I’ve not been around for aaaaaaages.
The last post I made to my WordPress page was in August – so I’ve been absent for just over 4 months now.
It’s a funny thing really – because I have actually been writing little bits n’ bobs here and there – I’ve just not been posting them. Mostly; I get a few nice paragraphs together driven by a thought, or a little family thing, or something I’ve just watched, but then never quite finish it. I used to love writing little skits on my family life or sharing my little reviews in the internet void, but, I must admit, I find it a bit of a tiring enthusiasm and therefore I turn to something less occupational & involved in my downtime to recover from general work tiredness and toddler raising exhaustion.
This is what the Current Mrs Six came home from work to discover one day after a busy day’s play. The lump next to me is Little Miss Six.
So – my New Year’s resolution of sorts is to re-invigorate my blogging and give it a bit more focus this year – starting over the next few days with a few catch up posts consisting of those little snippets that have been hanging out on my iPad for ages: starting with this little story written in November…
The lead up to Christmas has been a Frozen hell.
Nope – not another rant about bad customer service or the frustrations of rail travel. It’s Frozen with a capital “F”… as in the Disney film.
Little Miss Six had her heart set on a “Snow Glow Elsa” doll for Christmas. Every children’s channel had been advertising the damnable thing to death since August and Little Miss Six had fallen in love with the creepy little doll – shouting up every time the ad appears on the telly and exclaiming “Can I have one of them?” and just generally obsessing and banging on about the fucking thing.
Like any other parent in their right mind we delayed the Snow Glow Elsa conversation with the tried and tested and true retort – “Put it on your Christmas list and, if you’re a good girl maybe Santa will bring you one” This, of course, was fine, until we realised Christmas was only a mere 5 weeks away.
What the advert didn’t tell you is that every other 2 – 12 year old girl in the Western hemisphere was also responding to the advert in the same way as Little Miss Six, and that the demand was vastly outweighing the supply.
We’d been everywhere, and I mean everywhere, that even vaguely sells toys, to discover the fateful words – “out of stock.”
I then caught wind on the grapevine (otherwise known as “Twitter”) that boats were docking in the UK carrying the valuable cargo. I set about lining up every friend, family member and work colleague I could tap up to investigate supermarkets, department stores and Toy shops high & low the nation over to find a doll. It seemed that we were only ever moments behind this mythical new stock. Snow Glow Elsa’s were like Keyser Soze (“…and like that, pffft, they’re gone”) and I was starting to convince myself that maybe they were just things of legend. That was until we specifically heard that Smyths were getting stock on 21st November.
Me & the Wife sat down and held our strategy meeting to plan our approach. This approach somehow ended up consisting of me logging on to Smyths’ website at midnight on the 20th and frantically mashing “refresh” with all the obsession and fervour usually only reserved for desirable gig tickets. I was to do this for as long as it took, sleep be damned, until we had a Snow Glow Elsa purchased or reserved in some fashion.
And, at 1:42am that morning, the fateful “Out of Stock” changed to “In Stock” and I secured a Snow Glow Elsa for Little Miss Six’s Chrimbo.
*phew*
The story doesn’t end there though, oh no. Because of all the toys & gifts she received this Christmas which do you think she has played with the least?
Yep – the Snow Glow Frickin’ Elsa.
True Mister Six 