Day 17: a girls' day, or how Anthropologie is like Build-a-Bear for grown women

Greta and I tried out a new cookie recipe today, and we were thrilled with the results. They're vegan oatmeal cookies, which were great because they're relatively healthy, I had all of the ingredients at the house, and sometimes I like to play vegan for a day. I'll put the recipe in the comments section for anyone who is interested in trying it.

Look how excited Greta is about the precooked cookies. She can't even tear her eyes away from them to look at the camera.

Here's the finished product. I like my cookies nice and soft, and since these are vegan cookies, I could undercook them without worrying about pesky salmonellosis.

She's not really looking at the camera in this one either. Maybe she was staring off into the distance at cookies.

Greta and I had a lot of quality time together today since I missed part of the fun yesterday and because Pat had to do some studying for his midterm tomorrow. After we baked cookies, I asked Greta if she wanted to go on a "nature walk" or if she wanted to go to the mall. She voted for the mall (belch).

Greta is usually very reasonable when it comes to buying junk, but today she asked me probably a dozen times if she could get a new Build-a-Bear toy. She was being super good, and I was high from being in our new Anthropologie store, so I said we could get her one. As much as I wanted to buy a few little things at Anthropologie (I'm in the market for some knobs for my childhood vanity that I'm giving a makeover, and they have the greatest knobs ever), the line was insanely long, and there was no way I was waiting in that line - with kid or not. I seriously could not believe how many people were in line. That store is good and all, but come on. Tanget: apparently Anthropologie can do wrong.

So we finally wandered over to BAB, and I could see from a distance that the store was jam packed, with the line spilling out the door. It was even busier than Anthropologie. I have never seen anything like it post-Christmas on late Sunday afternoon. The store was swarming with people, and the line to stuff the animals was probably 20 deep, and it was NOT MOVING. I felt awful about reneging on my promise, but there was no way I could wait in that line and survive. I tried to rally by summoning my memory of the time I decided I just had to have a Cabbage Patch Doll. My mom very patiently waited in a very long, disorganized line in what I recall to be a small room in a department store because, even though I hadn't even seen one before, I sensed that I MUST have one. Even thinking of that time in my life, I couldn't do it. I mean, I knew the stupid pink unicorn BAB Greta had her eye on would still be there tomorrow and next week and even next month.

I scanned my brain for any excuse to get out of there and suggested to Greta we go get a cold drink and then come back and see if the line was any shorter. Greta was game, so we shared a super tasty strawberry banana smoothie at yogen früz (they didn't have White Russians, unfortunately), and by the time we got back, it was way more reasonable in there. Greta ended up decided instead of a new BAB animal she wanted some clothes for one of her old BAB animals (thank you, thank you, thank you), so we were in and out in no time. The thing that sort of blew my mind is that all of the people working at BAB were all so damn chipper still, and the parents waiting in the giant line all looked so calm (there were some very agitated kids, though). I think it's official: I have the temperament of a toddler. I might need to work on that.

I don't think I really captured the essence of it in this post, but today was a great day. I wouldn't have wanted to do anything else. (BAB can suck it, though.)

Fran