Had a mission today. Dream up something for Zoe's birthday... which is this Friday. My baby is turning 8... which is scary in itself. What was also disturbing was that I really had no idea what to get her. Basically she doesn't really need anything in particular. As the third of 3 girls, she has plenty of books, games, toys, clothes. They all get bought stuff they need from time to time.. (it's not like she always wears or uses hand-me-downs) but birthdays (and christmas) end up being a time of trying to dream up something a bit special.

Zoe, out of the three of them, is the one most likely to wax lyrical about anything you gave her. She is the least materialistic... and is the epitomy of the child who appreciates anything. Every birthday is the BEST, BEST, BEST birthday ever, ever, ever... and her mum and dad are the best mum and dad in the WHOLE universe (fair dinkum!! ... well that's what she called back over her shoulder as she ran out the door to school this morning.)

But while you could get away with giving her anything, of course you want to give her something nice. 'Cos you love her and want to spoil her! And 'cos you want to treat them all evenly, and make her feel special and get a surprise, and feel excited.

But at the same time, I'm getting more and more jaded with the crappy toys out there. So much plastic junk! She doesn't need any more of it, and she has no space for any more of it! And the world is going crazy with materialism, and I am a part of the problem because I get sucked in to an extent every birthday and each christmas.

So I drifted around the shops for a couple of hours, and was no closer to a solution (and starting to get quite stressed)... and agreed to meet Marc for lunch on the condition that he come up with an idea.

To his credit he did. Nothing outrageous (I won't post here yet in case she happens to read my blog!)... but a sensible idea.

So I raced around, found one thing he suggested, and one thing that will do for what he suggested, and came away happy that she will love everything I got her. And so now I am looking forward to Friday morning.

In the meantime though, I have to contribute to my Shopping Gripes list... one I sort of started when I had a bit of a whinge about shopping for kids' clothes and shoes.

Here is another one:

• I HATE BEING PESTERED IN SHOPS!!! One shop lost a sale today because they annoyed the crap out of me. Hello Howards Storage World. Do you train your people to be annoying? Or was I just unlucky today? I like to browse. But every damned assistant in the place kept hassling me, asking me if I needed help, or just deciding to give me a sales spiel if I looked at something. I actually had something in my hand that I intended to purchase.. I told an assistant (when approached) that I was going to get that, but I still wanted to look around. "Would you like me to put it on the counter for you then?". Whatever.. ok... do you think I'm going to walk out with it? I thought to myself. THEN I picked up a particular lunch box to look at, and got an unsolicited spiel about how great it was by yet another assistant. "They have great stuff in here" she said. Yep, right.... but they also have very annoying assistants. Sometimes you just want to look at something, and ponder whether it will suit what you want... and whether you really really need it. I walked out.. leaving the other bloody thing on the counter, and wished I could have been a fly on the wall when they realised that the customer who was going to buy that thing had gone AWOL. Stupid people.. if I'd still had it in my hands, I would have gone through with the sale.
  

UPDATE from yesterday.

There is a god. ;) .. or I was just on the receiving end of some good karma. It rained (which is always needed these days, so despite it being annoying, you never, never complain about rain anymore.) Marc's Touch was cancelled, so he was able to leave work, pick up the netball girls, who were finishing at 6.00 (instead of 6.30) because of the rain.. so the other two were only left for about half an hour. (And the hour it took me to drive the netball girls into town and pick up something for dinner on the way back.)

Labels: shopping