My daughter wants a “Pillow Pet.” She saw it on TV and then someone at daycamp told her they had one. This evening she wandered into my office with the remote set on pause, and said “Mommy, the commercial is on TV for Pillow Pets and I want you to see it.” We went into the living room and she played it for me. I guess I know what Rabbit is getting for her birthday.
Again today, I came awfully close to throwing in the towel on the no fast food resolution. Then I found out that a Realtor in our office was hosting an open house/luncheon for other agents to preview one of his properties. A couple of us went to it, admired the house and grounds and view of the lake, and feasted on pulled pork sandwiches, two kinds of vegetable salads, chips and homemade salsa, and homemade strawberry rhubarb cobbler for dessert. Yay free lunch!
This afternoon I went to a negotiation class for part of my continuing education credits required for my Realtor license. The instructor was a local attorney, and hilarious. She broke us into groups and gave each person in the group a different page with instructions: we were to pretend to be families working on negotiating a family vacation. One member of the group was a teenage daughter. I got the sheet for the dad, another lady was the mom. One guy in our group was the 18-year-old son. Another older guy in our group had to pretend to be the 11 year old daughter. Finally, a female Realtor in her 50′s was assigned to be the family dog.
Our group was in hysterics. My “secrets” page said I was supposed to try to get the vacation to be in the winter, and I would get extra points for the most affordable vacation I could convince the family to go on. Others in the group had different instructions. The group exercise was intended to help us do concession negotiating. Our “family dog” sure had a lot of financial questions: she was second guessing everything and finally one guy told her to go pee on a tree. The lady playing the mom kept saying to me “But at least one night we need to have just us, just you and me together, by ourselves.” Later, she said she didn’t mean to be so creepy, but her instructions were 300 extra points for negotiating an evening with her husband (played by me) for one evening of the vacation.
When we all reported back to the instructor, the room dissolved in laughter when the group across the aisle reported that they hadn’t done so well in their negotiations. The instructor said “What do you mean?” The man who played the dad said “Well…..my wife,” (gesturing at the lady behind him) “..my wife and I are now separated, we never agreed on where to go, two of the kids won’t go with us, and our toddler son insists he wants to go to South Padre Island without the rest of the family.” The attorney running the class was laughing so hard! “I have to say, this has never happened before, in the entire history of me teaching this class.” It was a great afternoon.
At home this evening, Rabbit and I made dinner for the two of us while PC finished his shift at the service station where he works two evenings a week. She’s now watching cartoons (and Pillow Pets commercials). She is doing her own negotiating these days: “If I eat all my supper, can I play for a while before my shower tonight?” or “Here’s what I think, Mommy. Someday when we have money, I can get a Pillow Pet.” I told her to save up her allowance and she will have enough in no time. She scowled. “I don’t want to spend my own money!”
So much for concession negotiating!
