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Showing posts with the label shopping

Christmas Spirit

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     Christmas is still three weeks out, yet… From about the time in my life that I would fully credit with making me what I am now, we had some adult-ass Christmases.  I say that to say that we had a couple of things under the tree – if there was a tree at home – and a ton of practical things. Socks, drawz, clothes and shoes fit to be worn to school were staples.      At 12, this was kind of hurtful, but at 38 I would LOVE someone to provide me with some of these things. [ Phlip note : no shit, email me for size/address information] There was no secrets at the time as to why things were the way they were, and since we liked to live and eat, indoors at that, we had no good reason to complain.  We appreciated what we had.      On into actual adulthood, I was kind of conditioned not to give a whole lot of a fuck about the general mechanics of Christmas given our history with it.  A gift or two to the people around me, special focus on helping the kids to not feel what I

Christmas Shopping? PAY YOURSELF BACK FOR IT!!!

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                Have you ever considered that shopping doesn’t HAVE to cost you the farm? There are many means and methods through which to pay yourself back for spending money you were going to spend anyway.                 If you’re like me, you’re mildly antisocial and have no interest in setting foot in a mall, toy store or Wal Mart during the holiday rush and will instead do the lion’s share of your shopping from the comfort of your own home.  The beauty of not having to know anything about crowd control or deal with the intricacies of actually putting on clothes being one thing, the other is that there are tools in place to make this even MORE lucrative for you.                 As eBay is no longer the spot for soccer moms to clean out their attics and cash in on people willing to pay top dollar for obscure goods, retailers have come to use it as a marketplace not terribly dissimilar to Amazon.  eBay has a rewards program called “eBay Bucks” where they keep a run

The frugal sneaker fiend

My name is a Phillip, and I am a sneaker head…                 I did not come by this as honestly as many who I have observed have.  In fact, I may have created it for a WILDLY different set of reasons.  When my twin and I were 11, we left my pops and became a single parent household.  Even before this January day, we could basically be assured that at any given time there would be three pairs of shoes in our lives: 1 – “school” shoes:  this would be the newest and cleanest pair, re-upped only at the beginning of the school year and Christmas. 2 – “play” shoes: the most recently demoted shoes from “school shoes” status, provided there had not been a major growth spurt to bring on a change. 3 – “church” shoes: replaced ONLY at significant growth spurts and/or Easter.  Otherwise self-explanatory.                 Let me preface this by explaining that I have worn the same size shoe since the summer before I turned 16. As a kid, I learned to lowkey HATE that other kids got sh

Phlip - 1, Black Friday - 0

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            So it’s 4:30pm on Black Friday.  I had successfully managed to not have to leave my house to do anything other than pay a couple of bills as I might do on any payday Friday I should so happen to not have to work.  Hell, it is what I would do if I HAD to work.  Stops also include also payday standards Food Lion and ABC (grocery and liquor for those who don’t live here) for the items I would normally acquire to get me through a weekend.             As my child is still only one year and four months old, she does not yet have the tastes that even MIGHT require that I stand out in the ball-chillingly 25º morning before a store opened to buy her anything.  Responsible adulthood has unlearned me the habit of really wanting many things for myself that aren’t directly tied to the experiences of holding down my house for Ava and my wife.  About noon, coming in from taking my mother with me to the grocery store for a second time and returning back after dropping her off and