a day at the carousel

The other day I took the kids to the mall to ride on the carousel. It has traditionally been a quick, inexpensive, sure fire way to please the kids. When we got there I realized that I didn't have any cash (you have to have dollar bills to buy the little tokens).

I tracked down an atm and planned on withdrawing the smallest amount possible. Hadn't been to an ATM in a while, since everything takes credit cards, and was just thrilled to see that my $20 bill was going to cost me $3 in usage fees (did it really just cost them $3 to push out that one bill?). Whatever.

I was still no closer to getting the token since the carousel machine only takes singles. Abby kept asking me for a cookie so, being the clever mom that I am, I decided to buy one for her and get the change I needed in one fell swoop.

In my second fortunate turn of events I happened to buy a cookie from some kind of ex-used car saleswoman turned cookie peddler.


"Don't you want another cookie for the little boy?"

"No thanks, they will just share"

"You sure?? buy 4 cookies, get the 5th one free"

(Oh, because THAT'S what was holding me back from buying one for my little boy. I was worried about that 5th one breaking the bank.) "Nope, just the one please"

I handed her my $20

"Um, you don't have any smaller bills?"

(Smaller bills? Yea, Mike and I like to live it large with our stacks of $20's) "no, that's all I have"

"Well, I don't have enough change"

"Ok, we'll just go somewhere else" (I heard Cinnabon has a buy 12 get the 13th free deal going on)


I handed back the cookie. Oh, and if you ever want to make a 3.5 and 1.5 year old happy, buy a cookie and then give it back to the cashier. Just so you know.


"Wait, I'll go find more change in the back"

What the hay? What country are we in here? Didn't think getting some change would be so difficult. Abby and Owen were now screaming for their cookie.

So somewhere around a million years later she returned and I finally get my blasted change. I give the kids each a half of a cookie and start walking to the ride. The dollar bills were really crumpled and I was thinking there was no way the stupid machine would accept them. Sigh.

I get to the machine and see that's it's moved to a different location. I go over to it with my dang crumpled bills that have now cost me a $3 usage charge, a $1.50 cookie, and a couple minutes worth of screaming kids.

This carousel ride better be worth it.

I reach to put my bills in the slot and see that it says, "credit cards only"

"What?!"

I start looking around for the "cash only" machine. I circle around the carousel and slowly come to the realization that the cash machine has been replaced by the credit card only machine.


Awesome....