"Can you run to the mall for me?"

Bossman: "My mom is moving away and I'd like to get her a piece of Lladro as a going away gift. Can you go to Ross-Simons and find pieces that are travel or moving related, send me pictures via the phone, and I'll pick one?"

Faithful Assistant: "Sure. When do you need it by?"
BM: "Before 2pm."

Now, it's not such an odd request for me to go out and pick up a gift for him. However, I always get nervous when he puts such specific guidelines on what he wants. It has to be Lladro, it has to be from Ross-Simons, and it has to be related to his mother moving away. Yikes. I'm somewhat familiar with Lladro's overly emotional, pastel, high-gloss porcelain figurines. They are usually tall slender mothers in long dresses cradling babies or puppies. It's not exactly my taste. Also, any depiction of motherhood from them usually involves infants. Mothers aren't likely to move away from infants, thus making "relocation" a somewhat unexplored theme in Lladro ceramics.

Obstacle #2 was that my car is in the shop. I know. AGAIN. Although they promised I would have it by early afternoon, I knew I wasn't going to get it by 1pm. The scramble began for me to again impose my carless-yet-errand-laden self on one of my generous friends. Liz answered the call, picked me up, and we headed to benevolent Providence Place Mall on what I promised would be a "short trip."

After finding the only two figurines that could be remotely related to any sort of travel, I snapped the pictures (see Fig 1 & 2), and sent them to Bossman. I followed up with a phone call two minutes later:

FA: "Hi Bossman, I just sent you two pictures. Have you gotten them yet?"
BM: "No."
FA: "Ok. Well did you want me to buy the piece or are you going to come pick it up yourself?"
BM: "Um...I'm not sure. Let me call you back in a little bit."
FA: "Ok. well it's just that I don't have a car so I'm at the mall with my friend and I can't stay here that long. Can you call me back in two minutes?"
BM: "Oh. Ok."
FA: "So you're going to call me back?"
BM: "Yeah."

Long story short, he called me back and said that he was just going to come to the mall himself so I didn't have to stick around if I didn't want to. Apparently he doubts my ability to interpret the meaning of Lladro.

Fig 1: This is a puppy (somewhat similar to Bossman's dog) riding a paper airplane on top of a stylized gust of wind.

Fig 2: This is a bird gliding South (get it? get it?) on yet another, stylized gust of wind