Thursday Thoughts - Not What it was Meant For

When I was very (VERY) young, one of my favorite toys for whatever reason was an empty bottle of baby powder.  ZBT Baby Powder to be exact.  (Search "vintage ZBT baby powder" if you are interested.)  I can literally remember what it looked like and everything.  I always liked the smell of baby powder, so maybe that is why it was my favorite toy.

I loved it as a toy, but that was not what it was meant for.  It should have been thrown away when it was empty, but I got it as a toy.  At least for awhile.  (Eventually it did get thrown away.)

Anastasia does the same thing with a lot of her toys.  They have a specific purpose but then she adjusts their purpose from time to time.  Like when we used Shopkins for playing pieces in Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, or any other games she had.  Or mix and matching food toy sets with each other to have a wider variety she could offer at her "restaurant."

Sparkle and her "toy."

And then there's Sparkle.

As you can see, Sparkle is holding something yellow in her mouth.  It is her new favorite toy that she brings to me in the doorway, drops it very loudly and expects me to throw it to her in the yard.

It is a water/food bowl.

Sparkle has this habit of needing water when she is outside.  And when it started to get colder last year, while I knew for a time the water would freeze overnight and melt during the day, I was concerned with her using a metal bowl so I switched to a plastic bowl.

Let me rephrase.  I tried to switch to a plastic bowl.

Upon seeing the plastic bowl, she drank a little water out of the bowl and then promptly put her paw in the bowl, tipped it upside down spilling all the water, and then running around the yard with a bowl in her mouth.

Try as I might, I could not get her to drink water normally out of the bowl.  She will drink rain water out of them before playing with plastic bowls.  But, for whatever reason, she associates a metal bowl with water for outside and plastic bowls outside are toys.  Note, she does have plastic bowls for her food and water in the house and aside from shoving them around the floor when they are empty and she wants more, she doesn't treat them as toys.

The plastic water bowls outside are being used in a way that is not what they were meant for.

But it certainly makes me laugh.  A lot!