IN WHICH I LOVE THE TARGET, PART TWO

I love the Target.

In fact, let's be honest here; I'd live at the Target if they sold beds like at the Macy's.

Truthfully, I can't make it out of the Target without spending at least $100 on wonderfully useless things. It is always surprising to me how quickly these cheap little things can become so very expensive, and today's Target day was a day just like that. 

Today's Target day was the same as always and yet so, so different, and discombobulating (a fantastic word), and disorienting, and so now, here is the story of today's Target Day,

-aka- 

Going Out The Way We Came In

-or-

Closure Is Important To Human Emotions

-but if you'd rather-

Let's Make A Target Sandwich

***

So, the other day I needed to go to the Target. 

Well . . . I didn't really need to go to the Target, but I did want some alone time. 

I also wanted to see this brass lamp that I keep on seeing all over Instagram. It is everywhere! It looks so classy!

You probably have one too, right?? Yeah, you do.

Whenever I see this lamp I always catch myself thinking it can never truly be possible that it actually came from the Target. Because it looks way too slick. It's probably not as great in person.

This was a theory I was willing to invest time into.

Mostly, however, the real reason I wanted to go to the Target that day was so that I could end this flipping blog already.

***

I have been ready to be done with this blog for something like ten years at this point.

And always, when I thought about it, I had this idea in the back of my mind that, this, someday, was how I was going to go out.

Which is to say, by going out the way I came in.

By which I mean, by writing about shopping.

Plus, I'd been having hella writer's block for a couple of months and I thought that maybe the long drive might crack something open.

(Well, it didn't.)

(Try picturing a Prius-shaped thought bubble hurtling towards the ever loving embrace of the closest Target, 90 minutes north of here, and you about got it.)

All the drive long I wondered and wondered.
What would I want to say in this, my very last blog post?
What are my messages? What are my themes?? Do I have any of those things??? What has all this been, anyway????
What does a reader even look for in a decent flounce post these days?

I definitely wanted it to be, like, MEANINGFUL.
An essay! You know, one of the good ones.
Make it mean something! On a treadmill! With Dave Chappelle!!

"I was eloquent! Shit!!"

But the more I thought about it, the more I knew. I am just way too over it at this point for something like that. I am just actually that ready.

***

So, this is it. 

Without pomp or circumstance or anything terribly exciting to go along with it, here it is. 

After ten years of blogging, I am closing up shop.

***

(This part is the part at the end where I say, "Hey, guys, thank you.")

Dearest People Of My Blog,

Hey guys. Thank you.

Thank you for always being incredibly fantastic and intelligent and fascinating and kind whenever we've been able to meet in person.

Thank you for your beautifully thoughtful comments and emails.

Thank you for your prayers! I've felt the them, I swear it. Every last one.

Thank you for your sisterhood, for sharing your experiences with faith, infertility, hope, and the hard things, and for letting me feel at times like I was your big sister. This has and will continue to give my life an insanely wonderful added purpose and meaning. It makes me want to cry anytime I think about it.

I'm so grateful for you, you weird little knuckleheads, for supporting me and coming along with me and for liking the same dumb things as me, and for asking me things like where I get my white t-shirts and clogs, and for buying my book, and f or showing up when I've held  events, and for always being so much stinking cooler than me.

Thank you.

Thank your, ladies and gentlemen!

And now for my parting words. My legacy! Get excited!

That lamp at the Target is EVERY BIT as rad in real life as it seems online.

Wouldn't it be nice if everything was like that?