...It's inevitable, and you cannot avoid them no matter how hard you try. They're everywhere.

You see, I saw the first sigh of Christmas at the mall after I went to a local sushi place (really, it's a good sushi place, even if it's in a mall) and wandered past the Hallmark store next door. They had the ornaments out already. Now that's actually normal for Hallmark, but this particular store also had garland up and lights on the edges of the glass shelving, and a bunch of other things to make it look Christmas-y.

That was in late July. Michael's did their setup in September, and I've cut my visits down significantly, and even when I go in I don't look in the direction of Christmas and I rush back to where I actually need to be. I've actually avoided most stores successfully for quite some time now.

But it's over. I can avoid it no longer. You know that you can no longer avoid Christmas when Starbucks changes out the menu board on the drive through to be the Christmas red placard, and they've changed the cups out too. This stinks - I was so very sure that I could avoid Christmas until after Thanksgiving and then Starbucks had to go and do this to me.

And to add insult to injury, there's no "The Way I See It" on the Christmas cups. That means I'll have to wait until January before I get a pearl of wisdom again from Starbucks. Yes, yes, I know they have them on the website, but it's just not the same. At least I have a couple saved up that I've wanted to blog for awhile, but still. Christmas. At Starbucks. Already.

I guess it's time to pull my head out of the sand and catch up with the rest of the world and start my Christmas shopping. Heck, I still have shopping from last year to finish (just that smoker/BBQ that DH wants - no we still haven't purchased it). So, here we go - I am officially going to charge into Christmas headfirst now...

...but the tree still isn't going to go up until the day *after* Thanksgiving.