Oh ALA, Look what you've done

When I go to ALA, I'm right in there with everybody else picking up the goodies the publishers and tech people hand out. A lot of the goodies I'll use as prizes during the library's Summer Reading Program. Others I keep for myself.

--sun screen lotion in when ALA was in Florida? sure.
--free ARCs? sure. (Advanced Reader's Copies of books the publishers want librarians to know about and buy, buy, buy)
--posters? sure.
--A make-your-own airplane? sure.
--bookmarks? love them.
--pencils? pens? rulers? other office supplies? great!
--A cell phone?

Huh, you say?
What do you mean, cell phone?

I passed this one by several times before I actually picked one up. Through the packaging I could see what looked like a pool of lip gloss or chapstick. "Oh cool," I thought. Just the thing the 8-year olds at my library and my 8-year old at home would love. A play cell phone full of chapstick.

So I gathered it up and dropped it into my goodie bag. (supplied by the ALA registration desk)

This whole past week the 8-year old had been waking up early because she wanted to go early to the before-school daycare with my spouse. Because she was making something special for Mother's day and needed the extra time there. Meaning I could sleep in and take my time getting to work.

Yesterday I was awakened by a crying 8-year old. And an irritated spouse who told me that I would have to take the 8 year old to before-school daycare because he wasn't going anywhere with this painted lady.

When I finally took a good look at her, she was indeed highly made up. Bright red lips/ rosy cheeks/ eyeshadow. hmmmm. where did she get her supplies?

It turns out that this innocent looking cell phone/ lip gloss/ thingie wasn't so innocent. She had discovered another layer to it which held little pools of various shades of lipstick. (the eye shadow she had lifted from my bureau.)

Many tears. How could we tell she had makeup on?
After a good scrub with Noxima (TM) and a long talk about how we older people used makeup so that we could look like she already looked, I finally managed to get her to daycare and me to work.

I'm going to have to take a good look at the rest of these ALA goodies before I hand them out to children this summer.

-wendieO