Do’s and Don’ts for Black Friday

• Do loll in bed for a while, reading a library book or maybe even flip through a catalogue or two. (‘Tis, after all, the season to go shopping.)
• Do – if you were lucky enough to cadge a bit of leftovers from, say, your sister who hosted Thanksgiving dinner – make yourself a terrific turkey sandwich. (Bonus points if you’ve got both cranberry and stuffing to put on it. And bonus on bonus points if you had the foresight to pick up some cider.)
• Do take a nice, long walk, ideally through an area where you will encounter some frazzled shoppers that you can superciliously look down your nose and/or roll your eyes at.
• Do dig out the Christmas cards you bought on sale the day after Christmas last year, and address them. (Even though it’s over a month until Christmas, put on Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby and sing along while working those cards.)
• Do revisit your Christmas list, (smugly) congratulating yourself on how many of the gifts you’ve already checked off.
• Do resist the temptation to panic because there are still a few items on the list you haven’t gotten yet.
• Do remind yourself that you don’t have to go into an office everyday and, thus, can take care of those items any old time you want.
• Do take an afternoon nap. You are, after all, still logy from all that turkey and, let’s face it, wine you downed yesterday.
  
•  Don’t get on the scale. Plenty of time for that in a few days, after you’ve polished off all the leftovers and had a day or two living on yogurt and apples.
• Don’t, while chomping down on that post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich, question the wisdom of eating a sandwich with bread stuffing as one of the main ingredients.
• Don’t dig out that Christmas sweater you may or may not have gotten rid of last year – plenty of time to figure out if it’s still in your possession.
• Don’t spend any time on Huffington Post, Politico, or DailyKos. Just be thankful that the elections are over, and that there’s really no need to make yourself crazy worrying about 2014 just yet.
• Don’t go the Post Office and stand in a long line to buy Christmas stamps. (See above: you work for yourself. You can go to the P.O. any time.)
• Don’t fret about Red Sox tickets going on sale next Saturday and you won’t be around to hang online to buy any. Keep in mind, the upside of having a truly suck-filled season is that tickets will be way easier to get this year.
• And whatever you do, don’t go shopping.