Tag: Target

I’ll Be Back! – Friday

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I’m sorry to be delayed on my Favorite Things Friday post, but I just spent ten minutes watching Arnold’s thoughtful video. This video is one of my favorite things that I watched this week (besides last night’s big upset by the St. Peter’s men’s basketball team, the Peacocks, beating Kentucky – even if you aren’t a big sports fan, March Madness is a blast!). Go Peacocks!!! I hope that you had fun celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, too. I just recently found out from my DNA test that I am at least 12% Irish and that makes me proud!

Here are my other two favorites for this Friday. (Please check out previous Friday posts for more favorites and please share some of your own favorites in my Comments section):

GUND Baby Sleepy Eyes Owl Bedtime Soother Plush Owl Stuffed Animal Night Light & Sound Machine – I saw this precious owl in a local gift shop for kids recently and I fell completely in love. First, I adore owls, but second, this soother is the most comforting, mesmerizing “toy” that I have ever witnessed. I wish that I was going to a baby shower, because every baby deserves one of these darling owls. It is like the most comforting meditation you have ever experienced in soft plush form. My favorite part of the owl is that its eyes slowly close like it is going to sleep. There is a reason why 34,000 people on Amazon gave it a perfect five star rating.

10.5oz Eucalyptus and Patchouli Ceramic Face Candle Green – Opalhouse™ designed with Jungalow™ – I purchased this candle (exclusive to Target) the other day, and I adore it! The container of the candle is a woman’s face, but she also has ears, adorned with adorable beaded dangle earrings! Even when the wonderful smelling candle burns away, I will be left with a wonderful planter for a small plant. This is the kind of small, fun item, that brings me happiness every time I look at it.

Final Friday Bonus – I keep my entire blog, from the day I started to write it, online. It is always interesting to me when a post from years past pops up as having been read or is trending. This blog post (one of the first I have ever written) trends a lot, almost every day. This tells me that a lot us love our throw pillows!:

Along Came Throw Pillows

This second post popped out of nowhere yesterday, but I read it again and it really does have a helpful message, if I do say so myself. So if you are wanting to do some more reading, check it out:

Repeat Broken Toe

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!!! We have a lot going on in this world, but as the Italian proverb goes, Hope is the Last Thing Ever Lost. Don’t ever lose your hope! See you tomorrow!!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Riding A Bike at Target

I am hesitant to put this out there, because the “mask situation” has been a controversy for what feels like most of the pandemic, but I am going to take a chance. My readers know my heart. I walked around Target for two hours yesterday and I wasn’t wearing a mask. I didn’t really even need to buy anything (but of course I ended up with a cart full of stuff, anyway). The experience was delightful!

My family and I have been fully vaccinated for about a month now. Our governor has lifted all mask regulations. Target has lifted their mask regulations. So, like a kid, wobbling around on a bike, when first learning how to ride it, I wobbled around with my big red cart, with a huge smile on my face, to anyone who would meet my eyes. It was kind of like learning to ride a bike all over again. It all comes back to you. I promise you, it does.

I thought to myself, in some weird way, maybe this is sort of a gift, which has come from this awful pandemic. Getting to experience things, like it was the first time all over again, is kind of thrilling. I had forgotten how much I liked to shop in Target. I had forgotten how much fun it is to leisurely amble around a store, without actually having anything really to shop for, instead of zipping around the store as quickly as possible, like I’m a super-crazy-competitive contestant on Supermarket Sweep. Yesterday, I didn’t dodge others like they were poison incarnate. And they didn’t dart away, in fear, from me, either.

I would say that only about half of us in the store (shoppers and employees) were maskless, but that’s okay, everyone learns (or re-learns) to ride a bike, in their own time. When I was checking out my purchases, my clerk, looked at me in the eyes, smiled and said, “Wow, it’s so nice to see people buying lipstick again.”

23++ Inspirational Quotes About Living Abroad - Best Quote HD

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Shape of Friday

As seen in one of my favorite boutiques . . . Target.

Yesterday I wore a sweater dress for the first time since probably the 1980s. Given that it is only a couple of weeks after Christmas (which, for me, was a time of highly overindulging in anything the least bit sugary), I decided to also break out what was once called a girdle and is now more commonly called a “Body Shaper.” BodyShapers/Girdles should be damned to hell, for all of the physical and the emotional pain that they inflict on women. There is NO way ever that a Body Shaper will make the Friday Favorites list here at Adulting-Second Half. That’s a promise and a guarantee. To add insult to injury, I noticed that my Body Shaper has stretch marks. Yes, stretch marks to match the originals, the stretch marks on my skin. Garbage Can, open your mouth, I’m about to feed you a Body Shaper. Wow, even you, Garbage Can, spit the Body Shaper out. Yucky!

Welcome to Favorite Things Friday. New readers, Fridays are frolicking and frivolous here at Adulting – Second Half. On Fridays, I list three of my absolute favorite anythings and I would love for you to share your favorites in the Comments section, too. I am always looking for more favorites, in my life. Here are today’s favorites:

Body Shapers – HA! Go back and read the first paragraph, in case you decided to just skip to the favorites part. I caught you.

Pollo Tropical – One of the best and most underrated fast food restaurants known to man. If you ever get a chance to eat at Pollo Tropical, take it. It’s one of those fast food chains that kind of tricks you into believing that you are actually eating relatively healthfully and wholesomely. (kind of in the way of Boston Market tries to trick you, especially if you get the broccoli, as one of the sides) Pollo Tropical is chicken and pork served Caribbean style. Their Cilantro Garlic sauce is so yummy that it is drinkable, but don’t kiss anybody for three days after eating it. Their iced tea is probably the best iced tea that I have ever drank.

Dr. Teal’s Foaming Bath With Epsom Salt – This bath wash is incredibly soothing. It comes in different scents like lavendar and eucalyptus, but it just so healing to use a little bit of it on tired muscles and dry skin. If you don’t have time to sit in a bath full of dissolved Epsom salts, just rub a little bit of this wonder into your skin while taking your shower. So soothing!

T-Rex Postal Forever Stamps – Do you know what lenticular printing is? I didn’t either. I had to look it up. This is how the postal service describes these mailing stamps:

“The Tyrannosaurus Rex Forever stamps are available in panes of 16 stamps with four designs. Featuring lenticular printing, two of the four designs show movement when rotated. See the skeletal remains with and without flesh and watch as an approaching T. rex suddenly lunges forward. “

They look so cool. The postal worker who helped me, apparently was as equally unaware of these stamps’ special features, as I was, so she kept trying to separate the thick sheet, convinced that several sheets of stamps were stuck together. My mother always taught me to never settle for “just the flag stamps” in life. These T-Rex stamps are so much fun and will make any envelope truly stand out!!

Have a great weekend, friends! Here is the fortune for the day:

“Our real personality is all light, all love, always shining.” – Upanishads

Sticker Shock

I’ve been going through the fun experience of “sticker shock” as I have been opening up our credit card bills corresponding to all of our summer fun and the finishing up of our house renovations. It’s not that we didn’t consider our budget when planning all of this. We had a good general idea of the cost of all of this fun and upgrades. It’s just when looked at, as individual costs, they didn’t look so bad. All lumped together, it’s breathtaking. It’s daunting.

I get “sticker shock” at certain stores every single time I check out. Costco and Target come to mind as my biggest, “Oh Wow! Did I really just spend that much? There must be some sort of mistake.” It happens every time. My daughter and I now laugh at ourselves when we say we are just running into Target for Advil or toilet paper. Ha! My favorite experience is when I try to hone myself in and I try to get away without getting a shopping cart. I still end up hobbling up to the checkout counter with a toppling pile of awesome stuff, often running into other shoppers because I can’t see over the pile of things that I am trying to carry, to the checkout line, to buy.

Costco is another harrowing experience of sticker shock. The checker usually whispers to us, the amount of money we owe, I guess in fears of setting us over the edge. How do incredible bargains add up to incredible sums owed, so fast? The person at the front of the store, assigned to check people’s carts, who are leaving the store, never bothers to check over our cart very much. We hand the person our mile long receipt with the scary sum total owed and they just highlight it real fast with looks of fear and sympathy, as they pat our backs on the way out of the store.

Don’t worry, readers. We are fine. Our bills are paid. I am not going to be adding a tip jar to my blog. Once again, I am just trying to get a laugh at what I hope is often a universal experience. I am going to age myself, when I say that I grew up at a time when things only had sticky price tags attached to them (UPC codes, huh?), and moms walked around grocery stores with little plastic clickers to keep a check on how much their carts were adding up to, in order to avoid the panic of literal “sticker shock” when the time came to write a check. Back then, no one got angry at people writing checks at grocery stores. I wonder if there is now a retro app on my phone, equivalent to the little plastic clicker. I guess that would be called a calculator. I may have to start using the calculator a little more handedly, if the ultimate “sticker shock” starts really affecting my health adversely. In the meantime, I’ll just nervously giggle.

The Power of Earrings

I went to Target (otherwise known as Tar-jshay) with my daughter yesterday evening. I found a pair of earrings that I liked and I decided to put them on right away, at the cash register, because I had forgotten to wear earrings when I was getting ready. The earrings are long dangles with all different colored tassels. They are playful and fun and surprisingly, not heavy. When I put them on, our cashier exclaimed, “Oh yes, those are great! They make you look happy and young.” She then started stammering something about me actually “being young” and then I didn’t need anything to make me look young, and then she turned as red as her red Target shirt.

I just giggled and said, “That’s great. In that case, I’m never going to take them off.” I mean fashion earrings are a lot cheaper than a face lift or even some of these wrinkle creams on the market. Still, it was one of those moments in life when you notice a shift. Years ago, I was the young person giving stupid, backwards compliments to older people. (unintentionally and meant to be kind, of course) Often I would say, “Wow! You look great for your age!” Note to young people – just stop at “great.” Another thing not to say is “Wow! You look great for having four kids!” Again – just stop at “great”.

I would like to pretend that the comment didn’t bother me at all, but that would be a lie and I wouldn’t be writing about it this morning. Still, the cashier’s comment bothered me only slightly and more, it made me reflect. We put such emphasis on looking and being “young”, yet as I’ve aged, I’ve experienced many, many benefits to being older. Younger isn’t necessarily better. It’s just different. I took the earrings off last night before I went to bed. Maybe today I’ll wear one of the many vintage clip-on pairs that I have collected over the years. Instead of “young and happy”, perhaps the vintage earrings will make me look “older and sage.” I like having the option. It makes me feel free.