Popped into the market this morning and grabbed some ornament hooks and was joking with one of the gals that works there about how I have to buy them every year - she said she was surprised I could even find them. We talked for a few minutes and yes, holiday stuff is already quite picked over even the first week of December.

We couldn't decide if it was less stock on hand, people going overboard for Christmas, or a combination of both...

I know at least locally from my drive to pick up dinner last night that folks are going a bit happy batshit with the outside decorations - we're in that group, too - last year we couldn't find outside twinkle lights at all (and the ones we had were starting to fail, cause, time) and this year I found them and let's just say I can't translate "66 feet per string to bushes covered" - and well, we have A LOT OF PRETTY WHITE AND MULTICOLOR TWINKLE LIGHTS OUT THERE.

What can I say, I love twinkle lights, and frankly, I'd leave them up and turned on year round if people wouldn't bitch about it. (We don't have a HOA, but we do have Nextdoor and it does have it's share of "I just don't understand why people don't have pride in their yards..." asshats, and I'm not bringing that on myself.)

But at least I wasn't imagining things.