I am being very, very strong.

The designers at Playmobil are conspiring with the local upscale toy shop to make me part with huge wads of cash. It's not fair.

First we walk into the toy store and my child - you know, the one who has watched the volcano video about 400 times - comes eye-to-eye with this:

Why yes, that is, in fact, a Playmobil volcano with real exploding action, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. And here I am with no major holidays in the foreseeable future. Damn. I had to start on the whole "You can put it on your Christmas list for Santa" ruse already, and it's barely September.

After I pry the box out of her cold, dead hands, I turn around to put it back on the shelf. Little old me (the girl who loved Playmobil stuff so much she managed to convince her parents to buy her one of the first pirate ships ... when she was in college) managed to walk away from Playmobil dinosaurs and exploding volcanoes.

And then I came eye-to, er, kneecap with this:

Son of a bitch. Fine, take two of my favorite things in this world - Playmobil and ancient Egypt - and combine them into $104 of all kinds of awesome. And then I saw that it comes with a tomb robber ... I went weak at the knees.

No. I am not going to pay $104 for a Playmobil set that will be just as unplayed with as the other sets we've gotten for the kid. And I do not have room to display a 2' square pyramid in my home, much less room for the pyramid plus all the cool subsets, like this one:

Dude, it comes with canopic jars. And camels. And tomb robbers. And it's only $40. Swoon.

Did I mention that according to our homeschool curriculum, we get to study ancient Egypt in a couple weeks? And this would be good for all kinds of role-playing, and would be Very Educational, and ... damn. I'm not convincing anyone with this, am I?

Yeah, so I carried the tomb around the store for quite a while before it went back on the shelf.

But, god as my witness, I will possess this before the end of the year:

I've got a birthday coming up, and Christmas, and if I just happen to need an extra $8 on my Amazon order to get the free shipping, well, who knows what might happen to fall off the truck and into my cart?