Month: November 2004

I told Junior he needed to get working on his list for Santa. I have a good idea of the things that have been catching his eye the past few months, but he does still get to write his own list. He immediately grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and said we needed to watch some “good commercials”. Oy. I can just see him creating a list of just the things that happened to be advertised within a certain narrow window of time. He does understand I have veto power. As in, he can ask for Matchbox sets, but not Hot Wheels sets. I’ve talked about this before. Matchbox sets are build to last. I think you can stand on them and they won’t break. You can pick them up and move them and nothing falls off. Hot Wheels sets are exercises in frustration. Once you finally get it all put together, you can’t breath on it or it will fall apart. And I think they have less play value. But I’ll be darned if I’m going to buy a race set that leaks goo all over everything, or another where every time you go around a dinosaur attacks and you have to put the set back together. Nope. No way.

I think I have him convinced on the Matchbox Rocket park. He loves amusement parks. He loves car sets. A match made in heaven!

I’m not too sure how I feel about the big Sears-Kmart merger. I don’t think I like it. I like Sears, I really do. And I like them more now that I can buy Lands End clothing there. Big bonus.

I don’t like Kmart. I used to – I actually grew up a 9 minute walk from the one at Twin City Mall. (Yes, 9 minutes. I used to work at Victory in high school and knew exactly how long it took to get there. I have added a bit of time to get across streets, etc.)

But at some point, all the Kmarts seem to go down the Ames road. Trashy junk. The one at Twin City was a filthy mess. The aisles were always a wreck, the shelves were bare. I think they decided to appeal to a decidedly downscale market, if you catch my drift. Now I’m told the store got a new manager who really cleaned the place up, but it’s just so not the Kmart of my youth. I can’t explain it. It has a kind of a “dark” feel, but I can’t explain what I mean by that. It’s a harsh feeling. I don’t get that vibe from other stores, so maybe they need to change their lighting or something so it’s less harsh. Or make the whole store more airey, somehow.

So what I’m saying is I think Sears is going to watch their reputation go in the crapper, unless they keep the two completely distinct. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking with it.

I’m already tired of winter, and it isn’t even winter yet. I have a picture on my desk of Cinderella’s Castle in the background and all the Red Sox balloons in the foreground, and it is depressing the hell out of me. I guess that’s a sign of an excellent vacation. I can’t think of anything I would have changed, if you can believe it. Well, I think maybe I would have tried to be better about writing in my journal, but that’s not really vacation-specific.

Man, was it only three weeks ago that we were having breakfast in Norway with the Princesses? I could go for some of those cheesy potatoes right about now. And some sunshine.

*sigh*

It’s the Nanowrimo halfway point. Technically, I should have 25000 words written by the end of the day. In reality, because of my mess-ups early in the month, I’m writing more each day, but won’t hit 25000 for another 2 days (and I’ll still be on schedule for the end of the month). Unless I can find 6000 words in me today. If I couldn’t do it on the weekend, when I wasn’t working, I doubt I’ll be able to do it when I am working. This is just a guess.

And what is it about JC Penny that makes me buy stuff I didn’t go in to buy? We went there Saturday to buy some new pillows for when the kids come up. They’d been stuck with some of our older ones (because they don’t sleep here every night) and after keeping them down in the basement on the futon, they were smelling a little musty. So I said we’d throw out all the old pillows and replace them, and store them upstairs when the kids aren’t here so they won’t get musty again. They sleep downstairs in the finished basement, on the futon, and we can’t seem to keep it from getting a teeny bit musty down there. Not wet, but you know.

You are supposed to replace pillow annually for allergies anyway. Not that I do, but this reminds me off Dana, my college roommate, who couldn’t sleep without the pillow she’d had for most of her life. It was a pretty beat up thing. An allergist would have probably dropped dead at the sight of it. I wonder if she still has that thing? Or if her kids now have their own pillows. Hey, DanaMarie, if you’re reading this, give me a holler!

It got sunny and warmer today, and everything seems to be melting nicely, if not slowly. Mr. Snowman (see below) was sort of listing to one side.

Junior: Mom, I went to check the snowman and he was all melty.

Me: Well, I’m not surprised.

Junior: Ya, so I [and at this point, I expected him to tell me that he started working to shore up the droopy bits, because this is the kid who cried when the little bug-like creatures in the video game Pikmen were eaten by bigger bug-like creatures. So he’s going to try to save Frosty, right?] smashed it with my foot.

I think I went into shock. Sure, every other six year old boy on the planet (and plenty of the girls) would have done that. But not mine! And yet, Frosty is no more. What have you done with my child! I blame public schools.

(Oh, that reminds me. I got a letter in the mail today from the assistant principal, telling me that Junior has excessive absences, and if he’s going to be out he needs to bring a note with him. Um, ya, so what did y’all do with the note that I sent in with him two days prior to him being out, just in case the teacher forgot the conversation I’d had with her two weeks earlier? Huh? Do you people talk to each other at all? Did you check out his made up school work and the vacation journal he wrote? Huh? )

Sheesh.