..in which I found myself with the challenge of killing four hours away from the house with an 8 year old ...without spending money.

Spoiler alert: I failed.

But, hey. We both got away from the computer for the better part of the day, and that was a good thing.

Had to drop 13 year old off with some 'girls' for a few hours, and I thought I'd drag youngest along so dad could get some work done. I pictured maybe hanging in the playground for a bit, but chilly weather and the morning coffee hitting my bladder far from a bathroom made me rethink that plan.

So, we headed to the mall.

First stop, Food Court. Standing in line for a Happy Meal, young son and I entertained each other with various other mood possibilities, such as "Mad Meal". Confused Meal".  "Agitated Meal". "Perplexed Meal". "Mildly Amused Meal". Great fun, really.

Oh, and it came with this creepy-looking thing:

Headed to my favorite-but-way-too-expensive-to-justify-going-to-more-than-once-a-year cosmetic store to get the mascara I put on my Christmas list.. a task hubs wanted nothing to do with.

When asked by the nice sales girl if I wanted "volumizing" or "moisturizing".. I was all like, what? This required more thought than I had planned on putting into this purchase beyond "black or brown". Seriously? I now have to think about moisturizing my eyelashes?

Thank god I didn't send hubs there.

Next, the candy store to get youngest ONE THING! Do you hear me? ONE!

After some serious and impressive contemplation, he settled on a 'gumball on a stick', roughly half the size of his head.

Over to the library, where we forgot to get what we went for in the first place, which was fresh "Calvin and Hobbes". Instead we left with a couple video games, a book about gems, and for some reason, a 2-cd set of "Pennsylvania Bird Songs".

Ooookaayy, J.

Bonus stop: car wash. Restored the sparkly to ZoomZoom. Very nice. Nothing like washing the car in 35 degree weather to make one's hands look their best.

Then, up to my fave natural food store for Liz Lovely's awesome vegan Cow Girl Cookies, and my fave incense. (Yes, I have a lot of faves.)

Finally, or would have been finally, had I not received a call to pick up other sons at the train station on my way home... rendezvous with 13 yr old who was nowhere to be found when I arrived.

Found him eventually...

And then lastly, a long car ride home with oldest son regaling me with tales of his weekend spent with young Quaker revolutionaries. Very exciting.

And here I am. In front of the computer again.

When I was grabbing random items for stocking stuffers off the toy shelf at Target, little did I know what a big deal one of them would be...

Boy #3 ended up with the Slinky... the original metal kind.. not the modernized cheap-o plastic version... encased in a cardboard box touting the amazing benefits of the "famous walking spring toy", in that it "moves without motors", and "there's nothing to wind.. nothing to wear out". And let's not forget, "..it's lots of fun!".

Indeed.

Watching the enthusiasm and awe that met with the opening of this gift, you'd think that my family had never seen one before, much less owned and mangled at least a dozen.

I guess I never really appreciated what a multi-sensory experience this simple coiled piece of steel could be: from the bright shiny silver of the metal, to the "shiiiing" sound it makes when you take it out of the box, to the arm hair-pinching inflicted by wearing it as a bracelet. In your face,  XBox 360! Can you walk down the stairs? Huh?

And now the ultimate in extreme Slinky-ing:(don't try this at home, unless, of course, you have 100,000 steps in your house..)

Today is the last day of autumn.

In an hour or so, our friends will arrive from Poland. I'm looking forward to this for three reasons:

Ben, who is actually from Pennsylvania, but went over to Warsaw in '92 with the Peace Corps, and never came back. Ben is our (hubs and mine) shared Greenpeace friend, and was witness first-hand to hubs' falling for me, so the story goes.

Monika. Ben's wife, and the reason why he never came back. Monika is one of those Eastern European women who makes drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes look 'very' sexy. She says things like, "you sink so?' in a husky voice, and makes a kick-ass wild mushroom soup. I'd like to keep her.

Krupnik. Krupnik is a kind of vodka and comes in a variety of flavors, including hot pepper. We never know what kinds they will be bringing, and as they always include some new variety, we tend to spend our first couple hours together sampling everything. (I shall report the details as they come in.)

I imagine that it will be a long night, as their plane doesn't even land till 8:30 (oh ! It's 8:30 now!), but it'll probably be at least another hour till they get here.

The last time they were here together was two years ago, and fortunately during my birthday. We were all at the beach, and with a few friends and family gathered, (and yes, much krupnik) I was treated to Monika's belting out of "Sto Lat", a traditional Polish birthday song.

Sto lat, sto lat,

Niech żyje, żyje nam.

Sto lat, sto lat,

Niech żyje, żyje nam,

Jeszcze raz, jeszcze raz, niech żyje, żyje nam,

Niech żyje nam!

This translates roughly into English as:

A hundred years, a hundred years,

May he (she) live for us.

A hundred years, a hundred years,

May he live for us.

Once again, once again, may he live, live for us,

May he live for us

I have no idea who these people are, but you can at least hear the song, and imagine a green-eyed, husky-voiced Polish woman singing it quite loudly, while the the inebriated rest of us tried to follow along.

Tomorrow at Meeting, I believe, is practice for the Nativity play, which I have nothing to do with, (or so I hope) which is good, as I'm imagining I may be fairly useless.

The holidays are looking up.

Much to my dismay, I found myself with an opportunity to get Christmas shopping done today, as I had to drive boy #3 to meet a friend at the mall. I think I've been secretly holding out for a national emergency to be declared due to the economy, and the government would have to cancel Christmas, or somehow enough electronics and musical equipment would be on the list, thereby taking it out of my realm of responsibility.

But, alas, neither of these were the case.

So, there I was at the mall. And I figured if I'm there, I supposed I should at least act like I was being productive. I walked around no less than twice, both upstairs and down, but felt no desire whatsoever to hand over my money to anyone. I found myself obsessing over how much crap was accumulated in that entire building... where it came from, where it would eventually end up.. just one retail location of thousands, millions in the world, and surely this was a sign of how doomed we are as a species.

And then I wondered whether it was more depressing to see all this stuff, largely created for the sole purpose of selling it to schmucks like me, or to be at the mall one week before Christmas, and find hardly any other schmucks there to mindlessly buy this stuff.

Which I guess was good in one way...  to see consumerism reigned in just a tad, but still, it felt kinda hollow and sad, and the canned, contrived happy holiday music piped in just seemed to add to the bizarreness of it all.

Remembering that this was mostly only this year's version of my annual ritual which includes me venturing out to many stores, buying nothing, and then being stricken with a general feeling of overwhelm, cynicism, disgust and befuddlement... and also that I had severe brain fog from a headache I woke up with. So, I decided to go for coffee and regroup.

Left the mall, and hit Wegman's, which is always hopping and festive no matter what's going in the real world, and there, I managed to get excited buying stocking stuffers. At least until I ran into someone I met at a holistic event over the summer.. a nice guy, but one that could make a career out of small talk. I managed to finally escape the tea aisle where I was trapped for about 20 minutes, now sufficiently jittery from caffeine... but not before I could notice with horror the Valentine's Day display being installed. On to more stores to purchase even more stocking stuffers, underwear for one teen boy, and wrapping paper. Oh yeah, and got an expert and somewhat exasperated opinion from a music store owner who didn't really think it was a good idea for an 8 year old to take up saxophone, as the instrument is only slightly smaller than his body. And somehow that might make it difficult. He obviously doesn't know my 8 year old.

So, huge sense of accomplishment for the day! No, not really.

Why can't Santa be real?