For Everything...There is a Season?

Our niece's birthday is at the end of September, and this year, she wanted ice skates.

Since the Halloween decorations had been out in the stores from about the middle of August and at least one major department store began decking the halls in mid September, I figured ice skates would be no problem. I was wrong.

Footlocker, Sports Authority, Dick's Sporting Goods, Target, Ski Chalet; they all looked at me like I had lost my mind. Ice skates? In September? Uh uh. But if I wanted flip flops, I was in luck. Still tons of those available, and new shipments arriving daily!

I eventually ended up going online where, thankfully, there is no such animal as "seasonal merchandise".

So now it is November, and the last time I looked, that qualified as the beginning of the winter season. The mornings are getting colder, the days cooler. Perfect time for buying kid's winter coats, right? Wrong again!

The perfect time was apparently last month when it was eighty-five degrees.

After wandering around the first store on our list, unable to find winter gear (shouldn't it be relatively easy to spot it among the shorts and sleeveless tops?) we finally had to ask where they were hiding it.

Giving us one of those pitying "really, you waited this long to buy winter coats" looks, the salesperson directed us to the clearance racks. Thinking this was an aberration, we trundled down the mall corridor to the next store...and once again ended up at the clearance racks.

After visiting about three dozen more children's departments/stores, we were waving the white flag and considering making the suggestion to Tim's brother that they move to Florida. I'm pretty sure Howard Carter didn't have this much trouble discovering King Tut's tomb (although at this point, we were feeling pretty much cursed--either that or we were cursing a lot--is that the same thing?)

All we wanted were a couple of jackets the kids could wear to school. Was that asking so much? It's not like we had our hearts set on matching coats made of carefully blended virgin Tibetan wool from a yak named Edna and double-cocooned silk from a Chinese worm named Dwayne!

Finally, after visiting about three dozen children's departments/stores, we found it...the Holy Grail. One pink coat in our niece's size, and a whopping two in our nephew's (thankfully, neither one of them was pink). Snatching them up, we ran to the register and purchased them before any other poor unfortunate soul who had been lulled into a false sense of complacency by the summer-like temperatures found them.

It was a long, tiring, frustrating day, but I have learned a few valuable lessons from it. One: buy in season (which basically means shopping for winter coats in September/October, bathing suits in January, and back-to-school clothing in July), and two: be out of town next year when it is time to shop for coats!