Simone and Nadia have been begging for Bake Pops. There’s a commercial on one of their favorite channels, touting all things wonderful about the tiny cakes that look like lollipops.
If I were the baking kind, I would purchase a pan, whip some up and have them ready for when they return from school. Their eyes would grow big, and I would sit by, arms crossed in confidence, while they devoured one or two. There’s only one problem: I am not the baking kind.
I don’t blame many things on my mother, but I am going to blame this on her. My father loves pecan pie, and for years she tried to bake them for him. No matter what she did, she just could not master the pecan pie. Hers didn’t gel right, and the pecans sat on the bottom of the pan. Oh, how she tried, and oh, how she failed. I watched from afar, sticking around long enough to steal a spoonful of sweetness. See, it’s in my genes. Baking is not for me.
Sure, I can cook the simplest of cakes. As soon as the directions start requiring that I sift ingredients and stir them for a certain amount of time, I get all flummoxed. I rush, forget something, do something backward, or mess it up in some other way my cooking friends find impossible to believe.
That’s why the local bakery is my friend. When birthdays come around, I call up and place an order. A beautiful cake shows up on the day of the occasion, and no one says a word about the cake being dry, or lopsided, or undercooked.
The Bake Pops are so new I can’t get them at the local bakery. I may have to suspend my non-baking pact and purchase a pan or a kit. I secretly wish the girls would forget about the trendy treat. That’s not going to happen as long as that commercial is on one of their favorite channels. I promise not to report back with the details of how it all went down. All I ask is that you keep my Bake Pops and me in your thoughts and prayers.
They taste like really hard toothpaste.
Nadia, explaining the sensation of candy canes.
Curlies everywhere have ditched shampoo. They report that they have more defined curls and moisturized hair. I’ve co-washed, also known as washing with conditioner, off and on for years, but I couldn’t give up shampoo. I put oils, butters and silicone products in my hair, and I had to use something to get out all of that gunk.
Then I started to read more about chemicals and think about the marketing genius of shampoo. It makes no sense to me to wash all of the natural oils out of my hair and then replace them with conditioner. So, I tried a little experiment. I didn’t put any of the aforementioned ingredients in my hair, and I use a conditioner with water-soluble ingredients. I massage my scalp with conditioner, rinse my scalp and hair with warm water, and go about my daily routine.
I’ve been doing this for about three months, and my hair is soft and retains moisture. I must admit it was tough giving up shampoo. It was part of my shower routine, and a conditioner rinse doesn’t feel quite the same as a shampoo. It’s a amazing how a few suds can make you feel like you’re doing the right thing.
Will I ever use shampoo again? Maybe. I may want the sheen that some oils — I love argan and jojoba — provide or use something else that I can’t easily rinse out with conditioner. I still wash Simone and Nadia’s hair with diluted shampoo and hope to eventually make the conditioner only transition for their hair as well. But just wash my hair because I think it’s dirty or that it’s right thing to do? Ut-uh. Those days are over.
It was 7:58 a.m.
I glanced at the young guy to my left. “What are you here for?”
“Maybe a LeapPad.”
I turned to the older man on my right. “What about you?”
“I’d like a LeapPad.”
The manager of the local big box store unlocked the door. When the men pulled it open, her key was still in the lock. I quickly followed them inside. We trotted, jogged and finally sprinted to the toy department.
In a matter of seconds, I became one of those parents, the ones who embarrass themselves all in the name of their children.
As I was becoming something I hated, I heard the older man talking to no one in particular. “Well, if we’re going to run, I am going to run.”
With that, he shot past me like he was Road Runner, and I was, well, a rock sitting on the side of the road. I didn’t hear the signature Beep! Beep!, but that might be because I was so shocked and awed by his move that I couldn’t comprehend the sound.
We turned left. Young Man was in front, followed by Old Man, with Old Black Lady pulling up the rear.
Young Man arrived at the finish line and found — nothing. He and Old Man seemed surprised, as I checked up and down the shelf just in case the must-have toy had been shelved in the wrong place. It wasn’t there.
That was Monday.
By Wednesday, I had learned why I couldn’t find the LeapPad. It seems in these tough economic times that no one wants to take the risk of warehousing products. No one — not the manufacturer, not the retailer, not even the distributor — wants to be left with unsold merchandise. All three want to make a profit, and that can’t happen if toys are sitting on the shelves.
I get that. Really, I do. But I can’t help but notice that this toy is a learning toy, that its sales are driven by parents whose children likely haven’t even heard of it, and that it has been dubbed the iPad for kids. That last one is the most important in my mind.
Simone and Nadia have asked for an iTouch and an iPad. I’m being stubborn by not buying one. First, it’s expensive. Second, after parents abandon toy gifts, there is no turning back. I’d rather hang with toys for as long as possible. Besides, we all know the price of the iPad and tablets like it will eventually come down.
I’m no economist. Still, I wouldn’t irritate parents with such shenanigans. Kids grow up and ask for more expensive things. Retailers, manufacturers and distributors might as well make as much money as they can, because the toy learning game market will be gobbled up by a much more sophisticated and easy-to-use device, in my humble opinion.
Which brings me to Friday. By Friday, I was done with the LeapPad shortage. I had employed the help of a big box store employee to text me if he saw what I was looking for. I had signed up for — and responded to — several electronic alarms that went off at all hours when LeapPads were in stock online. I came close, once getting the item into my cart, before it went poof. That was it, doggone it. If LeapFrog and all those middle men didn’t want to sell the device to me, I certainly didn’t want to buy it. After all, no one at my house was jumping up and down and begging pretty please for Santa to bring it on Christmas Day.
On Friday evening, my hubby forwarded an email to me. On Saturday at 6 a.m. a big box toy store would have many of those hard to find Christmas gifts. All I had to do was show up at an ungodly shopping hour.
What the H. E. double hockey sticks? I’d give it one more try.
It was 5:45 a.m.
I knew I was in the right place when I saw all of the bright lights and a short but growing line of people, wearing heavy coats and nursing huge cups of hot beverages. At the front of the line a small piece of paper noted that this was the line for LeapPads, one per customer. Fair enough. I took a quick count. I was the 10th person in line. At the appointed hour, a brave man opened the door and shouted the rules. There were 10 pink LeapPads and 10 green LeapPads. He would give us slips of paper, depending on the color we wanted.
Someone at the beginning of the line got more than one, and the nice man let the rest of us have two apiece. There was a bit of confusion for a moment and some people tried to give back their extra slips of paper. I told him I wanted one pink one, but I got two slips and was told I could keep both. There were enough to go around for the 13 people standing in line, and all the slips of paper were gone in about 45 seconds.
There were no last-minute sprints to the learning game area. There were no Road Runner moments. The big box toy store with untold thousands of square feet that had opened at O Dark Thirty placed everything we wanted in one shopping cart. The cashier scanned my LeapPads, I swiped my debit card and out the door I went.
I’ll find out on Christmas morning if the little devices were worth all of trouble.
Nadia takes up for herself when the boys try to cut in line.
A note from Nadia’s preschool teacher, which made her mama proud.
A serious and then funny and then serious take on colorism. Enjoy!
When a church holds a vote opposing interracial couples, one has to pause and reflect on why so many people are worried about what other people are doing.
The pastor and 30 church members at Kentucky’s Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church have reversed the racist vote made my church leaders. Pastor Stacy Stepp says the congregation passed a new resolution that does not conflict with federal laws.
The church welcomes “believers into our fellowship regardless of race, creed or color,” according to a new church resolution. That’s a very good thing. The fact that anyone had to make such a statement in 2011 is not.
Gawker has a good take on the matter.
