Today’s outing was to a Farmer’s Market and big outdoor shopping mall. The drive was uneventful, except for the last two miles taking longer than the first six. Traffic here really sucks. Then we had a major scare in the parking garage at the mall. After my husband parked and shut off the car, he decided to pull up a little further. Except the car didn’t turn over when he tried to restart it. Not even a click.
I was just starting to envision an afternoon filled with the trauma of getting the car towed to a garage for repairs, when my husband did some magical trick under the hood and the car restarted immediately. Turns out the battery shutoff switch had loosened slightly. Crisis averted. We were off to the mall.
Despite our many years of spending Christmas in Phoenix, seeing signs of the holiday in warm weather still weirds me out. There was a giant Christmas tree next to a fountain in the mall courtyard and when we turned right there was a Santa House. So Nola’s mom went to check on getting Santa photos. They actually take reservations for the photos, but it was a relatively slow time, so they let us queue up.
After about 20 minutes of waiting in line, during which Santa only got through a few rounds of photos, we were told that Santa needed a short break. At that point there was only one woman with two kids in front of us and no one behind us. Santa’s short break turned out to be 20 minutes. Maybe he has a prostate issue. One of the more annoying things was an adult couple who not only took photos wearing matching hideous holiday sweaters, but spent a considerable amount of time talking with Santa. If they had just taken the photo and left, Santa could have cleared the line before his break.
By the time we finished with the photo, we were starving, so we headed to the Farmer’s Market. It’s one of those permanent ones that sells every kind of food in addition to lots of little tchotkes. Our lunch choices covered cuisine around the world – sushi, enchiladas, shawarma, corned beef and a hot dog. Everything was delicious.
We walked around the market after lunch, buying all manner of evil things (toffee, fudge, chocolates), spotted a couple of minor celebrities and headed back through the mall to our car, stopping at a few stores along the way. We needed to make a Target run, so we navigated to the closest one on the way to our house. It took 45 minutes to drive the 3 miles. I’m pretty sure I could have walked faster.