*swipes from someone else* While Sailor Moon is stalled out as I figure out what the hell, I present the Harry Potter 30-Day Challenge... if you DARE. (Okay, fine, the icecream may have hyped me up a tad.)
( Day One! )( Listy! )This is actually from three days ago so... later I might move on up to questions two and three. We'll see.
Yesterday was a bad, bad day. It actually reduced me to whimpering and rocking back and forth. I don't even think my breakups have reduced me to that, so there you go. Bugs apparently have a bigger chance of breaking me than boyfriends turning into exes. Who knew?
Still. I bounced back because I had a friggin' list of things to do. One of them involved getting Widget's school supply list all crossed off. It wasn't until we hit Target that I remembered why I'd given up on this earlier. He's getting a "new" list on Tuesday and if it's like every other year, they're just going to change everything. Bother. I really wish that once August started, they'd give the parents the information like, "Your kid is going to be in Ms. Nelson's class. Here is her list. Have fun at the tax free school supply holiday, k?" Instead they don't hand that list out until after all the sales are OVER. So, I mostly ignored the supply part of the list and concentrated on getting the boy some new clothes.
I... I lack the words, you guys. I just... I know it must be hard to see all those clothes you'd rather be wearing and then look over and see the uniform of DOOM but he wouldn't cooperate. At all. It was painful, dudes. Painful. Anyway, clothes were found. Shoes were found. Tears were shed. This was much longer originally but it's enough to say Never. Again.
We walked up the last aisle and there was some weird CD trial thing and he grabbed my hands and said, "Dance with me!" And it was adorable enough that I momentarily forgot that This Expedition Was A Bad Idea. :D
Walked by the book bags and he didn't fall in love with anything. Headed for the toys because the other part of this mission was simple. I was fucking going to see these Monster High dolls in store, in person, and I was going to buy Clawdeen Wolf.
Sadly, Walmart (never my first choice in the toy wars, but the only place I *knew* had the toys to begin with) was in the middle of revamping the toy section.
Let me repeat that for you. Walmart was resetting the toy section the weekend before school starts. So all those parents who did what my parents used to do for my brother (to me the school supplies were the best part of starting school!) and offer to bribe him to be good with a new shiny bauble? Yeah. They were screwed unless the kids wanted Legos, Monster High, or Barbie. And even then, they were still screwed because... it was a mess.
But back to MH. Apparently I was not the only person who wanted Clawdeen because she was the only one they did not have. This did not surprise me though, because Mums said as much the other day when she went to look for me. But they had added more to the section, so I think somewhere there's someone with a Clawdeen and they'd better treat her right! Anyway, a lot has been made about the quality control of other companies, so I will say this. Cleo should be suing Mattel because the few boxes I peeked at all had Cleo's lipstick smeared across the plastic facing on the box. Not cool.
They didn't have the Fortune Skulls but they did have the rag dolls. All three of them. The cute, it burned. I grabbed Clawdeen and turned it over and read the back and the little bio on Crescent, her cat, was so perfectly cat-like that I could've died. But it was 16.99 and I wanted Clawdeen, the fashion doll. So, reluctantly, I put her back.
They were clearancing the Barbie Basics, but they didn't have the ones I loved and only one that I merely liked and $13 for a Like in a crappy LBD isn't a great deal. Saw the glitter fairy fashiony things. If they'd been the price the sticker said, I would have bought two. Hell, maybe three, because for all the glitter, I love them. But they were ten bucks and yes, the three dollars does change things for me. So I didn't buy anything. Widget desperately wanted a toy but he didn't seem to love anything and I reminded him that we had two more stops to make. In retrospect, maybe just buying him the blasted army figures would have kept the insanity level at normal. But hindsight and all that.
There was a brief thing that the Widget and I were not privvy to involving the belt that we realized had looked onto the cart and we hadn't paid for. Mom went to go pay for it (damn you honesty!) and was gone for forever. Widget and I were in the car debating whether it would pour again (the rain bands on the way to the store were not pleasant) and eventually she appeared, looking pissed off and without the belt. Crap. Turns out the belt had been recalled and Mums.... it's best if we don't speak of it. I gather that in the karmic kickback system, I'll be getting people pissed as hell that I'm unable to sell them something that's been recalled but since it was hiding behind thirty other things, no one ever found until now. Sigh. What're the odds this was the kickback for when people did that to me?
Target. Target's got the super awesome display so at least I could see Clawdeen in person. I wanted her, man. You have no idea. But they didn't have her. They had a thousand Cleos and quite a few Draculauras, and one Frankie, I think, but Clawdeen was gone. They had the fortune skulls, but I was a bit distracted by the other things. I grabbed stuffed!Clawdeen because I really, really regretted not buying her. Plus! She was cheaper. It was fate! I love the little displays Target has for the dolls and the fact that I could annoy other shoppers while listening to/watching one of the webisodes? Just icing on the cake. I do have to say that in general, I think the dolls are being recieved rather well. Two decidedly tween girls were all, "OMG! I want!" and with the grabby hands. Speaking of which, later I heard someone actually say OMG. And not in a tounge in cheek sort of way, as I've heard other people say it over the past couple of years. It blew my mind.
Because Target was done with their toy reset, I can say that I've seen quite a few of the new dolls. I saw the
new Bratz and I'm guessing I must live in the Bermuda Triangle because they weren't as craptacular as people have been saying. Well, the Twiinz were. That was an idea of unfortunate consequences, really. Jade didn't do much for me, but as far as I could tell it wasn't a quality control issue, it was just... meh. They had the basics and it irked me that everyone is a party basics Bratz doll, but Sasha (whom they had one of) was a party basics (ethnic) doll. Um... okay. What the hell. If you ignore the fact that she was pictured with short hair and it was awesome (and I'm not necessarily the girl you go to for short haired dolls) I thought she was easily the prettiest of the bunch. I considered buying her, but it looked like a kid or a Target employee threw her around. The doll looked fine, but her box was kinda beaten up. Sad. Besides, much as I might have tried to lie to myself, I knew I was buying ragdoll Clawdeen.
I saw the new
Moxie Teens and I thought they were all really pretty. Much prettier than I was expecting, honestly. But the fact that I wouldn't have anything else to dress them in? Yeaaaah. Deal breaker for now.
I seriously considered a regular
Moxie girl because they were on sale and I was still debating Crescent at this point, but the only one I really liked enough to buy (that was on sale) had a really meh outfit, and the outfit I liked was on a meh doll. I'm going to agree with the general consenus that it was a lovely faceup the first couple of times, but now it's just lazy. Change. It. Up. Saw Bria and she's also stunning, but not included in the sale because she's ethnic too. *twitch*
LIV dolls. *ducks any and all rotting fruit* I keep wanting to like these dolls because I adore the whole wig thing, but I've seen exactly one doll in person that doesn't look creeptastic. It's the face-mold. It's hard to explain because it's not just the high probablity that your doll will look cross-eyed. It's the combo of the eyes and the way the mouth looks like she's either trying really hard to be a model (anyone who either was a pre-teen girl or knows/knew any rather well will know what I mean. There's this phase that a lot of them go through where they think they look AWESOME but in reality it's a really bad idea.) or they caught her about to say something or.. I don't know. So all these outfits and wigs appeal but I don't know who the outfits would fit and I think the Wigs work on Moxie Teens, but I don't have one yet. Research!
We ended up at Kmart looking for a book bag that didn't cost as much as a small country, that he thought was "cool" and would actually hold his school stuff and not immediately fall apart. Three different people to please. Not easy. Thing is, Mums forgot that the big reason Kmart was even on the radar was because they had their bookbags on sale. So Thomas fell in love with a couple while I was wandering the toy aisles (they all changed! But no monster high! Not even a place where they'd belong. But no Bratz either, which leads me to believe that they just did a better job of hiding the line between finished/haven't started yet) and Mom shot him down because of price. I came by in time to see her shoot one down, so I wander back to the price checker (why, oh why, are there two in toys, but only one of them works? and none in the seasonal section?) and aha! It's one of the ones on sale. It took it from, "Yeaaaaaah. NO." to "will it fall apart immediately?" and Mums said it would die a horrible death. Or maybe it was the one that wouldn't even hold a fraction of his stuff. I don't know. Point is, it failed one of the tests. But it did get Mom to ignore the price tag because that was just not going to work.
Eventually I grabbed him and told him, "Find ones you like. If Grammy says they'll hold your stuff and won't fall apart, then I'll check the price, okay?" Yeah. That worked for about three seconds. Ultimately he'd start fussing, "They won't fall apart! Why do you keep saying that?! THEY WON'T!"
Oh, honey. I've been there. The only licensed book bag that I owned that did not fall to pieces after the first three months of school was my She-Ra one and it was a bag, not a backpack.
He might sound really obnoxious, but this is nothing compared to the Target leg of the trip. Still, I was losing my patience again and Mom had lost hers when she notices one lying on the bottom shelf, "He liked that one originally." So I pick it up and give it to her for the tests of endurance. She takes a few minutes, as Widget is clearly ignoring us as he focuses on his pain! His rage! She finally says, "It won't last forever, but it's got that extra pocket so it will hold more than all the others."
I wander to the price checker and aha! It's on sale. Widget, who had caught on to the fact that he was getting one that lit up and wasn't plain as hell, ran towards me, grabbed the bag and said thank you. It was cuter than cute.
As we passed the toy section, something happened to fall into my hands. But that'll have to wait.
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