Starting about a month ago, I had started hearing my daughter yell and point at the t.v. shouting
"SQUINKIES! Mama, SQUINKIES. Look, look, awwww, you missed it"
"No I saw honey" - totally lying to my 5 year old, but lies to your children are o.k. I promise.
"No you didn't! You were looking at the mail!" -(or actually she said 'yous was lookin at da mail', but I don't want anyone to judge my daughters grammar. She is brilliant,genius almost, really, I swear, but she is five,and sometimes uses her own grammar book that she stores in the corner of her brain. Just like mommy. One of the only words I will correct my children (and husband) like a school teacher, is 'Ain't' - God, don't even get me started on Ain't!
"Baby, mommy is magic.I have magic powers, magic eyes.Mommy can look at mail and the t.v. at the same time" - another acceptable lie. It will come in handy when she is 16 and I tell her my magic powers are what told me that she was getting ready to go 'all the way' with her boyfriend. Magic Powers indeed, not the fact that I hacked into her computer and read her instant messages, which gave me waaaayyy more info than I wanted to know, or really could handle before I had my morning coffee.
"Mommy can I get those?"
"No. Santa will be here soon though, maybe he will bring them"
------jump ahead 1 month---------------
"Mommy. How much Christmas money do I have?"
"Ummm, let me look" - I know exactly how much she has. She has more than I have in my wallet right now. Seventy dollars to be exact. And I know what you are thinking. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Yes, I tell white lies to my children, but stealing is not a white lie, and I would not steal from my five year old. Stealing is stealing. Even from a 5 year old who doesn't know the difference between 4 quarters, 4 dollars, or 4 twenty dollar bills. I just don't want to tell her how much, because as I mentioned above, she is kindof a genius. I mean, maybe she will know exactly what seventy dollars means. She could already be on some invisible life path towards being a banker, or business woman. Then she will know that she has seventy dollars, so my plan of putting 50 of it in her savings won't work out.
"Can I bring my money to the toy store"
"Yes" - so I take her to Target with me. Best of both worlds! (especially now that they have a nice grocery section at our local Target) Food, the essentials like toilet paper, and toothpaste, but also a new sundress, bra, candle, and picture frame for mom and Toy section for the little one.One stop shopping.
-----------an hour later at Target------------
The cart is full of my essentials
- cute black skirt - I didn't try it on, but am praying I look exactly the same as the outfit put together on someones Pinterest. I already had the riding boots with the cute little buckles and the grey, knit infinity scarf. Just needed the cotton black skirt.
- Slippers- well they were on clearance. Love that red clearance sticker.
- Lip Gloss- I am addicted to lip gloss. Cheap, sheer lip gloss.
- Face wash.
- Christmas Clearance Crap-again, Love that red clearance sticker.
- Cream Cheese
- Bagels
- Vanilla Coffee Creamer
- Bread
- Thai peanut sauce- who knew they'd have that at Target
- Soda / Chips
- 2 Bottles of wine. Red for hubby. White for me
Now onto the toy section. Oh my lord, the decisions, the agony of a five year old with more money than she knows what to do with. She picks up a Barbie, then puts it down. Picks up a clearance Dora doll (which I am trying to train her to go for the 'red' stickers), puts it down. Goes back to the Barbie section, then walks backwards to the Littlest Pet Shops. Onto My Little Pony. In the middle of these back and forth aisles, she is picking up big ticket items.I am trying to maneuver my cart back and forth, resisting the urge to tell her the store is closing, and we have to leave 'NOW' (another acceptable white lie). I am explaining to her she does not have enough, when really she does, I just don't want her to waste it all in one shot. Back to Barbie. She picks up Bicycle Barbie. It looks cute, it is on sale, it would go with the Barbie Dream House we just bought her for her Birthday (she is a December baby). She wanted a dream house more than anything, but Holy S*it, it was $135. Found one on Craigslist for $40. She will never know. Well, actually, she did turn to my husband, and in the sweetest fricking voice said "Daddy, did you buy this at a garage sale?" But see, in my family that is not a bad thing. It is not embarrassing. My husband is seriously the most awesome garage saler in the world. So many things in our home are from garage sales, and I assure you we have a nice home. We get complimented all the time, and my friends want my husband to either 'teach' their husbands, or they want to wake up on freezing cold Saturday mornings at 6:00 a.m. and head out with my husband, him acting as their teacher, them acting as his students.Kinda like Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid. Wax on, Wax off. Garage Sale on, Garage Sale off. They can go anytime with him, fine with me. I'm happy sleepin in my bed, knowing that when I stumble downstairs a couple hours later he will be pulling into the driveway with treasures for all of us. The kids and I love it. So her asking if her Barbie house was from a garage sale, was not bad. We said 'no', and that wasn't a lie. It was Craigslist, not a garage sale.
She puts the Bicycle Barbie down, and spots something on one of the end caps.
"Mommy. I want this ('dis)! Do I have enough?"
I look at it, and realize it is one of those Squinkies that she was hollering about a month ago. I had told her to wait in case Santa brings it. Well, Santa forgot. So here we are.
"How much is it?" I look at the tag. The RED CLEARANCE tag. We are off to a good start. The box was huge. It was some Jungle, Iceberg, slipping slide, shitty ass......oops sorry. I looked at the sticker quickly, and saw a 2. My brain told me it said $20. Regularly, $39. SOLD!
I was exhausted, and all I wanted to do was go home, cook dinner, read a book to my d........... Oh,Lord, I can lie to a five year old, but not to my 'blog'. Who am I kidding? I wanted to go home, log onto my pinterest, put the picture on the screen of the outfit that inspired me to buy the black skirt, then actually try the black skirt on to make sure I could rock the look. Then I would think about dinner, or think about telling my kids and husband we were gonna have a WACKY CEREAL FOR DINNER NIGHT!!! Wouldn't that be fun? A theme dinner! It could catch on.
"Yes, baby. You can get that"
My daughter sits in her booster seat hugging the box of Squinkies as if it were her favorite stuffed animal. We pull in the driveway, and immediately she is unlatching her seat belt. I can barely get the key out fast enough to unlock the front door, before she is asking me to help her unwrap it. Her smile lights up even the darkest room, so I put my black skirt on hold, and sit down in the living room with her. The whole time I am unwrapping this toy though,something is nagging me. There is a thought floating around in my head,but I can't put my finger on it. I mean, with four kids, I have helped assemble, disassemble, fix, put together, read directions for, and played with many crappy, pointless toys. Don't even get me started on battery operated Sewing Machines for kids. I don't think either one of my older daughters ever even stitched one fricking piece of material, before they were asking me if they could sell it our garage sale. (Yes, we are garage salers and garage salees)
But something about these Squinkies was just plain STUPID! Not too mention, it wasn't on clearance for $20. That zero was actually a '9'. So, 30 bucks was spent on the Squinkies jungle,iceberg, pimp mansion.
We hear the sound of the diesel truck pull in, and realize daddy is home from fishing. A few minutes later he walks in the door, completely wreaking of fish, but hey, he feeds the family. A little bit like Pa on the Little House on the Prairie, walking through the front door with a deer wrapped around his neck, telling Ma to 'start the fire'. Only I am pretty sure Pa wasn't listening to Pandora radio, while sucking on Tecate Beer, and eating expensive beef jerky shooting the shit with his best friend. But you never know, Pa could play a mean fiddle, and when he got together with Mr. Edwards, forget about it. I'm sure the moonshine was flowin!
"Hey baby, did you go shoppin with Mama? What did you buy?"
"Squinkies!"
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| The Little Culprits |
"Squinkies?? What are those?" - and as he bends down to get a closer look, he picks up one of the little suckers, which are about the size of his little toenail, and he shakes his head. Then mouths to me "what the f*ck are these?" **yes he mouthed it, I promise. No ears of a five year old were damaged in the prepping of this blog.
"They are Squinkies babe. You know, she kept talking about them"
"Well someone is making a buttload of money off of .25 cent gumball toys." - O.K. , O.K., he said 'shitload' not 'buttload', and no, he did not mouth that one. But by then she was completely engrossed in her new .25 cent toy that cost $30, so I think we were in the clear.
Aha!! That's it!! He just said what has been nagging me about these stupid things. That is exactly what they are. TWENTY FIVE CENT GUMBALL TOYS!!!!!! That is it. Whose idea was it to put a quarter in a gumball,turn the wheel, pull the little door open, pull out the plastic container, open it, hold up the teeny, tiny little rubber figurine and think. Hmmm, I should market these to toy companies, call them Squinkies and sell them to all of the STUPID PARENTS and Toy Hungry kids out there. Who was this guy? or gal?
I think I am going to start selling temporary tattoos for $29.99
Plastic Gold Rings for $15.99
Slappy Hands for $9.99 (or 3 pack for $19.99)
Plastic pretend watches $17.99
The possibilities are endless. Insert 'evil laugh' here!. I will be rich! RICH I TELL YOU!!!!!
I know I am guilty of it. But no more! No more paying 10,20,30 dollars for something that just 6 months ago was living in a gumball machine, and when my kid pulled it out she called it a
PENCIL TOPPER!!!
PENCIL TOPPER PEOPLE!!!!!
And get this- you can still walk into a grocery store, and purchase these 'pencil toppers', but you will only need to pull a quarter out of your pocket.
AHHHHH, Thank you for listening. I feel better!
My kids have these things. Hopefully this fad goes away quickly.. Funny read..I totally relate!
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