During this last frenzied week of shopping, cooking and wrapping, I had no choice but to take a last minute trip to the beloved Target to get some last minute items. My mother, who is always finished with her holiday shopping by December 1st, surely would have been disappointed in me.
But, alas, I'd run out of scotch tape midway through the pile of gifts "hidden" in my office closet. And the container of Tide was running copiously low. So there I was, scouring the aisles, filling up my cart with miscellaneous trinkets, snacks, and laundry products. You could say I lost my focus, picking up "texting gloves" for those nearest and dearest on my list, forgetting to grab the scotch tape while wandering around the holiday aisle.
So during this aimless, cart pushing, item tossing moment, I finally looked down to check my phone (how many times a day do I do that - a topic for another blog) and realized that it wasn't there. Not my phone or purse or any of the items I'd collected along the way. Somehow I managed to wheel away the wrong shopping cart. One without my purse, phone, keys and wallet. My heart started to race, my legs felt like jelly and I started uttering to no one in particular, "Oh my, this is not my cart, where is my cart, what happened, where in this superstore did I misplace EVERYTHING?!"
I panicked. But had the sense to retrace my recent steps, however I remembered those! And after a minute or two of racing around the store, I found my lovely cart, sitting idly next to a rack of turtlenecks that I had been admiring 20 minutes earlier. And in that precious cart, was my purse, with EVERYTHING still in it: money, phone, keys, wallet, checkbook. How about that?
Anyone could have walked off with any of it. And no one did. Typically, I wouldn't trivialize the meaning of the word "miracle" but boy it sure felt like one when I saw all of my things in tact, untouched and possibly not even noticed by another shopper or store clerk.
So this is my little Christmas miracle. It was miraculous, to me, that no one took my valuables. And I'm grateful.
Merry Christmas to me!
But, alas, I'd run out of scotch tape midway through the pile of gifts "hidden" in my office closet. And the container of Tide was running copiously low. So there I was, scouring the aisles, filling up my cart with miscellaneous trinkets, snacks, and laundry products. You could say I lost my focus, picking up "texting gloves" for those nearest and dearest on my list, forgetting to grab the scotch tape while wandering around the holiday aisle.
So during this aimless, cart pushing, item tossing moment, I finally looked down to check my phone (how many times a day do I do that - a topic for another blog) and realized that it wasn't there. Not my phone or purse or any of the items I'd collected along the way. Somehow I managed to wheel away the wrong shopping cart. One without my purse, phone, keys and wallet. My heart started to race, my legs felt like jelly and I started uttering to no one in particular, "Oh my, this is not my cart, where is my cart, what happened, where in this superstore did I misplace EVERYTHING?!"
I panicked. But had the sense to retrace my recent steps, however I remembered those! And after a minute or two of racing around the store, I found my lovely cart, sitting idly next to a rack of turtlenecks that I had been admiring 20 minutes earlier. And in that precious cart, was my purse, with EVERYTHING still in it: money, phone, keys, wallet, checkbook. How about that?
Anyone could have walked off with any of it. And no one did. Typically, I wouldn't trivialize the meaning of the word "miracle" but boy it sure felt like one when I saw all of my things in tact, untouched and possibly not even noticed by another shopper or store clerk.
So this is my little Christmas miracle. It was miraculous, to me, that no one took my valuables. And I'm grateful.
Merry Christmas to me!
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