Patwoman Goes Shoppping

Recently, T and I went to the Education Supply Store (I'm not sure what the actual name is. That's what I call it.) because that's where I get my spiral binding done. They do it for about a tenth the price of Kinko's, btw. (Oh, and Kinko's is apparently not Kinko's anymore. They are FedEx. You can tell I'm not super big on store names.) And they do it quicker than FedEx/Kinko's. (Which means they will take longer to do the actual binding, but they won't make you wait for 20 minutes while they flirt with the guy in line in front of you, even though he is not cute and not all that interested. That is a true story.)

So, while the associate was binding my cookbooks, T and I took a turn around the store. The selection of novelty notes (see above) was pretty impressive. I think that's probably the best part of teaching, all those crazy animal shaped notepads.

Oh, and the sculpting of young minds, of course.

But I must admit, I was a little disappointed in how spoiled this generation of children is. I mean, look at this. It's a pack of pre-cut paper dolls. I guess the idea is that the kids get to jump to the decorating of the paper dolls right away, without the bother of trying to cut them out. But that was always part of the lesson of paper dolls, wasn't it? To teach kids fine motor skills like cutting curves? And as I recall, it was always a really nice "aha!" moment when you finished all the cutting and then unfolded your paper to find these identical dolls, joined at the hand and foot...

Oh wait, that might be a little creepy, now that I think of it.

I did like this, though.
A premade puppet. That would be lots of fun, I think. Hey, what's this? It's a lion. No, it's a king. No, it's a beautiful female astronaut with an IQ of 156. No, it's a cute little sugar cookie boy calling you back to Candyland. No, it's a blank-featured homunculus created in some evil wizard's lab and fed on the blood of the innocents, sent to bring destruction to your whole house and line. You see? Now that's the way to encourage creativity in children!