Bag It

Oh, jeez, I have to do it again.

If I'm shopping in Carytown, it must be almost Christmas.

Because I dislike shopping so much (food and wine being the exceptions), I avoid it all year long.

I know it makes me a poor excuse for a woman, but I'm good with that.

But with the holiday imminent, I had no choice. It was time to spend my money locally.

Rostov's Coffee and Tea was the first stop, a baby step toward the mass of humanity that awaited in C-town.

Which is not to say that Rostov's wasn't busy because it was.

Apparently unlike me, there are plenty of people out there who would appreciate a gift of coffee or tea.

In fact, I was shopping for one of them.

Who are these people and how did I end up on the same planet with them?

With gifts in bag, the next stop was the strip.

One good thing about shopping late is that parking spaces open up as early bird shoppers leave just as I arrive.

I began at the Bizarre Market upstairs at Chop Suey, wanting to look for homemade options.

Bingo!

From there, it was up Cary past a well-appointed busker with a microphone stand and music stand.

What happened to sitting on the sidewalk with your hat next to you?

I ran into the Man-About-Town and his face told me that the Firehouse brouhaha was weighing heavily on him.

I asked, he expounded and I heard more of the disappointing details of the ouster of the artistic director who had been instrumental in not only founding Firehouse Theater Project, but in steering it to where it is nineteen years later.

Sadly, I heard that he had resigned from the board of directors and since he was a founding member too, it was sad news indeed.

If there's any way this mess can be corrected, I hope for the sake of the theater-loving crowd in Richmond that it is.

For a pick-me-up and as part of my annual Christmas shopping tradition, the next stop was Can Can.

The bartender presumed that brunch menus were in order, but all that was required was a cup of their fabulous hot chocolate.

Not cocoa, but real French-style hot chocolate, more of a dessert than a beverage and mounded with whipped cream.

I drained my cup in a most unlady-like manner.

But then, it's that good.

Properly fortified, the last stop was For the Love of Chocolate, which was a madhouse.

Customers crammed every inch of the place and running into a familiar face (and this is a small town, so it happened a lot) inevitably caused a traffic jam.

Let's just say I got what I needed, was introduced to an artist/DJ and got the hell out of Dodge.

And as I walked out of the store, it was as if the clouds had cleared and the birds were chirping.

I was finished shopping.

Sure, I still had cooking and wrapping to do, but the stores no longer had any hold over me.

And that definitely means it's practically Christmas.

On the bright side, I don't have to shop for another year.