See? I can act my age.

I'm in my mid, almost upper-30s. I look young. And I'm not bragging. That's not a compliment to me when someone tells me I look like a teenager because usually what a person means by that is, I don't take you seriously because you look like a teenager.

I act old, though. I don't play, really play, with my kids as much as I should. I don't do a lot of fun, spontaneous things anymore. And I always require my 6-7 hours of sleep.

But this weekend was Thanksgiving. Which means there was a Black Friday following the feasting. Which means that tradition dictates I throw the Old Lady Act out for a day or, rather, a night. It is on this, the nation's biggest shopping day, that I venture out with my husband in the middle of the night. We check things off our list, and we enjoy each other's company minus the little people.

This year was a bit different because some stores threw off our normal early-morning schedule by opening at midnight rather than at 4am. Toys R Us was that store. And I don't know why we always try to do Toys R Us. We are not serious enough shoppers to stand for hours in a line out in the freezing cold, so we never get there early enough to get the doorbuster deals. Then, after we have chosen the items we do want, when we see the check-out line that circles the gigantic store at least once, we always put the items back and leave empty-handed. But every year, there we are at Toys R Us. And this year, there we were. Only earlier.

Even though they opened at midnight, the other stores we wanted to visit didn't open until early morning, and, try as we might to be completely young, we did decide we wanted at least a couple of hours of sleep. So we went to bed at 9:30. And I lay there wide-eyed for at least two hours like I usually do, solving the world's problems. (Oftentimes I write blog posts in my head while I'm lying there, but obviously there was no head-blogging going on, or this post would have been written a bit earlier). Just as I had fallen into deep sleep, the alarm went off.

We were out the door by 1:30 and off to Toys R Us. The parking lot should have been our first clue that we were once again going to leave empty-handed, but there we were with 3 and 1/2 hours before another store would open, so in we went. And sure enough, the really good deals I wanted were gone, and the line was already winding around the store, in and out of the aisles. We left. But not before running into some good friends whom we would encounter several times during the night/morning.

With a couple of hours to kill, we decided to head to the mall. We had no idea there would be anything open in the mall, but there were cars in the parking lot, so we decided to follow the crowd. (As a side note, following the crowd can backfire on you. One Christmas, we were on the road and saw a McDonald's that looked open. We pulled up behind several cars in the drive-thru, finally got up to the speaker-order-thingy, and tried to place our order. No one there. It was closed. I wonder if we were on candid camera that day.) Anyway.

Our early morning escapade ended up being worth it because we cleaned up at the Disney Store in the mall. All items that weren't on our list, but the deals were too good to pass up. After the Disney Store, we got to go on our date. To the Waffle House. Because we're a class act.

So to cut down the length of my tale, I'll summarize by saying that we also got some great deals at Kohl's, Target, and Wal-Mart. If you've never been to Wal-Mart on Black Friday, it really is a must-experience. At least once. If you have a shopping cart, it's like Rush Hour traffic. Seriously. You can't move. It's a little easier without a cart. Sort of like being a motorcycle in Rush Hour traffic; you can weave in and out a bit. So I stood on the edge of the traffic jam with the shopping cart, and, using the cell phone, guided Mark to a couple of end caps I could see from my vantage point, which contained various items I can't name here because occasionally my daughter reads this.

And that was it. The end of another Black Friday. See? Sometimes I can be young. Ish. And, no, I'm not going to 'fess up to an afternoon nap because that would just make me sound old.