Tag Archives: shopping

Tonka Town Girl

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Used With Permission

 

My Sweetgirl is so… me. She’s one of those play-rough-but-pretty-it-up kinda girls. She’ll gladly pull out the cars to “VROOM!” with the boys.  And Holy Moses, does she know how to wield a Pirate’s sword!  But, if left to her own devices for too long, she’ll have each and every dress-up dress pulled out and tried on, with different shoes for each. Mention that you’re going to paint your toes and she’s at the ready with the most sparkly pink polish she can find for her own piggies.  Jewelry?  Yes please!

 

Apprehension doesn’t quite capture my feeling for that moment when we found out we were having a girl.  “A girl!?  What in the world will I do with a girl?”, I said aloud. You see, I grew up hunting and fishing with Captain Ahab. It took me a good long while to start to appreciate my femininity.

 

Meanwhile,  The Nana swooned with relief. The grandchild count, so far, included only boys.  “No sweet little girls to dress up!”, she lamented on more than eleventy occasions.  “Who will I go shopping with?”, she was often caught whining asking. We all knew it wasn’t going to be me!

 

At the time, I had to set about rehashing all of the reasons why I was glad that God knit me together as a girl.  There were plenty, yes. But, I’ve had to learn a few of them along the way.  Haven’t we all?

 

So many prayers for this Sweet girl-child of mine… Not the least of which is that she’ll retain her sense of adventure while displaying her femininity proudly. Some of the things that I pray Sweetgirl will learn to appreciate, about being a girl, are things that I still pray for, for myself.

 

It should come as no surprise, then, that I found great joy when I found her playing with this:

 

Thank you, Grampy, for the nostalgia-inducing Tonka Tin!

 

I picked it up to put it away and heard a rattle inside.  I was curious.  Wouldn’t you be?  It’s always interesting to me to see what kind of “treasures” my kidlets like to stow away inside of things.  I opened it up and found this:

 

 

I couldn’t have planned that photo op better myself!

 

I do believe she’s going to turn out just fine and dandy.  Yes indeedy.

 

Let’s Talk Shop

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I’ve never liked shopping.  There, I said it.  It’s one of those dirty little secrets that I keep under wraps whenever other women start talking “shop”.  The Nana will have you know that I most certainly can NOT be her daughter based on that fact alone. That sweet woman could out-shop Rachel Zoe any day of the week.  Now, give me a couple of days hours to surf the internet, and all of a sudden, I am a shopper-extraordinaire!  But, the malls?  No way, no how.   The mere thought of a trip to the mall used to make me break out in hives.  Upon arrival, I required an immediate stop at the hot pretzel place for sustenance throughout the ordeal and the reward of a cookie the size of my head for surviving it all, on the way out.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I realized something on a necessary pit stop to the mall today.  I had one item on my agenda.  However, I found myself looking at All The Pretty Things on my way to the one particular store and enjoying the looking.  Enjoying. The. Looking!  Why, I even think I had a fleeting thought along the lines of,  “I wonder when I could come back and do this again?”!  I’d like to be all noble and say that I had far better things to do than be attracted by All The Pretty Things surrounding me.  I’d like to say that I felt slightly ashamed to be frittering away a few hours looking All The Pretty Things.  But I can’t. And, I’m not. And Heaven help me, I want to do it again! And soon.

Please, for the love of all that’s good and right with my world, don’t tell The Nana!  We’re headed down there in a few weeks and, Sweet Moses, if she gets a hold of this information, she will drag my newly minted shop-loving self to every shopping establishment in the greater South Florida area.  Have you seen the size of some of those things?  Oh. My. Word.  I think hives are coming back.  Baby steps, people.  Baby steps. Oh, yes indeed.