Playmobil rocks.

Over to the left there you'll notice a nice slide show of items you can buy on Amazon.com. I've spent many hours randomly looking for things that I find interesting. Today I came across a lovely set of guinea pigs made by Playmobil. Do I need to say I was hooked? Just because of some guinea pigs? Okay, I was hooked.





There's also the friendly butcher shop you can buy. Who doesn't love to play with a butcher action figure wielding a knife while cuts of meat hang from a rack?

And for you laundry lovin' ladies, you too can have your very own laundry room setup, vacuum, while you'd think would be an extra, is included.



I for one have my eye on this spectacular office setup. I could have my very own office in my very own cube!



And then there is the land of ginormous household items! If that toothbrush and toothpaste get any bigger, "boy cleaning teeth" will soon be "toothbrush and toothpaste kill small boy by crushing him to death."

For the marine animal lovers who just happen to have kids not afraid to bottle feed a baby seal while the mom seal looks on, you can purchase "Child with Seal."

I got caught at work with this beautiful chicken coop set on my computer screen. The person who saw it sorta shimmied around my cube wall after seeing it. The only thing redeeming me is that everyone knows I have a kid. Why my kid would want a chicken coop toy set? That's another story.

And the piece de resistance is....VULTURES!

Are you convinced that Playmobil rocks? Go find your own Playmobil treasures. Seems anything and everything is out there. Almost. And the things you would never think they'd make (butcher shop), they do! And the things you wished they made (boss), they don't. Hit or miss, Playmobil simply is the coolest thing - ever.

Mom vs. the toy.

Remember this little story about bursting Mateo's bubble? Well, I think I'm being punished because the toy I ordered for him is now my personal toy nemesis.

First, After I put it together and flipped the switch to "on," it didn't work. I swear the Amazon listing said it came with batteries, but apparently not based on the toys lack of spewing out the balls from its insides.

Yesterday I bought the needed batteries, so when Mateo and I got home, I put the batteries in so we could get this toy spewing balls. Of course, since I put it together a few days earlier, and I left it on the ground, Mateo happened upon it Wednesday morning and removed all balls from its inside by knocking it over. We have a cat who loves anything that moves or twinkles, so most of the balls got moved around the living room and dining area. I grabbed two balls and put one in, which easily fell into the tube, and then the second, which didn't.

So, me being the brilliant one, I started pushing the ball into the hole more and more, wondering why it wouldn't go down.

Oh wait. You're wondering where Mateo is during all this? He's sitting next to me, watching everything I'm doing and wondering why I'm sweating so much.

I grabbed the screwdriver I had to use to open the battery compartment and started so hit the ball, which made it lodge into the tunnel.

Hmm. Why would the toy peeps send this toy along with a ball that won't actually work with the toy?

Then I realized, he has another toy, with three balls, almost the same size as the balls for this toy, and I'm trying to force the wrong ball into the wrong toy. And that's why it's not working.

I spent a good 10 minutes running around the condo, trying to find a small screwdriver because the screws I needed to remove to try to remove the lodged ball were tiny. I finally got the ball out.

During this time, Mateo was playing with the parts to the toy that I had to take off in order to perform surgery.

Okay. So I got the toy back together. And since I realized that using the three balls that don't work with the toy is not the brightest thing, I searched for all the balls that came with the toy - I made sure they belong to this toy. While I was doing this, Mateo was crying and following me because he was on the verge of calling it a day and didn't have time for my nonsense.

I realized one of the balls I grabbed went to the other toy (I'm telling you, they all look the same, and the size difference is so slight, it's really hard to tell) when it wouldn't quite fit through one of the holes. I put the ball with the other toy - the toy it belongs to.

After all the balls were put in the tube, I grabbed Mateo, sat him in my lap, and turned that baby on.

Nothing happened.

After inspecting, I realized that Mateo had grabbed the ball I put off to the side and stuck it in the tube while I wasn't looking. Somehow, this ball got in, but it couldn't get out. At least, I couldn't get it out, no matter how many screws I unscrewed.

I eventually had to abandon my toy project because Mateo was on the verge of cracking and needed to eat dinner.

The toy is sitting on the kitchen table, just waiting for someone to rescue it. I swear, this is the worst 18 dollars I've ever spent.

Ah, let the money fall from the money tree.

So I already let the cat out of the bag that I was stealing Mateo's gift card money and his Kaiser experiment money to pay for my new LAVENDER and quite fabulous dyson.

Well guess what showed up in our mailbox today? Yet another check made out to Mateo from Kaiser. Why? I don't know. As far as I was told, he was only getting 50 bucks since he only got one shot.

Boy howdy, you know where this money is going. I'm about 150 short from paying off my lovely and bestest pal, my dyson, so his money is going there! I'm also working on making a nice chunk of change at work by whoring myself out as a blog master for a community blog.

And isn't May at three paycheck month? And isn't the IRS giving us more money back in form of refund? I'm a greedy, dyson-wielding crazy momma!

My new dyson.

Contrary to popular belief (MOM), the picture posted below is of a purple / lavender dyson and not that stupid pink one you saw on Target's web site yesterday. Regardless of how color blind anyone reading my blog may be, I would never, ever, EVER buy a pink dyson. Why light purple (aka lavender, very close to its friend, pink), is okay with me, I do not know. But pink? Who buys a pink vacuum? Mary Kay peeps?

All I do know is this: I vacuumed Mateo's room, which is not big by any means, but suits his 2 foot some odd inches frame quite well, and the canister, which seems rather big although I haven't checked it out from the inside, is FULL OF CAT HAIR. Sorry for yelling.

What disturbs me is this: how does that much cat hair and dust and funk and what have you burrow itself into a small rug space? How is it that you can clearly see it and all its glory, while contained in the canister, but before it was all sucked up (with no suction, mind you), you would never know it was there? You might suspect it was there, but you wouldn't look at his rug and say, ah, yes, this kid's mom hasn't vacuumed with a vacuum that actually works in MONTHS. What a bad mom. She sucks (and quite unlike the dyson, which doesn't, but literally and figuratively).

Anyhoo. I'm very tempted to take a picture of all the grossness that's in the canister because I find it completely fascinating, but I'm not sure anyone else would. I just want to stare and stare at it and wonder how my two cats possibly created a whole new cat and how that cat got into my new LAVENDER dyson canister.

Meet my new bestest pal until I get lazy.

Fashion Plates

I rarely get to buy gifts for little girls, so when I do, I'm always hard-pressed to find a gift that's fun and different and definitely something other parents wouldn't be purchasing as a gift. I don't want to do the same old Barbie doll, and I've already bought clothes for the last three birthday party gifts, so this time I'm trying to find something that I loved when I was a kid: Fashion plates.

Do you remember Fashion plates? Oh how I loved them so. I even had a set for making vans or something. The baw-chucka-baw-wow vans at that (Mom, call me and I'll explain what that means). Fashion plates are something I constantly think about because I'm a dork. Apparently they don't make them anymore, although I found a whole mess of them on eBay, the soonest ending auction was at $42.00. Curses to myself for not keeping things! The amount of money I could be rolling in if I saved my Fashion plates, my ewok dolls, my cabbage patch kids, whatever else I had as a kid that is considered "retro" now. Ack, I'm old.

Oh you know I'll be hoarding some of Mateo's toys now. Although I'm looking at them with the same eyes I looked at my own toys: Who would care about this stuff in 25 years?

But I digress:

What little girl wouldn't love to mix and match outfits and hair styles and textures and be able to color them all in!? I did find some Dora the Explorer thing, and some other random cheapo items that are similar to Fashion plates, but just don't do it for me. And at this point, if I do find something vaguely similar to Fashion plates that I do approve of, I'll probably end up keeping it for myself.