Your Wants Won't Hurt You

There are a couple people in my life that have asked for my Christmas list. At thirty two years old, this is trickier than it seems. I have a very specific list compiled for Alice, her wants filtered and edited by yours truly. I know exactly what she needs and wants. I know the reaction each item will elicit. I know the gifts that will produce big smiles and giddy sounds of delight and I know the packages that will be more of a letdown. I take this all into account when I give out her list, who can hande being the giver of the letdowns and who really needs to hear shrieks.

But gifts for me?? I'm stuck. I'm not one of those people that keeps a running list on Wishpot.com for situations like these. Generally, I buy what I need and forget about the wants. My father had a saying, "You're old enough to know your wants won't hurt you." I guess I took it to heart. I'm not saying I don't want, I do. Since they are merely wants I tend to let them slip out of my thoughts. And the wants that don't slip away over time become needs. Another factor of giving my Christmas list to family is money. I never know how much someone is interested in spending. Do I ask for hand lotion or a new handbag? Huge price differences. I don't want someone to think I'm greedy. See? A gift list as an adult can be a sticky situation.

So far my list includes a 9 x 13 baking pan. And that's it. Period. People want to buy me things and all I can come up with is a $10 cake pan that I should have bought at Target several years ago. In order to get my want juices flowing, I will take a moment and list a few things that come to the front of my brain. You know, the kind of things you wouldn't dare ask a real person for.

• A garage. I can't ask for a garage, right? I really want one. I would love a convient place to store all things with wheels (strollers, bikes, trikes, wagons, scooters, cars, etc.)
• A brand new completely stretchy wardrobe to accommodate all the holiday eating and drinking. Think yoga pants for every day of the week.
• A dishwasher. I'm not referring to the appliance. Ours works fine. I'm talking about a person. I want to hire someone full time to wash all the dishes. And they will never complain about it. It will be awesome.
• While I'm on the topic of wanting household help, I want someone to be in charge of bathing Alice. I just can't be bothered with it anymore. I'm not greedily asking for a nanny, I'm a stay at home, what would people think? I just want someone to give my kid a bath four days a week. She can do it mostly by herself, I just need someone to be near the bathroom and make sure she is doing a thorough job.
• Anti aging products. I'm young, I know. But in the last two years my face has aged more than I'm comfortable with. I want the expensive stuff made with bee venom or sterilized placenta powder.
• Central air conditioning. We live in an old rowhome with steam radiators for the winter and window ac units for the summer. Taking the bitch ass things in and out of the windows every year sucks. Storing them sucks. They just suck. All around suckage.
• A parking spot. This is completely unrealistic, but I still want it. No matter where I go, I want an empty, free, and legal parking spot to accompany me. Go downtown during busy times, no worries, I'd always have a place to park. Get home late at night and all the street parking's gone, ain't no thing, my spot's always ready. The mall a week before Christmas, the sold out concert, the football game...do you see how magnificent this would be?!

I'm not sure where to go from here. It seems I've gone to the crazy side of wanting. That's the problem with wanting, it can take hold and make people loco. Like kids at Christmas time.

The Relish Tray

Thanksgiving came and went. We survived. I mean, really, it's a fairly painless holiday. You eat and drink and eat and watch football and drink and eat and drink and eat and eat.

People talk about the Thanksgiving meal for weeks ahead of time. The proper turkey technique is debated, to brine or not, to stuff or not, to deep fry or not. Recipes are shared. Every morning show and cooking channel attempts to teach you how to prepare the easiest and tastiest Thanksgiving meal. Everyone has their favorite dish, the one aspect that makes it Thanksgiving dinner. For me it's a trifecta: mashed potatoes, stuffing, and dumplings. Without all three, it's just not Thanksgiving.

But, this isn't about me. Surprise, surprise...it's about Alice. Wanna know how much she liked Thanksgiving dinner? Wanna know what she ate? Pickles. And a roll. Not a roll with butter. No, she wouldn't try that roll. Just a plain roll. And approximately ten dill pickle slices. To say my daughter is picky is an understatement.

There were twenty four people seated at dinner, all of them piling food on their plates, the waist band on their pants stretched to maximum capacity. People helping themselves to seconds or thirds and Alice is only eating off the relish tray.

How is possible that my child will eat guacamole and hummus and gazpacho, but will not eat mashed potatoes? Or a roll with butter for that matter? When I was three years old, my mother walked into the kitchen one day to find me on the counter eating from a tub of butter. I was eating butter by the fingerful, but my child wouldn't eat a roll because of it.

I'm starting to feel she isn't going to make it in the world, survival of the fittest. She won't eat chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, or french fries. No hot dogs, or fish sticks, or grilled cheese sandwiches. I can't make her try tacos or lasagna. She's never going to be invited to any sleepovers. Her friend's mothers are going to talk about picky Alice. She won't try fish or crab or any other seafood besides shrimp, ergo it won't be long before my family will ostracize her. In no time, she'll be banished from society completely. And to think it could've been avoided if she would've just eaten Thanksgiving dinner when she was four years old.

Dazed and Confused

I am too tired to write.

I know I said I wasn't going to give any more excuses for not writing, but I swear, this time it's different. See...I'm writing. Even though I'm so tired my brain is jello, I'm still stringing together letters to make words. Promise kept.

Alice is killing me. Slowly but surely. Autocorrect suggested surly instead, which may be appropriate too.

She's been having bad dreams. I suppose I would have patience for them if they were truly bad dreams, but I kind of feel they are merely less than stellar dreams. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your pink and purple heart Vans being tagless does not constitute a bad dream. It doesn't warrant crying and yet she was. Scream crying in the middle of the night because her shoes didn't have a tag. What tag? I don't have a clue what she's talking about. Yet, I was awake to ponder the thought.

I was awake to listen to the coughing, too. The rediculous coughing. Fifteen minutes of coughing, twenty minutes of rest. Ten minutes of coughing, fifteen minutes of rest. Ten more minutes of coughing, hour of rest. All freaking night long like this. I might have been more sympathetic and motherly if I wasn't already sleep deprived from the previous nights. All she got from me was "Go to the bathroom and get a drink of water, Alice." I vaguely remember telling her to get up and go play even though it was only five o'clock in the morning. Not exactly a shining moment in mom history.

Tonight I will sleep, damn it. I'm making Hatta buy Vicks Vapo-Rub as we speak, hopefully that will calm the coughing from her cold. I'm going to bed early. No Monday night football for me. Hell, I may even drug myself for a restful eight hours of sleep. As I tell a childless friend of mine, if you like sleeping don't ever, ever, ever, ever have kids.

The Dreaded Man Cold

I'll be the first to admit, I'm bitter. I don't get sick days. If I'm feeling yucky, I grin and bear it with less emphasis on the grinning. I don't get to call my boss, fake cough, and take to the bed for the rest of the day. Oh how I would love to take to the bed! The last time that happened was when I had my wisdom teeth sliced and ripped from my gums. Drugged and vomiting, I was given two days to recuperate before I was expected to be back to work. Work being a stay at home mom, of course.

That's quite possibly the biggest downside to my job, limited time off. For me to take a sick day, someone else (namely Hatta) has to take the day off from work to cover my shift. And even then I'm not really off. Alice, the helpful sweetie she is, likes to make me better when I'm not feeling well. She climbs in bed with me, armed with books and lovey friends, where she entertains me lest I be bored.

So you can imagine my displeasure this morning when Hatta announced he wasn't feeling well and probably wasn't going to work. Something about a cough, chest pain, blah, blah, blah. Before you get the wrong idea, I'm not mean. I can be very sympathetic for real illnesses, which this isn't. This is a cold.

"How can you be so certain?" you ask. It's simple. Alice and I had the same infliction a few weeks ago. I still wake up every morning with a sore throat, cough up green stuff, and fall asleep at the end of the day with the same sore throat.

"What's it matter to you if he stays home?" you question. Let me tell you. See, I work from home. Hence, when he stays home from work he's really coming to my office, laying around my work space, pretending to be sick. If he was really sick he would get out of my way and take to the bed!

When I picked up Alice from school, she was excited knowing Hatta stayed home from work.

"When I get home, I wanna play with Papa."

"Well, he may not be able to play with you. Remember? He's sick."

"He's not sick," she said. "He just has a cold."

Even at the ripe old age of four, she gets it.