Keeping the Economy Alive, One Dollar at a Time

We went to the Near Mall this morning to get groceries at Safeway and I desperately wanted to hit the new dollar store that takes up half the Near Mall’s square footage because who doesn’t love a dollar store? Especially a really big one?

Item 1:

A little tiny plunger. Saint Aardvark has been looking for one of these for ages, I don’t know why, maybe to plunge sinks or maybe to make beer, I don’t know. Only he knows. So I got him one. And it’s not even our anniversary!

Item 2:

Frighteningly realistic orange and banana for Trombone’s kitchen. A pleasing side effect of buying these before our trip to Safeway was that Trombone insisted on carrying them, which severely limited his ability to paw all the stuff on the shelves in the grocery store. Also he had a lovely chat with a woman who admired his orange in particular. Here you see him still holding them while exchanging loving glances with Thomas the Tank Engine.

Item 3:

Crack-addled stacking cups. All the stacking cups I have ever encountered have ranged in size from an inch in diameter to – oh, I don’t know, 5 inches? I’m bad with inches. There are usually 10 cups in a package. My mom has a set of 10; each has a number on it from 1 – 10. This is what I was expecting, although hers are pretty nice and this was the dollar store so I wasn’t expecting, y’know, art or anything. We get them open and there are four. Four cups. And they are numbered: 5, 6, 7 and 8.

What? Nothing on the package says, “Collect them all!” Now I want to go back and see if there is a package with 1,2,3 and 4.

The package does say, “Ages 3+ for small parts.”

What?

Yes, these are cheap toys. They are probably toxic to even look at. And sure, if you smashed one of the cups to pieces, your baby might choke on the pieces. But by that logic, you could take a sledgehammer to one of our baby dolls so she wouldn’t be safe either.

(yes, I did just want an excuse to post that adorable photo of Fresco)

Here is Fresco, very unsafely unstacking our four new medium-sized stacking cups.

Item 4:

Not pictured because we changed our mind at the checkout. It was a sheet of a billion smiley faced stickers that Trombone wanted. The price tag said 2/$1.00. But I did not want TWO billion smiley faced stickers so I only took one. The woman at the till said, “They are two for a dollar. You get another one.” I said, “No, I do not want another one.” She said, “You have to get another one.”

I said, “Are you my son all of a sudden with that attitude?”

No. Not really. I said, “Can’t I buy one for fifty cents?”
She said, “No.”

So I told her to keep her stickers.

Now I’m wondering, because this was a store called “Everything for a dollar,” is it a legal thing? Like, do the Dollar Store Authorities go secret shopping to make sure that Everything is Really A Dollar, no more, no less?

When we got home, Trombone went digging through everything for his stickers and I had to tell him they hadn’t made it in the bag. Like they’d been shot down or something. And he was all, “But where ARE they?” And I said, “They wanted to stay with the other stickers at the store.” And then I distracted him with a cookie.

Here is a shot of all our dollar store acquisitions in action. Everything cost one dollar. I swear.

Do I know how to set up a Friday or what?