Saturday, March 31, 2012

Like sand through the hourglass, so are the Days of our Lives

Courtney and I recently took a special "Girls Only" trip to TJ Maxx in search of desk accessories to outfit her "new" Big Girl Desk passed on to her from a dear friend. I envisioned the two of us picking out Vera Bradley-like printed pencil cups, dainty wooden boxes embellished with eyelet cut outs for important papers, cutesy paper clips in the shapes of butterflies...WRONG. Here is what happens when I "envision".

Within a minute of stepping through the store's automatic doors, she set her eyes on a giant "hour glass" filled with neon pink sand. She stood in front of the shelf that displayed 15-20 tacky hour glasses, each a different shape and each filled with different neon colored sand, mesmerized by the falling granules and the designs they made as they landed on the pile.

"This is EXACTLY what I need for my desk."

I tried to sway her. "Look at these super cute notepads in floral tins..."

"The sand is SO pink."

She didn't flinch. I browsed the surrounding aisles and came back with ammunition. "You can have TWO packages of these file folders with Batik designs..."

"The glass is SO smooth."

She still had not moved, fixated on the bottom half where the sand collected. I dug deep...it was time for the big guns. "That looks like it would break easily and then you would be very, very sad."

(read in a trance-like voice of a 6 year old) "I will take SUCH good care of it."

I pulled out all the stops. "That is a very expensive hour glass. With the money you would spend to buy that, you could get this ENTIRE set of fabric covered trays with individual compartments to hold pretty pink paper clips and other shiny desk 'must haves' that I can not name right now BECAUSE I AM SO FLUSTERED BY YOUR UNINTERRUPTED STARE AT THAT DAMN DUST COLLECTOR."

"Every morning I could flip it over and watch to see if the sand makes a different design. I bet the sand is just like people...there are a lot of them and they can sorta look the same, but they are all really different if you look REALLY close."

SOLD.

The past few mornings I have peeked in her room bright and early and this is what I've watched her doing.


I am almost positive, unless a bus-load of 6 year olds girls arrived at the store since we left, that there are still 14 of these gems remaining on that same shelf. If you look closely, they are all just a little bit different.



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