Dollar Store?…no more!

                                
                                                                   

It’s a dreary, rainy Sunday here in New York; not much incentive to get out and do anything exciting but I coerced my Grandkids, Emma and Matt, to come along with me to a local Dollar Store.  We drove the 15 minute trip into town through a heavy downpour and navigated over badly flooded roads; all for a cause.  You see,  next Saturday evening, my hubby’s club is hosting their annual Corned Beef Dinner and I’m usually the one who coordinates club events; my trip involved picking up table coverings, a few decorations and, of course, letting the kids pick out some mildly entertaining but worthless junk items.

Have to stop here for a moment and ramble about the club dinner.  Every damn year, someone who attends manages to worm their way into the club’s kitchen to ask….”Are you cooking Steaks, Hamburgers or something else?  My wife doesn’t eat Corned Beef”. 

Duh!!!  Read my lips dude….no don’t, because I’m cursing at you and having trouble holding it back.  That asinine comment is always followed by a request for some type of refund because someone came, knowing what the event was, but didn’t eat what was on the planned menu.  Bite me!

Anywayyyyy, back to the Dollar Store trip……

On a previous stop to that store, my Grandson Matt stopped me in an aisle exclaiming that “Gramma, they shouldn’t put stuff like that where little kids can see it”….and pointed to this….

                                                    
                 

I quickly ushered him away.

Today was different.  Matt had no problem returning to that aisle, grabbing that Kardashian Boobs Coffee Mug and yelling out…”Gramma, Daddy would LOVE this!”.

I grabbed him by the arm, placed the Boob caffeine receptacle back on the shelf and headed towards the kid’s crafts.  Of course, as luck would have it, there, next to construction paper, stickers, packages of half-dried up paints and glitter was this…..

                                                                     

Matt found it, without any difficulty at all, lying next to a Tom & Jerry coloring book…

Somehow, in the space of a couple of months, Matt’s innocence is fading away.  Blame it on one or two of the little heathens who ride on the school bus with him each day, teaching him, and other kids things that make parents, and grandparents, shiver.  Don’t get me started on bullies and the spawn of the devil; that’s a blog for another rainy Sunday.

So, where am I going with all of this incessant griping?  The Dollar Store, better known as The Used-To Be a Dollar Store, as we’ve come to know it…is gone.  Well almost.  Little, if anything priced there is just $1; most is $1.25 and up.  Sad sign of the times. 

Even the X-Rated assortment of Big Boob ceramics went for a hefty $1.79.

 

Matt’s saving his money…..

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Butterflies and good-byes….

 

My mother passed-away in 2006,  sitting in my home, listening to Glenn Miller playing on satellite radio; she loved the 40’s Channel on XM and knew every song without missing a beat.

Some things, she remembered.

We were her family aside from her two remaining brothers who managed to hide in the shadows after taking a few material advantages during her deteriorating mental state; both have now gone on to their greater reward which, I hope, has been a heavenly confrontation with their sister, or…the devil himself.

Mom had wanted to be cremated and I had her wishes carried out; services were private and unconventional.  My oldest daughter flew up from Florida with her little son and together we went to the funeral home to pick up my mother’s ashes.  Along with my middle daughter and two other grandchildren, we tucked my mother into a colorful tote bag and all went shopping…to Trader Joe’s.  My mother’s favorite pastime was going into a store, any store, for hours on end.

That excursion was followed by a trip to the beach, mother included.  She just loved the beach.


                                                   

There, on that warm July day, the kids played, we laughed and suddenly…one solitary butterfly hovered around us for what seemed hours.  As we looked, there were no other delicate painted creatures flying around… except for this one.

                                                                
                                        
Butterflies were another of my mother’s favorites; she had butterfly earrings, pins, necklaces and knick-knacks everywhere when she was alive.
                                                                      
                                                  
We smiled and enjoyed the visitor who periodically landed on top of the tote bag where Mom rested.  Very late that afternoon, when it came time to pack up and head home, the butterfly slowly flew away, stopping now and then as if to look back and say good-bye.

And we said ours.

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Wordless Wednesday – Cabbage Patch Boy

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