Friday Fragments - Scattered

Welcome to another edition of Friday Fragments, the brainchild of the lovely lady Mrs.4444. Make sure you visit her place and give some comment love.

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I took the girlie with me to Costco again (worst thing I ever did was get a membership - I get happy when I receive my rebate cheque, and then my heart thuds when I realize how much I spend there in order to GET that sizeable cashback...but I digress) and we stumbled upon lovely Barbie in her fantasy bedroom.

"Oh Mommy, can I have that? I NEED that!", the girlie squealed.

"But what happened to the two Barbies you currently have? Where are they?", I replied in my practical Mom voice.

"I lost them. I don't know...".

Well, I do know where they are. One is on the floor of my minivan under the front passenger seat. The other, which actually came with some boudoir accessories, is sitting on her dresser, gathering dust. I don't dust.

"Oh, but Mommy I'll play with it, I PROMISE!"

Whether or not she would play with it was beside the point. We already have so much plastic crap at home. Plus I hate toy packaging.

I decided to take the scientific approach. What exactly in that box did she want? She didn't really need the doll, that she agreed with me. It was the bed itself, and a fancy lamp. I managed to talk her out of the purchase, with the promise of an afternoon of crafting our own fantasy Barbie bedroom.

So brace yourselves, because I am the anti-crafty Mommy...and cheap.

With her help, I sewed (whassat??!!) a couple of pillows out of old sweatsocks (tops only, so it was only moderately eww - stuffed with old Robeeze shoe fluff ; the bed is a juice box, her blanket is an old facecloth.. and the lace is from my Grandmother, which I have saved for about 40 years to use on I don't know what.

Looks more like rag-tag Barbie bag lady from under the overpass to me... but the girl loves it.



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I was driving (what else is new, mom chauffeuring services are on high demand during the summer programs) with the kids, and we had to do a double take at the intersection as we saw a tractor drive slowly in front of us, with an open topped wagon in tow. We do have some farmland and industry near us, so it shouldn't have been anything out of the ordinary. Only in the wagon there was a couch, and sitting on the couch was a woman having a smoke!

"That's sick Mom. Did you see that?" shouted the Boy.

At first I thought he meant ... "cool", "neat"...but the girlie asked, "What's sick? Who's sick?"

"Sick is when someone is not thinking right... I mean, what were they thinking, that is so dangerous!! The couch could fall over, and that woman was SMOKING on top of it! Not too smart! Hey, this would be AWESOME for your blog"

But damn, I didn't have my camera. Figures.

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We have a friend who's got a big milestone birthday coming up, the big Four-Oh. No big celebration though, which got me and my husband talking about when we turned 40. I threw him a surprise party that absolutely blew him away (and gave me a nervous breakdown, it'll be its own separate post). But for mine, it was low-key, the girl was only about 10 months old, and a night out for a lovely dinner was all I needed. I don't know, maybe it's a woman thing, but most of my female friends didn't have huge bashes either.

My boy, listening to the conversation, piped in..."Hey, I wonder what I should do for my big One-Oh next year!".

That kid, what a crack-up!

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We've got a couple of barbecues planned for the weekend, and yes, of course we're expecting rain.

Should be fine, though, I'm not the "Chef-de-grill" (isn't that a riot? We've used a cottage rental service who would describe their cottages with that term for the "man"... and then would actually say "lady of the house would love the kitchen". Normally I would be so offended, but I guess being in cottage mode, I would just laugh because it was so corny and antiquated...okay, now I'm just rambling...)

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Have a good one, guys...