Okay, where was I?

Oh yeah, I was about to go get Oldest and bring her back here. hehe. Got to school after making a quick lunch stop at Wendy's. Yikes. The woman at Window Number One looked exactly like Carrot Top. The only thing better would have been for her to put her hair up in puffy pigtails and scream "I'M THE WENDY'S GIRL!!" Poor woman. She probably has people telling her that all the time.

Anyway, go to school and told the gaggle of office help girls at the counter who I needed, then waited forever for Ashley to finally get there. The girls amused themselves by doing science homework--did you know that Mercury can get to be 450 degrees!? Celsius! Is that a lot? Well, YEAH! I know who sspspshh likes. But I'm sworn to Double DL secrecy not to tell. Down down low? NO, down down low low!

On and on. Well, they may not LOOK like the 8th grade girls I went to school with back in the Dark Ages (since when did 14 year olds start looking like full grown women!?), but they all still act the same.

Finally Oldest got there and seemed somewhat perky. I piled her in the van and went around to the other side--"Sure hope you don't mind, but you're going back to work with me. I've got exactly 20 minutes to get back."

And here we are.

I started my copies for the mailout tomorrow, and she has quietly--aside from a few attempts at guilt induction through assorted Ows and Ouches--reading her book. As I mentioned in the comments in the previous post, this is not quite the best situation in the world to have to have your kid at the office with you, but she has gotten into a pernicious sort of habit of calling saying she's sick, then recovering the moment she hits the door of the house. She hasn't quite gotten the message that it's a rather inconvenient thing for the adults to have to drive across town to tend to her, especially when her symptoms disappear. Just looks suspicious, you know? So, in the interest of making sure that I am able to adequately monitor her condition, perhaps this is for the best. (Although I am sure if only she had her CD player, things would be so much better.)

SO, back at Wal-Mart last night, she had narrow her selection down to several 1970s chunky shoe design retreads and a pair of somewhat okay semiflats. You know, I lived through the 1970s, and we thought the clothes were stupid looking even then. Why anyone thinks different now is beyond me. We negotiated a bit, and after putting the platform monstrosities back, she found a nice pair of sandals in red. Had to be red. Or orange. Or yellow. "What is the background of the pants you're wearing?"

"White--but not a lot. It's just in places."

Oh--THOSE. They have big flowers on a white background. Again, it is my firm belief the 1970s deserved to die thirty years ago, but this is what I'm dealt.

"Do you think maybe white would look better?"

Much hemming and hawing, and finally she decided to try on a pair of the white in her size. They looked very nice--"And you know, the white tends to make your foot look slimmer."

Yes, that was a bit of shameless psychological manipulation, but I've been shoe shopping TOO MANY TIMES with my girls, and the last thing I wanted to do was to stay at Wal-Mart for another six hours looking at Bandladesh-made platform huraches. She walked back and forth and admired them in the mirror, then came back and sat down, took them off, slapped the lid on them, and shoved them in the cart.

"Oh--you're going to get them!?" Just enough surprised puzzlement to mask the voice in my head screaming, "GOOD! Now let's get out of here!" She nodded happily, and we finished the list of stuff and headed to the check out. Did that, and as we were about to walk out the door, I remembered the tee-shirt I was supposed to get.

Once more--back to the boys' department, grab a shirt, check out, THEN home at last.

Sure was a lot of effort just for lunch money.
posted by Terry at 2:41:00 PM