On Toys

Seriously, our home is overrun with toys. We may need to buy the house next door and let the kids and the toys have this one since they have taken over anyway. I have said in the past that the house looks like FAO Schwartz hemorrhaged it's overstock in our direction but I think maybe it is more apt to say that we are the island of mismatched toys. There is some bizarre toy tractor beam in operation here. We attract animals that talk. Cars that talk. Tools that talk. Everything talks, sings, beeps or squawks. Plastic, wood, plush. You name it, we've probably got it. Organizing toy parts to find their original mates is an all day job. Trying to keep toys in the kids' room or the toyloft or the toy baskets in the living room is futile. They migrate. I find toy screwdrivers in my bed. I find blocks and robots in the bathroom. If you sit on the couch there is a great possibility that you will find a sharp toy stuck in your rear. We use it as a primitive sort of burglar alarm. If anyone tries to sneak around my house in the dead of night they will trip over toy golf clubs, bump into singing vacuum cleaners and break an ankle on a rattle ball as they try to escape. Believe me? Well, that's my story and I am sticking to it!

I have noticed that some of our toys seem just a tad possessed. I think they just might be designed to make me question my sanity, drive me batty or scare years off of my life (just in case my kids don't have that angle covered already). We have an RC car that moves by itself and I am the only one who has ever seen this phenomenon. I spent an hour staring at it one night after two such episodes. Then it went into a box under a bed somewhere. I will probably find it in the middle of the living room some morning like Christine. And then it will be Goodwill-bound, believe me! Once we had a giggling teether that would bust out laughing without any provocation. That sucker found it's way out of the kids' room (after it was bumped accidentally and woke up a sleeping child) to the loft where it had a brief stay - until it was triggered by a breeze at 2am at which point it found a new home in the garage. A few days later I gave up and tossed it in the trash only to have the pee scared out of me on trash day when the garbage can laughed maniacally. I have visions of archaeologists in the future uncovering this thing (having been unnaturally preserved surrounded by all of those dirty diapers) and fleeing in abject terror when it giggles at them. It never felt so good to get rid of a toy! My most recent fright came at about 3 am when a baseball toy in the loft whose batteries are apparently on the way out decided to shout "Going, going, gone! It's outta here!" I was standing at the end of the bed panting, heart pounding, and palms sweating before I finally figured out that we were not under siege. Now I have to make a sweep of every play area before bed each night to make sure the switches are in the off position to avoid being jerked from sleep by someTHING yelling "Hello baseball fans!" or singing "The wheels on the bus go round and round..." Definitely the stuff of nightmares!

The funny thing about all these toys is that the kids don't particularly like to play with them. They might hold their attention for 5 minutes, 10 if I am lucky. My children would prefer to play in the toilet. Squeeze bottles and cotton balls are a local favorite. Sticks, strings, fuzz and Kleenex. The girl likes anything pokey or chokey. The boy likes things that hurt when thrown. (He has good aim so he gets the cotton balls.) The girl can decimate a roll of toilet paper in just under 1 minute and spread it around the house in less than 4. The boy will chase ancient cat all over the house and pick him up and drop him and pick him up and try to throw him and pick him up and try to squash him into the couch and pick him up and try to put him on the table and pick him up and try to go down the stairs with him...and I wondered why ancient cat's favorite game to play was hide the poop. Ha. My kids like pens. They look with disdain at the crayons and reach for the Sharpies. Write on, wipe off? That is for babies, novices and trainees. They want the real deal - permanent ink, hallucination inducing fumes, chemical flavor. They want them NOW and they want them in the living room. They want them to scribble on the uninteresting toys that talk. AH-HA! At last the answer to why we buy the toys! I am off to spread the word...

Too much blog fodder

So, occasionally I am struck by how much I want to put into this blog. Unfortunately it seems that I have TOO much blog fodder and not enough motivation to type it out. Or I have a toddler clamoring for more juice or T.V. or, gosh, I don't know, attention? But it is in my brain and it is really funny. Today I will attempt to get some down on paper, uh, into cyberspace before said toddler wakes from an entirely too short nap.

So you are considered blog fodder if you are a female Security Guard at my local King Soopers and I overhear you discussing your Glock with the 10 year old whose harassed looking mother is trying to self check about a million items.

There is so much wrong with the previous sentence, isn't there?


Does anyone read the signs? Self check out is for 15 items or less - just like the FAST or EXPRESS lane. How on earth can you fit all 7 of your Diet Coke 12 packs in the 2 bags that they offer on the scale? 4 frozen pizzas, 3 boxes of macaroni and cheese, lunchables, donut holes (from the bakery, no less - hey what's the code for donut holes?) cheese puffs, bean dip...huh. It is my opinion that the grocery store sentry at the self check is on disciplinary probation to warrant that job for a few hours. Can you imagine watching dipshit people trying to swipe their own bar codes, figure out if the apples they chose are Gala or Fiji for the right code, feeding their pennies into the coin slot one by one by one and, gasp, trying to organize their own bags when they can't even read the sign that says 15 items or less? Sheer torture. My mouth would get me fired, believe me.

Should the fact that when I go to the grocery store mid-morning in the middle of the week and encounter a Security Guard who carries a gun frighten me? Not nearly as much as the fact that said Security Guard's judgement is such that she feels it is acceptable to show the gun to a 10 year old child and discuss it with him. My overactive imagination puts the conversation going something like this: "See, Johnny, this is a Glock. Here is the trigger. This is the safety. I use it to shoot people." WTF? By the way, I capitalized 'Security Guard' since she has a gun - I don't want to irritate people with guns, especially chicks. If it were just a stick or a taser I probably would have left it in lowercase. Just so you know. Now, I have no idea if that kid asked her about her gun or not. I have no idea if that kid's dad is a cop and he has a Glock, too. But seriously, did the gun need to come out of the holster? I thought that was a rule - no gun out unless direct threat to self or others or something. So, I guess as much as I don't want my kids' vocabulary to include the words I say on a regular basis, I would really prefer they not use the term GLOCK until they are much, much older as well. I will take "pinched your ass" over "put a cap in your ass with my glock" any day.

We gotta move.