Yesterday we went for a walk without mittens for young Master. Quite a few blocks passed with Trombone mentioning, offhand, “Mittens…mittens….mittens…Mamanonna…mittens,” implying that his grandmother never forgets the mittens when she takes him for a walk and really, I could take a page from her book anytime now.
At the London Drugs I found a deep-discount bin of ski-type mittens with faces on them and decided to pick up a pair with an embroidered bull face on each hand. Wasn’t till we got outside that I realized I’d grabbed the size 4-5 instead of the 2-3 but whatever – Trombone was amused by his giant, puppet-like hands and also they are super warm.
Then I noticed the wee pamphlet that was attached to the mittens. The “Auclair Kids” company seems to have been inspired by all those wordy bags of chips and body lotions and have created an entirely unnecessary world for their kids’ clothing to inhabit.
“The UFO ARK soars off into space with our first collection of winter travellers they are the embodiments of Winter Sensations,” reads the first paragraph, translated from the French, obvs.
“Our little Ark will travel all around the globe with a chosen group of friends who look for wintertime all over the Earth wherever it occurs. Wintertime is always about to occur, or it is happening, or it is about to end, somewhere on Earth. The Southern Hemisphere has winter in July and August when the Northern Hemisphere has Summer…”
Sadly, the character on the mitten I chose does not get a feature page in the pamphlet. Perhaps he did not go in the Ark? However, The White Eagle, who was the party responsible for choosing the animals to go in the UFO Ark, does get his own feature page, as does Elvis the Elephant. (and his sister Eloise)
“ELVIS is an elephant. He and his sister Eloise are from Namibia, a country in
Africa. This is a warm country where there is no snow. Elvis and Eloise were
specially chosen for this space journey by White Eagle. Many animals wanted
to experience winter fun, but White Eagle chose Elvis and Eloise. There are
not a lot of people in Namibia, but there are quite a few families of elephants. Elvis and Eloise wanted to do winter sports, but like us, they have to put on extra clothes, a hat and scarf, and matching mitts, to keep warm”
It’s a shame Auclair wasted so many marketing dollars on the totally bizarre back story; the mittens are cute and warm enough on their own. But I guess someone out there got to sit in endless meetings and storyboard the UFO Ark and that person is probably pretty proud of his or her work. I hope?
From the same “ideas that probably looked good in someone’s head but got hopelessly tangled and over-manipulated to the point of WTF-ness” manual, I also encountered a Scratch N Sniff Canada board book at Value Village.
I am ashamed to admit I actually sniffed it. (there was a page about beer!) Unsurprisingly, each page smelled only like Value Village. Lucky for you I remembered the website.
We had a nice, dull weekend, after a rather unpleasant, exhausting week. Yesterday after a morning of grocery shopping and slide sliding and toddler wrangling I received a communique from my body, namely the uterine subcommittee. It read, in part,
“You MUST LIE DOWN or you will be a parent of two before the weekend is out.”
Seriously, I had actual contractions for about 45 minutes – not regular ones and not escalating ones, just a bunch of Braxton Hicks in a row that were not just “tightenings” but somewhat uncomfortable. Notable, this, because I did not notice contractions of any kind when I was pregnant with Trombone until the day before I delivered him, when I was at the hospital and hooked up to the contraction monitor and the nurse looked at me and said, “Can’t you FEEL that?”
So I went directly to my bed, a-huffing and a-puffing, stripped off my supa-sexay overalls and slept delightfully for 90 minutes. Presto, no more Braxton Hickses.
Today I got a nice, relaxing haircut at the Master Cuts at Metrotown. The stylist was neither crazy nor angry. That’s two haircuts in 6 months. Not including when I gave myself bangs a couple of months ago. I didn’t mention that? No, I guess not. Pregnant woman cliche; cuts her own hair to take control of burgeoning life and flesh.
On Friday I drove past an establishment called “Ocean Fantasy Dollar Store and Laundromat.”
And I think that’s all I have to tell you.
Which is why I’ve not been writing here as much. Now that February has finally ended, perhaps more interesting things will come out of my brain. And if they don’t – something better will come out of my vagina (if not my belly button) in as few? many? as 7 weeks so The Cheeseblog: Worth Checking Back Periodically if You Like Pictures of Babies could be a new tagline, if I wanted one, which I don’t.
…yay?
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