I had an unusual day today, I had several hours of time, just to myself. We have school on weekdays with the children, but that three hours between driving them to school or picking them up from school usually gets taken up with lots of things that need to get done when children aren't around. But today, I had a sitter--for five hours. And five hours of freedom when you have toddlers, is a long time. A wonderfully long time.
My husband and I had been working hard over the break to get caught up on everything, and today I decided I was going to do several things I'd been wanting to do for a long time. Sure, I could have made time for them before, but things related to Christmas and family maintenance kept getting higher priority, so my "leisure goals" had to wait.
I ran a marathon on November third. Prior to that I didn't want to get a pedicure (much as I needed one) because my toenails and calluses were just fine and there was no need to mess with them and cause some sort of irritation that would bother me during the run. The pedicure (and manicure to boot) were something I haven't done in probably six months. It was so nice.
After that, I called home to get food orders for the family and brought sandwiches to everyone. As soon as we were done eating I dashed back out because I still had over two hours to accomplish my other goal: finding some winter sweaters.
I have some sweaters, but only a few that fit me well or aren't old, out of fashion or worn out. It's winter, I thought, it's the perfect time to go get a sweater or two at the mall. Off I drove and I went to the same department store I mentioned here the other day, expecting, like always, to find everything I need in one location. Only there weren't any sweaters.
That's not exactly true, there were sweaters, but not what I was expecting. There were these diaphanous, open-weave things that you had to layer with another sweater-ish thing on top to work with what was apparently the current style. They were hanging poorly on the hangers and only the dummy models looked good in them. They looked awkward to wear and I was afraid I would break them as soon as I got home and put them in my closet, much less wore them.
There were long, cardigan-type things that went to your knees, but I didn't want a cardigan, I wanted a pull-over sweater. I also wanted something that would keep me warm--the whole reason I was looking for sweaters in the first place. Weren't people cold this winter?
I left the department store and walked by another twenty stores, gazing in to see if they had substantial sweaters I could browse for purchase. I hardly saw anything. I got all the way to the end of the mall and one very large chain store and I found the sweaters. They must have all met up in this one store to be together. I was on the phone at the time and couldn't believe my luck.
You know how you think you can pay attention when you're on the phone but you're really not? That's what happened to me. I hung up and started to find all those great sweaters I was seeing. And yes, there were sweaters, but they were mostly in the wrong size and most of them were some sort of fashion statement and not designed for warmth.
After a while I took three options to the dressing room and left with one sweater I'm hoping will work with lots of pants options. It was a strange shopping trip. But it was my morning off!
The Big Boy Update: Branded socks. We started with boring underpants, solid in color, and at one point someone told us to get fun underpants with characters on them to get the children into wearing them and potty training, and that worked well. It never occurred to me to do the same thing with socks until we were given some Avengers socks for Christmas. My son loves them. But he only wants to wear the ones with the pictures of the characters. The ones with the big A logo for the Avengers means nothing to him because he doesn't read yet.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "Woooosie" I call our dog, Lucy, when she's outside and we want her to come in by yelling out her name and drawing out each syllable. My daughter likes to help me call her, only she says her name with a "woo" instead of a "loo".
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