Fill the whole world with heaven's peace

Words you don't want to hear at bedtime: "Mama, the laundry room is giving me an ominous feeling.  What does 'ominous' mean?  Does the laundry room give YOU an ominous feeling?"  This is the sort of conversation I have with Johanna all the time.  And people wonder why I'm tired...

And yes, the laundry room DOES give me an ominous feeling.  Thanks for asking.  I'd love to discuss it with you further, darling child, but now?  You need to go to bed.

Well, anyway.  Here's the thing: Eric is downstairs at the moment, playing poker with some friends.  This is a birthday tradition that I started, if you must know.  I asked one year what he wanted, and he thought it would be fun to play cards.  So I made some phone calls.  And then after it happened a few years, Eric took over the invitations part and the rest is history.

Usually I stay upstairs, but this year I did venture down because my friend Jason A., whom I met at church camp in the early '90s, came this year, and I think it is terribly unfair that Eric gets to hang out with MY friend and I don't.  The girls came down too and realized that everyone had brought snacks, and are feeling slighted because there is a cheese ball and Doritos down there and they don't get any.

Life lessons!

Which is all to say: I have some time on my hands this evening, and I feel a recap coming on.  Assuming Johanna stays in bed like she's supposed to.  Now her bedroom is feeling ominous, so that's exciting.  Also, the word "ominous" reminds her of squash and cucumbers.  Maybe I just need to go to bed and pretend I'm asleep?  Surely that would squelch her spirit, right?  (Yeah, probably not.  This IS Johanna we're talking about.)

So!  Today Abby and I braved downtown.  On a SATURDAY.  Our town is small, but leans toward touristic tendencies, and we've got people from the Big City who apparently think it's cool to drive all the way out here just to walk down main street.  Whatever, Big City Folks.  I hope you appreciated my patience with y'all this afternoon.  Because around here, we walk like we mean it.

We were downtown because: Johanna has decided that what she wants for Christmas is a Ginny Weasley Lego mini-figure.  Um, what?  I looked on Amazon, and those puppies are $16 a pop.  FOR A MINI FIGURE.  Lucius Malfoy?  Is 79-cents.  But she doesn't want Lucius.  Here, we need pictures:

Would YOU pay
$16 for THIS?

Where's Lucius' dark mark?
Come on, Lego!  Have you even read HP?

Not really wanting to pay $16 for a tiny little Lego figure, or even $5 from some site of questionable origin, I decided to go visit the local toy store.  Only they were all like, we've got one Harry Potter Lego set (the Knight Bus, of all things), and we're not planning on ordering anything else before Christmas.

So that ended up being a waste of time.  And also of patience.  Ah, well.

Then we hit the bookstore.  Abby has three books on her list (all by Michael Grant... Gone, Hunger and Lies.  I guess he likes short titles) and I wanted to see if they were in stock.  Abby found the second book, Hunger, and was all like, I am buying this now!  And I was like, why don't you wait for roughly twenty days and then you can have it for free!  And she was all, no!  Whatever, it saved me ten bucks.  So I let her buy it and then I had her go stand in the corner while I ordered the other two.  

I don't think I fooled her, though, because all the way to Wal-Mart, our next stop, as it were, she was asking me questions.  How much were they?  Hardback or paperback?  And I'm all, remind me to look for dishwasher soap.  And she's all, I KNOW, MOM.  And I'm all, I also need laundry detergent.

It wasn't much of a conversation, if you want to know the truth.

Wal-Mart was INSANE.  I should know better than to go on a Saturday, but I just haven't had time to go before today.  And I put the last squirt of my soap in the dishwasher this morning, so the situation was desperate.  Nothing else would have got me in through those front doors.

We got dishwasher and laundry detergents.  In cardboard boxes because they're compostable (spell check hates that word), even though my favorites are in plastic bottles.  Sometimes having a conscience is such a pain in the ass. Abby threw some mascara into the cart, having settled on Very Black over Blackest Black. (I think she made a good choice.  Clearly the difference between the two is astronomical.)  And then we followed some little old lady to the cash registers at approximately 2 steps per hour and had finally made it to a line, and I was like, crap!  Lego Ginny!  So we turned around and headed to the toy aisle.

Toy aisle in a crowed store on a Saturday.  Yeah, that was fun.

But!  We found The Burrows Lego set for $20 less than it was advertised on Amazon.  I called Eric and was all, um, so here's what I found, and do you think... And he was all, GET IT.  Because we spent last night surfing the Internet and you know what we learned?  That Lego Harry Potter sets are expensive and prone to selling out.  So now she's got Ginny AND Molly and Arthur and Bellatrix and that Greyback character (could have done without that one) and another Harry:

Hey, look!  There's also a marsh!  SCORE!

THEN--as if all the above wasn't enough--we hit the grocery store.  And it was (shock!) crowded and insane!  But by this time we were totally zen in our patience, I kid you not.  And that doughnut hole we got at the bakery didn't hurt anything, either.  I've been trying to cut down on packaging, or specifically, on plastics.  So I spent a good deal of time in the bulk aisle.  I have these cloth bags now, and I've been slowly working them into my bulk purchase repertoire.  The cashiers always look at me like I'm nuts, but I figure that eventually they'll be so used to it that it won't seem weird anymore.

Plus, if you must know, "weird" is not a negative in my book.

Abby accused me of being a poser because I wrote the bin numbers on my Kindle notebook ap instead of writing them on the bags.  Uh, ink doesn't come off of cloth bags, and using those little twisty ties seemed besides the point.  And anyway, the cashier I got this time didn't blink twice at the bags or when I read off the bin numbers.  She and the bag-girl and I had a nice conversation about conservation (say that three times fast).  And why Kindles are awesome.  But apparently some boy from Abby's class was behind us in line and I was being terribly embarrassing.  

So that's what's been happening today.  Tomorrow I'm going to need to buckle down and do some baking and some laundry and some general cleaning.  But I tell you what, I had a good time today.  I got a couple of things crossed off the girls' lists.  I got to spend some quality time with Abby.  I got out of doing laundry.  The sun was shining, and even though it was freezing solid, I wore my favorite navy blue sweatshirt and felt good about it.  The only thing I didn't do today that I was hoping to get around to was taking a nap.  But such is life.

John Berry, "O Come Emmanuel."  I really like this version, even though John Barry is all country and I am generally not a fan.  My mother-in-law gave me this CD years ago (hi, Joni!) and it's pretty great.  But I digress.  "Come and cheer our spirits by Thine advent here. Disperse the gloomy clouds of night."  Ah, how lovely that sounds now that the days are getting shorter and colder.  "O come desire of nations bind, all peoples in one heart and mind. Fill the whole world with heaven's peace.  Rejoice!"  Indeed.