Dollar Tree Airlines and Burying the Lead

Even when there's a surprising ending, I can't catch a break.  

Yesterday was supposed to be a simple process:  Work till 5, drive down to my mother's to fix her lawn mower and cut the never-ending grass that's been growing with all this relentless rain.  With that off my list, I could enjoy the penultimate weekend of AAU basketball with Child #2 (Millie), and stay local no less!  

And then my work had to do something stupid like include me as part of a 20% overall workforce reduction across the company at a 3:30pm conference call.  

Horrendous news, of course, but I can get down to my mom's early now, so that's a silver lining, right? 

Nope, Child #1 (Maja) got dropped off for her play rehearsal 45 minutes early in the bad part of town, and the doors are locked. Dad's now hanging around town to ensure the doors are open and I'm taking her home afterwards.  

So with two hours to kill, I ventured into the pit of hell itself: Hobby Lobby.  

I'm a Michael's guy myself, and have used plenty of coupons over the years for brushes and paint, but the the brushes have been incredibly sparse or poorly made in the past few months, and I've seen entire racks of a color of paint be dried out and cracked.    So far the 20/0 spotters I like using from the HobLob have held up, so I budgeted four more (at 40% off what the Michael's equivalents are) to ensure one major product gets done before my severance even kicks in, as well as some craft sticks to finish a second.   

The only other visit I did was to Dollar Tree.  The buck and a quarter stores around her, and around my mom's have been desolate of anything that not summer or graduation-related, and I saw some conversions of sand castle making toys into proper castle and castle wall game pieces, so I perused a little harder.  

No castles, but long-time pulp character Ted Mosby, Aviator at least has some pretend glass to block the wind (and water)! 

I don't really have any seaplane scenarios in the immediate future, but things could change.  

And yes, I made airplane noises as I pretended to fly it in my hand.  Watch out, I may PEW PEW PEW you with finger guns, or make lightsaber sounds with a wiffleball bat. 

A couple positives:  I was there less than a year, but I still get a severance to get me through June, and five months of sales commissions all at once, rather than Q1 arriving mid-June and Q2 in September..    Historicon for Maja and I is still a go, come Hell or high water.  We weren't living a glamourous lifestyle there anyway, although if we have room in the car, I might use the Sunday flea market to liquidate some of the lead pile and other things.