These Times They Are A Changing

If you've been following the ongoing pandemic news with supply shortages of everything we ran out of last year to everything we might want or need from Thanksgiving through Christmas for the rest of this year until who knows when, then you're probably out looking for a turkey about now. 

I asked a family member to bring a turkey just like the one she brought in 2016....  just in case!

Last year in isolation our frozen turkey (in the freezer for far more than a bit too long) was cooked and sliced for the two of us and pronounced tasting of freezer burn. We defrosted a frozen ham and our son-in -law picked our cooked turkey in its entirety up from its outside deposited location for use as crab pot bait 🤣

But on top of that (or perhaps because of all of that)  instead of starting the day after Thangsgiving, the crazy shopping sales and extravaganza begins on on the 7th with even more this Friday November 12th being called basically the new "Early Black Fiday".

Even my Thanksgiving Cactus started blooming before Halloween this year!

Crazy crazy these times they sure are a changing!!  It's been doing this before the pandemic too! I call it my "ecologically intuitive grandma holiday cactus".  Her children, grandchildren and great grand shoots off the old grandma plant that has pioneer rootstock lineage don't have nearly this one's stage presence of blooms. But they are all early bloomers even the ones I passed on to new homes. 

Will I be pulled into a few sales? Probably. I already see McCall's Patterns for $1.99 right now at Joann Fabrics but only 2 days. Joann's new version of sale flyers trigger the bats in my belfry. Practically each page starts and ends on different days. The sale ended long before I remembered where I put the flyer.

I'll probably it out in store fully triple vaccinated and wearing my newest mask and check it all out even though the last time I went in almost all the drawers were empty with no patterns for any of long possibilities list of  clothing patterns that I could have/would have put into use to make 2022 gifts from my vintage clothing fabrics stash. 

Once upon a time, I drew my own patterns. On newspaper and they even fit!

Now, I can't even get anyone's store-bought sizes right. How can they too big or too small when I buy the same sizes for whomevers' gift? Standards and practices and size charts--ha!

Now, it's buy it and hope it fits whether I make it or its ready made. And if you receive it from me and it doesn't fit be sure to return it immediately before return dates expire.  Some recent purchases from an online Target ad all arrived from different states with different store expiration dates.  Three things' 'return by' dates  expired before the mailman ever got them to my door.  

Not one item came with a receipt (ten different packages arriving on 10 different days). One shirt did give me a nice blank piece of paper with the Target logo on top. Period. I guess this is for my comments I'll be sending in to their customer dissatisfaction office. Arrived late. Didn't fit my cat much less grandchild. No receipt and my online purchase upc code was too blurry to be read even with a magnifying glass under high beam lighting.

 I'm also far more impulsive during these changing times. Pretty sure it was their online ad's hidden messaging and anti-my-mental-health triggering that targeted the isolated elderly like myself who can no longer read extra small fine print disclaimers. Shame on you. I'm at least 10 years older now.

I bought craft paints at Joanns last big sale plus my online coupons for half price. My large  vintage [1980s/90s) supply had mostly dried up. A very long time ago I appliqued and painted  clothing. So much fun back then! Not so much now when my elbows are too tired to keep lifted for very long and force my forearms to act as paint blotters.

I was going to make gifts for Halloween and 2 grandchildren autumnal birthdays. Ha! Maybe Christmas cards? Who am I kidding. 😂

Once upon a time long long ablotter. painted big canvas paintings for special occasion gifts for friends. Those days are gone my friend and here I thought they'd never end.  And painted dozens of sweatshirts and art quilts of course.....And now? 

Now I sketch tiny things and paint tiny fabric art quilts but if I'm having a good day.  And I can only show photos of things I have digital photos of! And photos only on my phone or in a Google photo album in the clouds since I  no longer have a computer other than a Windows 7.  It can no way/no how ever go online without our having house wifi since they have no use mobile phone as hot spot capabilities. It's one gigantic phone (usb cord to computer)  "photo back up unit" now. Phones get smaller storage much much larger.

Are painting supplies any different from any other crafting or art supplies? Look at sewing and quilting!  We should never truly buy more than we can use in what's left of our lifetimes.  Hmm age 72 to ?? With a very large number of family members with Alzheimer’s?  

Good luck to finding all of my fabric and remembering what it was going to be used for, much less using it with 40 years of arthritis under my covid  expanded belt. 

Oh yeah....don't forget! It's that time of year ago. Time to "fall back"!

I'll lucky if my shrinking height can see over my sewing machine or my shrinking arms and diminishing vision correctability can still thread a needle even with bright lights and a white piece of paper behind it and a magnifying glass!

On the plus side (also Covid related)

I managed to make another mask this week but I forgot to take its final photo.

🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️ 

Not a good sign of my times that are a changing. Sigh.  

But how it this all originally start? All these ads and campaigns and promotions and internet and TV ads that force us to shop until we drop even when we can't see the actual item with our own diminishing vision eyes?

Black Friday

Blackish Friday has been traced back to the 1970s. The day was originally so named because of the heavy traffic on that day, when all one could see was massive amounts of shoppers in stores, and cars on highways. 

Although most contemporary uses of the term refer instead to it as the beginning of the period in which retailers are "in the black "(i.e., turning a profit) as opposed to "in the red", when they are not.

The earliest meaning of the term Black Friday was also meant to be an implicit comparison to the extremely stressful and chaotic experience of Black Tuesday, the 1929 stock-market crash, or other chaotic days. The earliest known references to Black Friday (in this sense) are from two newspaper articles from November 29, 1975, that explicitly refer to the day's hectic nature and heavy traffic.

Cyber Monday

The term Cyber Monday, is a neologism ( a term created to apply to a new concept not previously recognized by the dictionary as an actual word) invented by the National Retail Federation's Shop.org division. It refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, which unofficially marks the beginning of the Christmas online shopping season.

In recent years, Cyber Monday has become a busy day for online retailers, with some sites offering low prices and other promotions on that day. Like Black Friday, Cyber Monday is often said to be the busiest shopping day of the year for online shoppers, although in reality several days later in the holiday shopping season are busier.

Buy Nothing Day

Buy Nothing Day was originally organized by Adbusters magazine, intentionally as a counter-action to Black Friday. Originally organized in September of 1992, the date was formally moved in 1997, to the Friday, following one week after Thanksgiving. 

Outside of North America, Buy Nothing Day is celebrated on the following Saturday. It is considered a day of passive, non-materialistic, non-consumerism. Occasional discussion has pointed out that, because of the anti-action of the event, it is very easy for people who are avoiding shopping on this day to "observe" the protest.

Hope I can remember "Buy Nothing Day" among all of my overwhelmingly exhausting "Do Nothing Days".

Plan for the rest of this day into tomorrow?  I'll be doing one of these!

shown above:
"Fill the Bag (for others)" Day! Yes its an old photo of old labeled products. No one gives free bags any more.

Fill a bag with canned and boxed foods and donate it to a food bank near you!

Phew i am exhausted. Hours and hours typing on my Galazy Note 9 to create this post.

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Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting... from my heart and with my hands