeted in white, as flurries of snow swirled down from the leaden skies. It was -10 degrees outside and everyone in the house was still dopey with food bloat from the previous night.

Genius that I am, I decided that because I couldn’t really do much outside, this would be a great opportunity to do some shopping. Thanksgiving itself might be blessedly free of commercialism, but once midnight strikes it’s Black Friday, which is to Thanksgiving what gastroenteritis is to good gut health.

So I went down to the nearest shopping centre and indulged myself in a bargain hunt. With limited space in my luggage I couldn’t buy anything large (or anything electrical, given the differences in Australian and American plugs and voltages). But I did find a new jacket, some Lego, a jumper and a couple of T-shirts in Target, as well as a nice box of champagne coupes to give to my hosts as a thank you gift.

As I wandered over to another shopping area, I did what I inevitably must have done under the climactic circumstances. While crossing a major road, I stepped on a piece of slick ice and fell flat on my back. Fortunately I was on a pedestrian crossing so I wasn’t immediately run over by a gigantic Ford Overkill. Also my shopping bags landed in such a way that the contents weren’t broken. The only damage was to my glasses case, which was squashed nearly flat, but did its duty in protecting my glasses.

Sore, slightly stunned, and increasingly frostbitten, I staggered on, pausing only for a restorative cheese dog at Five Guys burgers. I finished up my shopping with a half-price plum velvet smoking jacket from JC Penney, because one can never have too many plum velvet smoking jackets.