I know this will really date me, but here goes…. The dynamics of Christmas shopping have certainly changed. I can remember many, many years ago, there were two ways to shop. 1) drive to a department store or mall or 2) manually fill out an order form and mail it out to Sears or Montgomery Ward and wait for your goods to arrive 3 or 4 weeks later.  The latter took some long term planning. The former was a series of what ifs – what if I don’t have time to get to the mall? What if it snows and the roads are bad? What if I get there and can’t find what I want? Etc etc etc. The whole process was a stress producing ordeal that just added to the overload of things to stress out about during the Christmas season. The next phase of shopping was ordering tnrough a catalog company like LL Bean or Lands End. Before we had the internet to do this on line, you would have to call the 800 number and read off your list of items to a customer service rep. Again, you could be looking at two weeks or more for delivery. Then came Amazon, followed by Amazon Prime. Now I can be lying in bed with my tablet, and with one click, order everything I need. And it’s on my doorstep in 2 days. We always do some local shopping which is what we did this past weekend, as it’s important to support the small business owners, and they have so much to offer in the way of unique gift items. But for those last things that are still on the list…..  I looked at the weather forecast tonight, and there is snow predicted for three days in the coming week. In the old days this would stress me out. But I just smiled and thought “good thing I have my Amazon finger.” Click.