Hey Rechelle, Thanks for the wine!

Today's gripe session over at www.countrydoctorswife.com had a cathartic effect and later in the day I was totally up for going pinata shopping with the kids.

"Pinata shopping?" you say? With my fair city being this close to the border we have LOTS of pinata stores to pick a peck of pinatas at. For some silly reason, I think he was looking through that catalogue Birthday Express, Paul changed his mind last week to wanting a Star Wars pinata. Yeah, exactly, where the * am I going to find a Star Wars pinata without ordering it from that place? Well, we went to my favorite pinata store, Pinata Party Palace @ 1704 East Cesar Chavez St 236-0975, and lo and behold but what to my wondering eyes did appear? A miniature Darth Vader, all 3 feet of him. They had a larger version but there is no way that 9 kids need that much pinata. Let's see if I can remember some of the different pinatas that they had this time. Oh, they are all hand-made in Mexico and they are SUPER STURDY (you need a bat to break into these). There was: Diego, Dora, Mickey Mouse, Minni Mouse, Shrek, Mrs Shrek, a penguin, Cinderella, Barbie, wedding Barbie, Snow White, every Power Ranger, every Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Pooh, Tigger, a rabbit, a kangaroo, a lion, a tiger, the standard stars and fruits and vegetables, a donkey, a bride, a groom, several different Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, a pirate, the Hulk, Nacho Libre, many versions of aliens, a bunch of old Easter ones, and even more that I can't remember. So I got some junk to put inside of him: snakes, frogs, dinosaurs, bouncy balls and one bag of candy (plus our leftover Halloween candy, shhh!) and some items for the gimme bags some orange spoons and black bowls and we were out of there fairly painlessly.

We made a not-so-quick trip to Toys-R-Us to check out the facilities (Holiday items are 50% off) and then ate dinner out. We FINALLY used up all of our gift certificates for Satalite Cafe (why does that always look like it's spelled wrong even when it's right?). After dinner we ran to the other end of the strip mall to Blockbuster to use some more gift certificates (I still have $8 left on a card from Christmas 2005). We rented the 40th anniversary edition of Jungle Book, Disney's Alice in Wonderland, the 40th anniversary edition of Mary Poppins, The Muppet Movie and Fraggle Rock Where It All Began. For me I rented Tim Burton's Corpse Bride; the movie in which Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter play a gruesome couple in love. Wait, isn't that the movie version of Sweeny Todd? Is that already on DVD? I thought that just opened last month. Oh, maybe this is the animated version. Is it my imagination or does Tim Burton just keep remaking the same movie over and over and over and over and over and over and over again? I know that Rechelle has an in with him since he keeps using Johnny Depp over and over again so I'm going to ask her about that the next time she has an open question session.