Diagnosis to heal stress and disappointment: Spend some money

I can think of several ways of healing the blues - drowning our sorrows by downing a couple bottles of wine; playing tiddlelywinks with man-hole-lids; scrubbing the garage floor with a toothbrush and comet cleanser and spending money. Which one would you choose? Can you guess which one we selected?

It was another nice fall day here in southern Nevada. After packing a box to mail Soldier Tom in Iraq, I took a shower and did my hair and even put on makeup. My husband has been suggesting I needed a new hairdo since my current one is obviously very un-done purposely - but since I haven't left the house in five days now, what's the point of a new do or make up - who's going to notice? No kidding!

Depression can be a pretty iffy thing and between Bob and I we have various means of solving that mood - and there are different strengths of depression. The depressive mood is as a result of last night and is politically motivated which leaves us with few alternatives because we can't change anything except our attitude. So our solution to our depressive disposition was to visit the malls. With coupons in hand we hit the road this morning.

Actually, our main shopping purpose was to get stuff for Soldier Tom for the holidays. I am looking for a small Nativity set to send him. I don't want anything too expensive or large or even breakable and I have found nothing to date - but I will keep looking. Tom is pretty independent and doesn't want us to send him any gifts. They don't wear civilian clothes so that eliminates that area, and he buys his own games and DVDs, etc, so I haven't come up with much except one thing that I won't mention - and lots of goodies. I hear from other military moms some of the things they send their Soldiers who are deployed and that helps.

The stores I have visited this week seem disorganized. I would have thought the Christmas stuff would be in order, but either they are cutting back on their merchandise due to the stock market turn down or everyone is late (or maybe I'm early!). We'll be going back out tomorrow and check out other stores we have had good luck with in years past. These are very inexpensive odds and ends I'm looking for to send Soldier Tom for Christmas decorations so it's not something extravagant from a speciality store. There is a deadline to send boxes to the military with APO addresses so I don't want to drag my feet now - you know how time gets away all too quickly.

We had a good relaxingly day today and bought a few things. This old senior citizen feeling is for the buzzards because we wear out after walking around only a couple of stores. Some days are better than others but we do the best we can, but we do have fun while we're at it.

Let us all keep our new President-elect Barack Obama and his family in our prayers. May God bless and keep him and guide him in his decision that are best for our country not for any one's selfish opportunity. Please, God, help us to accept the decision the majority of voting Americans have made because we have prayed Your will be done. Thanks you God, for our many blessings.

Hope you have a very nice evening and pleasant dreams.