I would blame it all on the teddy bears.

or on the Don't Care Bears.

Meara is me w/r/t laundry.

Me too. Or I'm probably more like lisah.

Made it to work. 5 hours after I woke up and 3 hours after I first left the house. Go me!

When I was a kid, I liked the cuddly sort of dolls, like Cabbage Patch Kids, much better than I liked Barbies. My sister had some Barbies, and sometimes I'd do things like braid their hair or make clothes for them, but that was more a craft project than playing with them in the usual sense. With Cabbage Patch Kids, I could read to them, or pretend to feed them, or hug them when I got scared, or talk to them, or sit them in chairs and pretend to be their teacher, or all kinds of other stuff like that.

I also liked electronic toys, though I didn't have all that many of them -- my parents really hated any toys that beeped. I had a zillion construction toys, though -- Legos and things like that. I also had the girls Lego set. I treated that one more like a model kit, though -- it came with instructions for making a playground, and so I made a playground. The regular Legos, I made lots of different things. I got a toy carpenter set when I was about 8 -- a box of wood in different sizes, a bag of nails, a container of Elmers Wood Glue, and a kid-sized hammer -- and built a bunch of stuff with that. Including stuff like tables and chairs for my dolls.

My best friend growing up and I didn't like dolls, but we would play with my dollhouse because we used it as a stage for endless storytelling. Her brother had much cooler toys, toys that our parents wouldn't buy for girls, like a castle with knights, an Erector set and a garage that had a car lift. These were much better stages for the storytelling, and we appropriated them frequently. We besieged the castle. We told made up customers made up car problems. We built the props the stories required.

As a kid I had Legos and Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys and whatnot. Sometimes I'd do stuff like build two opposing fleets of spaceships that would have epic battles. Other times I'd take on engineering challenges, like building Lego or Tinker Toy towers that reached the ceiling. Oh, and I built a random number generator out of Legos that used marbles.

Oh, and I built a random number generator out of Legos that used marbles.

Why am I not surprised?

My brother made a bow and arrow out of tinker toys and shot an arrow in his eye permanently damaging it. That's one of my first memories--seeing it happen and him screaming and my mom running down the stairs carrying my baby brother. My older brother still gives me shit about not running for help but I was paralyzed with WTF? just happened??!?!

I built a bow and arrow-ish thing out of Tinkertoys too. (Actually, I considered it more like a phaser). I did have some vague knowledge that it'd be really bad if I shot someone in the eye with it.

That sucks about your brother. I knew a kid in 7th grade who shot another kid I knew in the eye with a piece of aluminum foil, blinding him in that eye. I felt bad for both of them. I guess some kids at that age don't know better....

fed my barbie dolls to my guinea pig. didn't realize I could have converted them to minions.

We made bows and arrows with old broom handles and bicycle innertubes. I'm surprised no one got hurt.

I need one person to respond so I can go ahead and finalize my vacation plans. Just one. And he's not responding to email or either phone line.