Becky Says...

Today was Chapel Hill's day to have a Christmas Parade. I'm sure much fun was had by all participating. But it took place at just the time when the Saturday bus I would ordinarily take to do my errands was supposed to be driving toward my stop. Instead, service got called off for that hour or so. Which, had I known in advance, would have let me make other plans. No mention of this was made on the bus schedules, nor on the transit website.

The bus service on Saturdays is seriously curtailed. There is one window of opportunity for me to get downtown and get another bus to the grocery store that does not have me waiting for at least an hour downtown. And the same is true in reverse.

Before I tell you even more that you don't need to know about the transit system, I'll just say both coming and going were thwarted. I had to spend a lot of extra time at bus stops. I am glad to report there were interesting people with whom to talk!

I did consider skipping the whole thing and shopping on Monday, but I was getting too close to out of several things to be happy about taking the chance.

I know I've written before about avoiding shopping on Saturdays, to allow people who really need to be in the stores to be there. But I tend to go early enough in the day to miss the majority of the shoppers, and for some reason Saturday just feels like the day to go shopping.

And I made a great purchase today. I have been thinking that I really ought to be using totebags to shop. My holding back has been the shape of the bags I currently had. They were all great for small purchases, but a week;s worth of food and stuff, even for me, would have taken too many bags to carry comfortably. So I've been asking for paper ones, which are truly easy to recycle around here and which are a bazillion times easier for me to carry.

I've even been thinking of making a totebag shaped (and stiffened) like the paper bags. But I've been too busy to start in on the project.

But today the grocery store had a different kind of totebag, made almost exactly as I would have made mine. Empty, they're very lightweight. They stand up quite nicely (empty or full), and from how they're constructed I suspect they'll still stand after laundering when that is needed. They're being marketed, complete with store logo, as part of the store chain's effort to encourage environmentally friendly practices (to be green), and they were on sale for the reduced price of 99 cents.

I bought two of them. I didn't have to do too much math to figure out I would have paid a lot more for fabric and trim to make anything similar, not to mention the electricity for the sewing machine.

As it happened, all my stuff today fit into one bag. I'm still glad I bought two, because some days I need more bulky stuff than I did today and I'd rather be prepared.

So even though the parade did mess up my timing, and leave me waiting for buses coming and going, I'm calling this a good day.

See the blazing Becky before us,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Deck the Halls
from the
Christmas Song Generator.