With the crazy times of the wedding safely past and the new bride and groom off preparing for their honeymoon to Hawaii, a lull in the action and frenzy was long coming.  For individuals like my mother, aunt, and grandmother who have been running around like maniacs for weeks making sure that the minutest details were in place, the change of pace to an afternoon of being able to sit around and do nothing was surely welcome.  For me on the other hand, a person who is used to running constantly with no time to sit down, having nothing to do on the day after the wedding feels almost painful.  As a thank you to the wedding party, my brother and sister in law purchased a catered brunch for everyone this morning at the hotel where the reception was held last night.  That was all well and good, but once the cars were jam packed with gifts and the overnight bags were packed and ready to go, there wasn't much to do but watch everyone go their separate ways back to their regulars lives.  I headed home with my mother and sat around dozing lightly on the couch with the television playing quietly in the background.  I woke from my cat nap after a bit and realized that I was wasting my day away and that I needed to do something...anything other than sit around.  I thought that I might go down to the mall and see what was new down there.  In the town where I live in Indiana, the shopping possibilities are meager at best, and I can think of only one store in the entire mall that I would ever even consider shopping at.  I knew that when I got home that I might have time to stop down and actually do a little bit of shopping.  The problem was that I couldn't find anyone who wanted to go downtown and endure the hustle and bustle of the mall traffic and fellow shoppers.  Everyone just wanted to sit around.  Even more importantly, no one wanted to spend any more money. Since I hadn't gotten a chance to shop in so long, I figured that I might be able to spare a few dollars for a few new shirts or some cool flip flops.  Everything changed in the blink of an eye when I realized that my mother had called a bunch of people in the family to invite them over to the house AGAIN to help finish eating up the many leftovers that we still had from the rehearsal dinner two days ago.  There went the peace and quiet along with my chance at stealing away from the house unnoticed for a little bit of light retail therapy.  As the doorbell started to ring and family members showed up who I had only gotten a chance to chat with fleetingly at the wedding, I knew that I was doomed.  I was going to have to stay home and pretend to be interested in these inane conversations about how school is going and what I've been doing all summer.  The only bright side of the situation that I could come up with is that the distraction that came along with the arrival of my extended family meant that I wouldn't be going out and spending any unnecessary monetary reserves of articles of clothing and other material items.  Although I know that I should be thankful for this money saving distraction, I couldn't help but be a little bit bummed out at the lost shopping opportunity.  As all of you who read my blog with any regularity know, I don't allow myself very many changes to splurge on items for myself, so this shopping trip was going to be my one opportunity in the last seven months or so to do so.  On the bright side, I did start to solidify some plans to head up to New York City to visit my cousin for next Spring break in March, so I suppose that I can just put that bit of money I was going to spend today away to save some extra funds for that trip.