Black Friday

In the history of the Heidmann Family, there has never been such a thing as a Black Friday.  Our family tradition has always, from the very beginning, involved a lazy after-Thanksgiving morning breakfast, followed soon thereafter by some loudly blasting Mannheim Steamroller and the Annual Christmas Tree Decorating Ceremony.

Ouch.  That hurt my heart a little bit.

This year was different for several rather obvious reasons.

• We have no Christmas Tree. 🙁
• We have no Mannheim Steamroller. 🙁
• We’re not even in our house. 🙁

HOWEVER, that does not mean we couldn’t enjoy the day in a “something different, something new” kind of way.  It is remarkably fortuitous – nay, even providential – that Black Friday should fall precisely in the window of time during which we have no choice but to purchase beds for 7 people, plus  pillows and towels and blankets and comforters and sheets.   One could hardly ask for better deals than those a Black Friday offers!

Though inexperienced in these things, we are familiar enough with Black Friday shenanigans not to get up at 2am to get to the store by the 3am opening time.  That would just be ridiculous, and someone would probably knock Oma over, and then it would be all dramatic, stressful, and newsworthy.

So we had a leisurely sleep-in, and got up and out the door at a very reasonable 7:30 – just Paul, Mom, Megan and me for the first trip.  We stopped at QT for a fortifying breakfast, then the next stop was the house where we needed to measure bedrooms.  Paul had asked me before we left the house if I had my tape measure, which I had placed in my purse the day before.  I just knew it.  So I didn’t even need to check.

Heh.  So we get there, and I’m getting out of the car, and I pick up my purse, and suddenly sense that it should be heavier… I frantically rifle through it for the tape measure for which I will momentarily be asked.  It is NOT in my purse.  Before the imminent storm erupts I begin dialing the kid-phone, which Laurent has back at the other house.  I rapidly implore her to find my tape measure on the front desk and drive it over.  Paul walks up just as I am saying goodbye… I attempt to allay the oncoming wrath by  saying “It’s on its way!”  To no avail.  Paul does not yell,  of course, as that would be rude.  He’s just … loudly exasperated.

Ok there was a little bit of yelling, but completely understandable considering the stressful time constraints of the day, and my lack of forethought.

Moving right along – Laurent arrived within minutes, holding aloft the prized tape measure in triumph.  I was most, most grateful that I have a teen driver in the family.

From there things went very smoothly.  We got our measuring done (including the refrigerator space, which we had HOPED would be the right size for the fridge we bought on Wednesday and will be delivered this Tuesday – we have exactly 1/4 inch to spare) and were off to visit Debbie Gaby at Sleep America.

The mattress store at the Metro Center was soooo quiet we almost wondered if they were even open.  The neon sign in the window indicated they were, and as we walked in we saw someone packing up a mattress to leave, so that was a good sign.  It didn’t really take very long to choose what we needed.  Mother chose the perfect bed for herself, and Megan was lucky – as the only child who came along for this leg of the journey, she got to be the decider for which mattress was comfiest, for all the kid-beds.

I have, over the past month or so, been trying out various memory-foam style beds in the furniture stores we’ve visited.  My hope has been to be able to get out of the recliner and back in a real bed, if I could find one that didn’t hurt my back.  Well, I found one alright… and it wasn’t cheap.  But we made it a priority in our insurance budget so we did end up getting the Serta iComfort Revolution.  And, because we were buying so many beds, our very kind and helpful salesman gave us the frame for free.  (We did NOT get the adjustable foundation, although they are extremely nifty – if we ever upgrade to a king-size ((ha! snort!  not likely!)) I will definitely get the adjustable base for my side!)

Having accomplished the first of our tasks with the greatest of ease, we drove back home where mother and I were dropped off.  Paul took Megan with him (because she’s the strongest) to go to the Sleep America warehouse and pick up all the beds, take them back to the house, unload them, put the frames together, and get them all in place.

Meanwhile, I loaded up the remaining three youths and mother, and off we went to Arrowhead for our first taste of Black Friday Madness.  Fortunately for us, we were staying on the south side of Bell, and did not have to venture into the mall parking lot, which we could see from a distance was completely packed.  Completely.  Ugh!

No thank you, we were just fine over on the near-the-mall-but-not-actually-the-mall shopping side of the road.  We slid in to a parking spot at the JC Penney home store around 11:30 a.m. and marched through the doors, grabbing a shopping bag for each pair of hands, and looking confusedly at the few people pushing shopping carts, wondering how the blazes those lucky fools found them.  What we REALLY needed was a flatbed, as we soon discovered with our arms laden with comforter bed-in-a-bag packages and sheets and blankets.  We ended up checking out with one batch of items and then going back to buy pillows and towels and shower curtains etc.  And the joke of the day was on me, of course… because, faced with walls filled floor to ceiling with every color imaginable, in addition to far too many options of style and size, I took for.ev.er in the towel department trying to choose just the right combination, and ended up going with hotel white for both bathrooms, arriving at the simplest solution by the most circuitous route possible.  Decision making does that to me.  It would have taken longer without the unflappable support of Laurent by my side, I’m certain.

Finally we went to check out our last batch of items – of which there were 50, if you can believe it – and here is where something happened that I can’t explain.  We arrived at the checkout stand just after a rush had passed, so we were the only ones being helped, and there were three ladies there working on bagging and checking the order through.  Well, something happened, a wrong key was hit, and the whole order was cancelled out after everything was bagged.  So they had to take everything out and start over again.  They were so apologetic and sweet, and I was just so thankful to be getting more than 50% off on most everything I was buying, that I was totally unfazed and in quite a joyous frame of mind.  So we laughed and joked as they finished checking everything the second time.  Then she asked if I would like the $20 discount coupon added (I had no coupon, but she was trying so hard to be accommodating after messing things up) and of course, who says no to that?  So she hit the button to deduct the coupon — and it cancelled the entire order out AGAIN!  By this time we had reached a fairly epic level of farce… there was much hilarity as we attempted to get through yet a third try with no more mix-ups.  And of course, there WERE mix-ups, and it got increasingly ridiculous, and we ended up having to split the order into two transactions… and I’ll never understand how it happened, but by the end of the whole ordeal of more than 30 minutes at the checkout, we walked out of the store with a receipt that was $250 less than the first time she rang it up.  I’m just going to give this one to God, because I have no other explanation.  Thank you Lord for that extra blessing!!

By that time, to my utter shock, we had been there for 3 hours.  And nobody had eaten any lunch.  And we were famished.  And the back end of the mini-van (and the middle as well) was full to the ceiling.  So before anyone could eat we had to go to the house and unload – and then of course everyone insisted on putting their bedding on their new beds so they could see all the wonderfulness and glory,  and by the time we finished THAT it seemed silly to go out for lunch because it was heading toward supper time.

So at that point we decided to go pick up Jeff and have a celebratory dinner at Olive Garden — not just because we had new beds, but ALSO because it was Mom’s Birthday!!  It was a wonderful way to cap off a wonderful (if long and full) day filled with blessings.

The end result of all that Friday Fun: