A penny saved is a Dollar Tree sword

Johanna's goal this summer was to find enough change abandoned on the street to make a dollar. And then to take that dollar to the Dollar Tree for A Treat.

Let's just get this out here right now: I am not really a fan of the Dollar Tree. It's just a lot of junk. Stacey at work swears by the Dollar Tree for cleaning supplies and there was some guy on the news recently with his Dollar Store Diet. So people do find value there. I'd just rather pretend it doesn't exist. (I like to stick to stores that don't induce panic attacks when I walk through the doors. Clutter makes me nervous.)

One more thing to get out there: I thought it would take her WAY longer than a month and a half to gather a buck in coins on the street. (I suppose the change Eric left for her to find didn't hurt, either.) What's kind of funny is that as the ordeal went on, the four of us got really good at spotting change. I've never found so much change in my life, honestly, but it kind of turned into a fun quest for all of us. We're STILL looking, so there you go.

The final dime that put her three cents over the top came July 12. Forlorn, next to one of the meters on main street. Sad, really.

Except Johanna was completely thrilled and beaming as I handed over the dime. It's the little things, people.

On the 13th I took the girls with me to run errands in town. We went all over the place, except they stayed in the car when I went into the liquor store for good cheap vodka for my vanilla and mint extract extravaganzas because I thought they'd get tossed, and getting thrown out of a bar once with your children is quite enough, thank you.

Wait, what was I talking about?

Oh, right. So the Dollar Tree is in the same retail mall as my favorite grocery store, so I had Abby walk Johanna over, change in hand, to see what she could find. This is called divide and conquor. Also: I did rather dodge a bullet.

So I'm looking at organic mac and cheese boxes and wondering where my zero waste mania had gone, when here comes my two precious darlings. One brandishing a sword. The hippy guy checking out the vegan soups sort of looks at us, and I'm all, huh, in this overly tense climate perhaps brandishing a sword in a grocery store is not the best idea ever, so I put it into my reusable bags and tried to pretend that I didn't just let my 8-year-old buy a weapon with change she found on the street.

That's some fine craftsmanship.

Let's review how this makes me a terrible mother:

1. I let my child buy a weapon.
2. Unsupervised except for her 13-year-old sister.
3. There goes all my lessons about minimalism and zero waste.
4. And not buying stuff just to buy it.
5. I can't even justify it by saying it could be part of a Halloween costume because there's a no weapons policy at school.
6. Even for fake cheap plastic weapons.

Let's review how this makes me an awesome mother:

1. Johanna is SO HAPPY.

In conclusion, I'm hoping she gets tired of her sword rather quickly and it will eventually be donated to some charity or another (um, do charities even want cheap plastic swords?).

And: Please don't judge me.