Being my mother's daughter I shop in the Dollar Store. Dollar Tree to be specific. This is the only dollar store where EVERYTHING is a dollar ! My mother was a "Cheap John's" shopper. Cheap Johns was the dollar store of the 50's. They probably didn't call it a dollar store because there wasn't anything in it that was MORE than a dollar. A dollar in the fifties was like a twenty today. And that was why my mom loved Cheap Johns. We didn't have a lot of money but my mom could make a dollar last from one month to another. You would think that as an only child I would have been showered with gifts come birthday and Christmas. And you would be right. There were always bunches of gifts for me to open. Ninety-nine percent of them came from Cheap John but being a kid I sure as hell didn't care. I had lots of gifts to open and toys to play with and that was all I cared about. To this day I equate gifts with love which explains why I am in therapy.
And all this has to do with swimmies how?
When ever the "kids" are coming to grand ma's I head for the dollar store. I HAVE to have "stuff" here for the grand kids to play with when they come. Most of the things are broken or lost by the time the kids leave but it was here to open and play with for the duration of the visit.
Now since we have a pool there is always the need for pool toys. Water shooters are big these days and we have probably gone through at least $25 worth of these things. The kids and grown ups love them and since they take such a beating we have to replace them after every visit. That and bubbles, floats and wind-up fish. If it goes in the pool we have it.
But since the 3 youngest grand kids are not swimming on their own yet I always pick up a pair or two of swimmies. In case you are not familiar with these they are plastic triangles that inflate and fit around the child's upper arm. They are quite amazing and really do keep the kids floating. Smith's parents have gone hi-tech and bought Smith "muscles". It is a float that fits around his chest and has swimmies attached to the arms. It buckles in the back and Smith floats around the pool to his heart's delight.
Since Kaelin and Finley were coming to visit this summer grand ma and grand pa went to the dollar store and amoung the MANY other things we bought we picked up a pair of plain old plastic swimmies for Kaelin. Little did we know that her mom and dad had purchased a very fancy pair of swimmies for her. Keri and Steve have a friend with a pool so they had been taking advantage of his hospitality during this really HOT summer. By the time Keri thought of getting Kaelin swimmies most of the stores were sold out. I believe she was in Target on day when she happened upon a, more expensive than usual, pair of pink SPEEDO brand swimmies. Knowing Keri she probably agonized over spending the couple of extra dollars but in the end she did purchase them. This particular brand of swimmy is so fancy compared to the dollar store ones but they also REALLY WORK WELL! So well that when Keri and family left them here and I decided to wash them before I sent them back this turned into a comedy sketch. First let me state that although this product is fabulous they STINK, literally, when left inflated. They have a cloth that covers the plastic inflatable floats. This cloth holds the moisture and when left sitting out they really really SMELL BAD!
I had Ger deflate them for me and I threw them in the washer machine with a load of towels. Being Ger the swimmies were only half deflated. So when I went to check the wash there were 2 pink swimmies floating around the top of the washer. I scalded my hands grabbing them out of the hot wash water and proceeded to try to deflate them completely. THREE times I did this. At which point I was piling towels on them trying to keep the damn things down. Upon the fourth try I realized the pink cloth cover, (which is the part that smelled so bad) could be slipped OFF the inflatable plastic!
DUH ! I'm just not capable of working with expensive items. Give me those dollar store pieces of crap that I can throw out and I'm good to go!
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