shopping can be fun!

...for others. i'm not too fond of it, though.

(yes, i'm rambling)

yesterday i went to the mall. i was under the impression that malls were supposed to have a variety of stores under one roof - apparently that means a variety of clothing stores, with just a few extra places with overpriced bric-a-brac that nobody i know would want.

i was looking for toys for a two-year-old. the department stores no longer sell toys, or they are keeping them well hidden. there was one toy store in the mall. kaybee. (is it against the law for them to have stores not in a mall? maybe it's part of the wright amendment...) anyway, they had some cute stuff, most of them for ages 3 and up.

3 is larger than 2.

of the under-three toys, none of them seemed "right" for this two-year-old. the toddler already has plenty of stuffed animals and bath toys. then i remembered someone mentioning duplo - lego's double sized building blocks for smaller kids. that particular kaybee location had lots of knockoffs, but only one duplo kit, a giraffe, and its box was bent.

no sale. but now i knew what i was looking for.

i left the store trying to remember where the closest toys 'r us location was. then i saw their logo on a billboard. what luck! wait a minute - it's an ad for the toys 'r us aisle at albertsons. argh.

i gave up and went to walmart, where i found several duplo brand building sets for about half of what i was expecting to pay. so i bought two.

i also bought a few other things (it's true that you always buy more than you planned at walmart, even for an antishopper like me), including some little red bows for the packages. i set them on the top of the pile in the cart so they wouldn't get crushed, but (unexpectedly) where they would blow off into the lane directly in front of a speeding cadillac, with comedic timing worthy of a laverne and shirley episode.