I had just dozed off after one of those awake and can’t go back to sleep stints. “Mom. Mom,” Jill was nudging my shoulder. I sat up trying to remember where I was.

“I think Dillard’s has some really good sales until 10. You want to go to the mall?” I felt like she was six again.

“Well … sure,” remembering how I had just said yesterday, “you won’t see me out in the Black Friday frenzy.”

I’m not one to jet out of bed, so I had to determine myself to kick it up a notch. With hot mugs of coffee and no idea what we were looking for but good deals, we headed out. My friend Amy, who has six kids, shops with an excel spread sheet with sizes and requests. I usually at least have a list, but I was empty handed and it made me a little anxious and I felt unorganized.

Jill took me to one of those fancy malls with the upscale stores like Louis Vuitton and Saks where most of the people act like it really wouldn’t bother them to spend full price. I love malls like that, but I generally walk straight to the back of the stores where the mark downs are.

In Dillard’s there were’t any before-10am-sales, just regular mark downs. I think that was Jill’s line to get me out of bed, like we needed to hurry. Gap, however, did have everything, even sale items, half off until 10. That was a find. But, without a list, I was lost. So I bought myself a sweater.

Anthropologie was serving fresh baked cookies, which we called breakfast and Banana Republic was handing out bottles of water to the customers in the dressing rooms and the long check out lines. I suppose fancy mall equals fancy service.

We spent less than $100.00 between the two of us, but walked off some of that Turkey Day slogginess. If you were organized and shopped with a list with the throngs of frantic people, I hope you found everything you were looking for. Maybe I can get a list together over the weekend for Cyber Monday.