Too Tired to Think About Anything but 90's Toys

I can't believe this is going to be my 2nd post about toys.  There's no justification for it, only that my new job is really mentally draining and that it's Friday night.  I went out for happy hour after work with some co-workers and the fiance, and that was fun.  Later hubby-to-be and I strolled downtown in a Car2Go, which I will post about later when I'm more coherent and will now refer to them as deathboxgolfcartonwheels (although statistically they're safe blah blah).  Once we got downtime we found a chill outdoor bar with a really trippy projection on an empty stage.  I think the DJ was reliving his rave days, but whatever.  The rest of downtown was covered with skank hos and guys who wear dragon shirts - joy of all joys.  So now I'm home, sober as a judge and wondering what the hell happened to the littlest pet shop.

If you haven't caught on by now, I love miniature things.  I have conspired with my brother to grow a miniature farm of miniature vegetables (baby carrots, baby corn, cherry tomatoes, etc etc).  I have a slew of model horses and that doesn't even begin to describe it, but that's another day.  So it should be no surprise that in the 90's, a young shemovedtotexas adored "The Littlest Pet Shop."

Sure, they were simple.  This wagged its paw, but hey it had cute little plastic accessories and even more important - PUPPIES!

And this one, little gerbils that had a magnet on them, so you could make them scurry through the cages with a magnetic "wand" on the outside.  Super cute?  Yes indeed, and no pesky cedar shavings that I was allergic to that real gerbils needed.  So I think we get the picture.  Cute little animals, that actually resembled animals - circa 1992.

Imagine my surprise when I strolled through Target the other week and found this monstrosity.

What the hell is THAT?  Does EVERYTHING these days have to have those sad anime eyes?  I mean, when have you looked at a puppy recently and thought, "Oh no, those eyes aren't cute enough.  Maybe if they were bigger, and had little teardrops and exaggerated pupils... then they'd be a winner - but until then, no way puppy.  No petting for you."  I mean, what is that crap?  Pets hang out at the mall I guess, looking sad and Japanese.

This is what happens when a 4 year old is allowed to give an animal tribal tattoos.  It's Littlest Emo Pet, a sad plastic companion for your sad little child who's going to be severely confused in their first Biology class when they see that a ferret's head isn't 500% bigger than it's body, nor is it pink.  Maybe I'm just sensitive, or maybe I've been watching too much "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" but this irks me all the same.  It's a short road now to "back in my day I walked to school up hill both ways," but if they're going to keep my childhood toys in production the least they can do is not fuck them up with pink japanimation barf.

End of a long weekend

This is what our local watering hole looks like at the end if a nice holiday weekend.



Yes, that's a diet coke. Nectar of the gods. I need their nectar, because I start my new job tomorrow. More on our 4th of July later, now I'm going to enjoy the sun and $1 lonestar night.

Martha, Martha, Martha

I have a confession to make. So Martha Stewart stole a bunch of money and I'm not entirely sure that she actually has a soul, but the bitch has some good ideas. Earlier in my life I'm pretty sure I vehemently denied supporting anything Martha'esque or even house keeping/hosting in general, but I have to say that these days I absolutely love being a hostess. Bakerella is one of my heroes, and since 'Top Chef' has been one of my reality programs on record during the last few days of working from home, I've been in the mood to craft some stuff in the kitchen. We're having some friends over for a cookout the 4th of July (unless it rains, then it's more of a cook-in), and to me that means several things but right now I keep hearing "Theme Party!"

Though I'm not going completely crazy (discount plastic red white and blue star themed glasses from Target, and flag napkins does not equal crazy.. by some definitions), I did see these really cute pretzels on Martha's site and thought they'd be easy to do.

I thought wrong.

Actually, they're not that bad but I didn't think about several things.

1) Nobody makes those pretzel rods anymore, and ESPECIALLY not in Gluten-Free and Vegan (Hubby is vegan right now, and one of our guests is gluten-free)

2) Apparantly you need to order red white and blue sprinkles online or something, because I couldn't find any at Hobby Lobby or the grocery store (just had sanding sugar in the wrong colors or nothing at all, listen I'm all for fair trade organic but is there really something so harmful about a chemically died sprinkle?!).  I could have driven across town to Williams-Sonoma, but I couldn't justify traveling about an hour round trip in a bunch of thunderstorms to find.. sprinkles.

So, I improvised.

Instead of red white and blue pretzel rods, we ended up with white, light blue, pastel flower, and orange mini-pretzel rods.  For a while I had a nice little assembly of dip in chocolate, roll in sprinkles, place on tray - with the occasional broken pretzel dropped down on the floor for the dogs to scarf up.  This lasted for about as many pretzels as you see here, before I got bored and went for a more modern approach.

I have not yet developed the patience to accurately dip beautiful chocolate pretzels.  Maybe next year! 

On the horse front, I'm going to have to wait a few weeks before I can go try out the Hanoverian.  The weather has been really crappy, and he's apparently afraid of thunder. He sounds like a really nice horse, but I'm also going to look into some local barns in the meantime and try to develop a list of places to check out that are close to me.  On my last day of my discount at my old job, I bought a brand new IRH helmet - exciting!

Study of a sleepy dog

Not feeling it today.  Here's a collage of crappy iphone pictures of the BT.  Sad to say, I've been working on taking these snaps for a collage for a handful of weeks... mostly while she sleeps next to me on the couch while I pretend to work.  Yes, she is giving me the evil eye in most of these. Yes, that's pretty much her normal expression. It's a hard life to be a BT.

I'm in the process of moving this blog over to a domain and wordpress.  Call me a blog snob, but the web designer in me just can't handle anymore blogger templates and sub-domain nonsense.  Expect a change soonish.