Gone before ya know it

Check the date, it’s July 4th. The summer isn’t even a month old yet. Summer is barely a toddler right now. There’s all those chances over the next several weeks to need a new pool float or a sexy new summery dress, I sure hope you can find those things.

On Thursday morning I had to stop by my local grocery store just before noon. That would be this past Thursday…JUNE 30TH, not quite yet July. It was a quick pit stop and I cut through the “seasonal” aisle on my way to the registers. I was pretty focused on my task (I had to be somewhere quickly) but even my intent-of-purpose could be broken by what I saw.

All around me the summery items I love so much were being relegated to sale tables and being replaced by backpacks and school supplies! What? Wait? Hey, it’s not even July 4th yet, what’s goin’ on here?

This is just friggin’ painful. The bigger question though is who BUYS THIS SHIT? If I bought something for September today I can guarantee I wouldn’t be able to find it come September. My house isn’t especially cluttered or messy and that may be the point, I’d buy it and need to put away so that my house WOULDN’T be cluttered or messy and then I’d forget where it was.

And what if I needed something for summer next week? Could I find it? We’ve been going through an alarming number of pool floats lately. We’ve had them a year or two, they’re cheap and, well, they just kinda wear out and are beyond repair and not worth repairing anyway, in a week or two will I even be able to replace them?

We were with friends last night enjoying a local fireworks display, one of the women has three young children and she was saying that everything is currently on sale which is kinda great but she also said that the sales woman at one of the stores told her that the entire Fall line would be on the racks by next week. FOR KIDS. Now look, I don’t HAVE kids but you don’t need to be the damn Duggars to figure out that kids grow out of stuff nearly weekly and you never know when that next growth spurt will shoot them two sizes in two weeks. Kids and their sizes are just plain unpredictable so please tell me how in the world you can reasonably expect to buy something next week for a kid to wear in October? Really?

I just HATE THIS. I do. I don’t want to see knapsacks and bookbags. I want to see backyard gear and special contraptions to make s’mores. I don’t want the retail gods to hurry me any further towards my ultimate demise than the world already does for me.

Can’t we enjoy the “NOW” for a few minutes?

My other question though is do retailers EXPECT to sell things on sale rather than at regular prices? I can tell you that if I went into a store today and saw something I wanted to wear…TODAY and it was regular price I might be tempted to buy it but that won’t be the case. If I were to stop by one of my favorite retailers today I can guarantee that any item of clothing I’d want to wear today or in the next few weeks would be marked down significantly and that lovely sweater that I might want towards the end of September would be full price.

We need a new grill and hubby said this one will make it through this season. I suggested that we should buy a new one at an end-of-season sale…and then I realized those were going on right now. We grill well into October these past few years since the weather seems to actually get nicer and nicer in September and October but by then those grills will be long gone replaced with Christmas and New Year’s items so it looks like our end-of-season grill may just be our most-of-season grill.

All so confusing!

Well, time to hit the road on this July 4th and enjoy some end-of-season somethings.

Happy 4th, Happy Independence Day, Kiss a serviceman or woman, wave your flags and enjoy this great American life for all its warts and burps and beauty.