Lazy Days and Shoebox Toys

It wasn’t exactly a gold-star productive weekend, but I have at least caught up on my sleep. If all goes well, this coming week will be the first five-day work week I’ll be putting in since I started back. It will be interesting to see how dead I am at the end of it.

After sleeping for about eleven hours the night before last, I dragged my sorry carcass out of bed and … read the paper. Made a cuppa tea. Lay back on the love seat with my legs propped up. When The Socialist arose a few hours after me, we went out to Chik-fil-A, where I treated myself to a salad. I could continue in this vein, but I think you get the general idea … I accomplished nadda yesterday. And I’m proud of it.

Today wasn’t much different. We had rented Enigma yesterday, which I’d really wanted to see in the theaters but missed. For some reason, when we plugged the DVD into the player last night, it wouldn’t load. The disc looked fine, but it just wouldn’t play. We returned it this morning and replaced it with a new Enigma DVD. This, it turned out, also refused to play on the Toshiba player. Out of morbid curiosity, I took the disc upstairs to my computer and gave it a spin there. It played fine. I’ve never had this happen before, but when I returned the second disc to Blockbuster they said that every once in a while there’s an incompatibility between DVD’s and some players. I’m totally bummed … guess I won’t be seeing that flick. I was able to replace it with “Twelve Angry Men”, an oldie that I’ve never seen and always wanted to. The Socialist will hate it, but I did give him a chance to tell me what to get and he declined. So he’s going to have to lump it.

On my way back from the video store, I stopped off at Walmart, the store I claim to hate but still drop mega-cash at. For the past few years, my company has sponsored a holiday toy drive for needy and underpriveleged kids across the globe. The concept is simple: you get a shoebox and fill it with toys and necessities for either a boy or girl. The shoeboxes are distributed Christmas day to kids anywhere in the world who otherwise wouldn’t have a holiday. It kinda ticks me off that only the Christian kids get presents, but I suppose since it is a Christmas charity I can’t make too big a squawk about it. The stuff still goes to deserving kids, regardless, and I can always make contributions to other organizations to help out the other kids.

Anyhow, for $33 at Walmart I was able to get:

One plastic shoebox with snap-on lid (seemed nicer than just using an old cardboard one)

A Kelly veterinarian doll

A package of five Kelly doll wardrobe changes

A tin with old-fashioned pick-up sticks in it, along with instructions on how to play

A Barbie doll grooming kit

A set of five gel pens

A purple ruler

A purple protractor

A set of purple-handled safety scissors

A foamy wash sponge

A three pack of Ivory soap

A purple toothbrush

A tube of toothpaste

A toiletry set of washing gel, lotion and shampoo (all purple)

A purple flashlight

After all that, there was no way I could cram so much as a pack of gum into that shoebox. I’m rather pleased with my haul.

I was also particularly pleased with the fact that the Kelly doll is a little black girl. I’d like to think that they’ll match the doll up with some young girl who can identify with her; buying a blond-haired, blue-eyed doll to send overseas to some poor kid in Africa just didn’t seem right. The fact that she was a veterinarian doll just tickled my fancy; if the child wants her to be a doctor or a nurse instead that’s just fine by me.

Oh yeah. I really feel like making dinner tonight. Not. I wonder if The Socialist would mind going hungry, just this once.

Yeah, right. I’d better get hustling.