Sprayed With a Fake Snow

My wife is set on making the Christmas eve dinner this year and I yield and allow her room to set the menu.  She takes it all very seriously.  My younger one and I decide we’ll appoint ourselves some pie duty instead.

Emails keep arriving from Amazon.cn.  I assume that they all say that the presents have shipped, they'll b there soon . . . but when I through the note into Google Translate to confirm it becomes clear that many of these notes have the phrase “very sorry” inside, which is not encouraging. On some of the orders they want me to reenter my credit card info.  On others, it all simply went right through.  This is very annoying.  I reenter everything again and get new emails saying that everything was well received.  But I’m suspicious.  I’ve seen these notes before.

We’ll need to some physical shopping.  As the afternoon draws on the kids and I struck a bargain with their mom, to drop us all off at the local mall: Shine City.  She still needs to buy groceries and I am realizing that this is going to be a particularly late, Christmas Eve dinner.  The kids want to get something in Starbucks.  I’ve been slurping coffee all day and uncharacteristically pass up the caffination.  But after I pay I begin to eye the caesar chicken wrap behind the glass.  We all agree to have some kind of meal after we shop for a bit. 

Walking around listening to A Band of Gypsies I notice that the mall has been sprayed with a fake snow that people are all appreciative of.  Kids run their fingers through the fake snow, writing things in the white dusting.  I look for a while and can’t find anything.  The hip kitchen supply spot we’d visited one night about nine month’s back is gone now.  My younger daughter had warned me.  Finally in one place I see some baking pans that have a nice aqua marine color and after deliberating the stated price for a few moments, I ask the clerk to wrap them up for me. 

Later we duck in to Element Fresh.  I can already taste their Greek Salad with big cubes of grilled lamb.  Sitting down we look at a holiday menu and ask for the regular selection.  It doesn’t exist today.  We only have the holiday menu.  This strikes me as particularly annoying and I groan aloud, unwittingly.  Back on the street again, its cold and nothing else among the dozens of restaurants seems to fit the bill.  Soon were in a DiDi heading back home. 

Sunday, 12/24/17