Colouring Your World

     Mondays suck as a general rule. Best thing to do is drive to Peterborough and by some discount Crayola products for Christmas. Bring your cash. It's shocking how much money you can spend in art supplies.

     Janet picked me up around 9ish with Miss Mary Mak in the back seat and we headed to Timmy's for coffee. The weather was good and traffic was clear, so we arrived at Gerri's Arts & Crafts Warehouse on Davis Road well before noon.
     I had a list of things to get for my friend, Kimmy, for Christmas gifts - including 92 pencil crayons, thick and thin markers, 64 crayons and finger paints. I got all of those things for $26.55. The same items at ToysRUs would be $56.23 plus tax, so I saved more than 50%.
     I bought myself a sandwich baggie full of extra thick crayons for those goddamn kids who come in to the restaurant and their parents let them do everything with the crayons OTHER than colour with them. Cost me six bucks and it will be well worth it. Let's see the little bastards chew through one of THESE crayons. <sigh> I guess that means the parents will just have to let them slobber on all the sugar packets. Urgh! Has anyone ever thought of bringing some small toys for their children to play with at the restaurant?
     I also bought a pack of window writers for $6 and I think I will really enjoy them, as soon as I learn how to write G.F.Y. backwards on the inside of my car's rear window.
     Prior to checkout, I heard Janet laughing hysterically from the middle aisle. On further investigation, I discovered she had picked out a pack of "multicultural markers" with 8 shades of skin tones. Really? Is it necessary for our children to have eight skin colours to choose from? I'm pretty sure my earliest family portraits were done with pink (because that's what colour my mom told me we were) while my daughter always preferred to make mommy and daddy yellow. My question is, how do they describe these eight colours? Jamaican black? East Indian brown? WASPy white? Mocha Choca Lotta (ya ya)? Well, I had to check this out and, unfortunately, they are very boring names such as beige, golden beige, tan, tawny, bronze, terra cotta, mahogany and sienna. I don't know who's who. You'll have to buy a pack and figure it out for yourself.
     There were markers and finger paints that only show up on special paper, colouring books that can wipe off and be coloured again and again, and glow in the dark crafts. Other than Crayola stuff, Gerri's also has Sandylion stickers, some educational posters (including one with all the Canadian Prime Ministers! Yay!) and all the Dixon pencils, pens, erasers, highlighters and glue you can sniff.
     I enjoyed myself. I would have liked to go to the Indian River Reptile Farm up the road, but Janet was not on board with me there. Instead, we used the GD GPS to find a Harvey's. I tried to complete the Harvey's survey on my cell phone to win $500 worth of veggie burgers, but I got half way through and ran out of space  to press more numbers. After 4 minutes of press 1 for "very dissatisfied" and press 5 for "very satisfied" I had to start using the backspace to re-write. I accidentally pressed the disconnect on the last question instead of the backspace, so I lost my chance :(