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This morning my friend Sal drove up to the curb and I loaded four huge IKEA bags of recycling into her car. Someone who shall remain nameless had forgotten to rinse the black bean cans and there was a stench of rot hanging in the minivan air as we drove the two blocks to the recycling trailer.

A quick run into a packed post office to mail some late packages and we were on our way. . .but where? Let me give you a hint: I never go to this place, well, almost never. When we parked and walked in, Beatrix yelled, "Seattle!" because we only go to this place when we are on vacation.

Did you guess. . .the mall? If you did, pat yourself on the back. It was pretty empty today and the kids took off down the wide, gleaming aisles. Sal hitched up an ancient LL Bean backpack on her back and we felt just a bit out of place with all the Mall Moms. For us, the mall is a cross-cultural experience. I bought little gift for my mother (which shall remain unspecified in case she's reading), and I felt as though the woman across the counter with the thickly painted eyelashes who handed me my bag should have been speaking a different language. She asked for my phone number, which really baffles me, and I said, "Could I not give you that?" And then she asked for a contribution to St. Jude's, and I'm all for charity, but it feels a bit weird in the context of flashing cheap-but-expensive jewelry and headless manikins. So I said no.

Malls do something a bit funny to me, and it's not just sensory overload. I begin thinking maybe I'd like to buy things, a bunch of things. This consumerist urge is balanced by the absolute repulsion I feel when I walk by a store with banners of half-naked teenagers, reeking of cologne with a sign that says "Holiday Hookup." I mean, really. Martin and I did a mall crawl last year at Christmas. We went into a shop that I thought might have some nice clothes but the music was so loud that it actually bounced us back out of the door. "I don't think we're the intended demographic!" I yelled as Martin grasped the door jamb before we were blown away back to the food court and the immorally large pretzels.

Anyway, we had a good time nonetheless. There were some guys from a prison with dogs being trained for veterans who have suffered from PTSD, and we pet them for a while (the retrievers, that is). The kids played on some soft replicas of a stethoscope and a tongue depressor (the playground was financed by the hospital) and we bathed them in hand sanitizer before we fed them a picnic at the food court. Good time all around. I'm beat. Oh, and they went and stood mute in front of Santa Claus, who was so warm there was a fan trained on his bearded face.

By the way, click HERE to see the best thing that ever happened in a mall. One can only hope that the Christmas spirit surprises us like this.