20 Gifts You Won't Find Under the Tree

I'm not gonna lie: if somebody were to slip, say, a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer or a zombie-themed, well, anything under my tree, I'd be a pretty merry Mommy. But sometimes the best things you can get aren't actually things. There are plenty of little gifts that life sometimes gives us ... things you could never wrap up in a box, but that are AWESOME just the same. (You've gotta find joy in the simple things, right?) Here, in no particular order, are a few that I appreciate.

1. Those times when you ask your kids what they want to eat and they're just like, "Cereal!"
2. When your kid actually lets you wipe his nose/clip his nails/wash his hair without putting up a fight
3. Skinny days
4. When someone takes a photo of you at exactly the right angle and you look great. Bonus points if they tag you in it on Facebook.
5. Snagging a great parking spot. Especially if it's cold. Extra-especially if it's busy.
6. Finding money. Any amount. Anywhere. The bottom of your purse, the back of your drawer, an old coat pocket ...
7. Seeing a photo of a celebrity who didn't magically lose their baby weight within half an hour of giving birth.
8. Hearing, "Let's just order a pizza."
9. When someone else buys your lunch. Especially if you didn't know beforehand that they were buying, and you didn't even try to be frugal when you ordered.
10. When your kid takes an extra-long nap.
11. When someone cancels plans you wish you didn't have to begin with.
12. Doing something exactly right on the first try. Bonus points if it's something from Pinterest.
13. When it's not your kid throwing the tantrum at the grocery store/restaurant/church.
14. When there actually is something good on TV.
15. Going to the grocery store by yourself.
16. The feeling of taking off your shoes/bra/other constrictive garments at the end of the day.
17. Running into someone you know when you actually do look decent (not like this past Saturday when I went to the eye doctor fresh from the shower with zero makeup on and my hair pulled back into a bun and happened to run into my kids' pediatrician who happens to be sort of cute)
18. Going to the bathroom alone. Bonus points if no one knocks and/or shoves things underneath the door.
19. Hitting all the green lights.
20. When you say "no" and it isn't followed by "But whyyyyy?" or "Pleeeeeeease?" or an incessant repetition of the question or some sort of tantrum.

... Oh wait. #20 doesn't really happen.

Well anyway. You get my point. Sometimes there are moments when life tosses you a little break - and it's just like a present. Minus the wrapping paper that you feel guilty for not recycling.

Snot: a Problem

'Tis the season!

No, I'm not talking about the holidays. Although 'tis that season too. No, what I'm talking about is far less enjoyable.

Snot, y'all.

All my kids, it seems, have almost-perpetually snotty noses this time of year. It's disgusting. We go through tissues like someone is eating them.*

*Okay, so Cameron may actually be eating them ... but you know what I mean. 

But despite the mass consumption of Kleenex, I feel like I still deal with an inordinately large amount of mucus around this piece. When the kids were all little, I had to worry about them wiping their noses on me. I had snot smears on every single garment I ever attempted to wear within five minutes of putting it on.

Now, though, I'm in an extra-special position. Because having an eight-year-old, a five-year-old, a four-year-old, and an eighteen-month-old, I have all kinds of different booger disposal methods to deal with: it's not just wiping noses on Mommy's pants and/or shoulders any more.

Take, for example, my eight-year-old. He's obviously old enough to know better than to wipe his snot on me; he's evidently not old enough, however, to remember to use a tissue every single time. Because he has this habit of running his snotty nose along the length of his sleeve, as though he couldn't possibly take the time out of tinkering with his computer or playing with his LEGOs or tormenting his brothers to actually go and get a Kleenex and use that. His sleeves are always streaked with vague dry smears of white. Blecch.

Then there's my five-year-old, who is apparently just as busy as his older brother - because instead of fetching a tissue, he just uses the handy built-in utensil I like to call HIS TONGUE. Blecch. Got a pesky blob of green goo streaming from your nose? No biggie - just a couple of licks and it's gone. This, however, creates a different problem: a horribly chapped, red, scaly area that not only encompasses his upper lip but the skin under his nose. So he walks around looking like he's sporting one hell of a Kool-Aid mustache unless I slather it with heavy-duty moisturizer three or four times a day. During which he screams "My liiiiiiips!" like someone is trying to murder him and I yell, "Then use a Kleenex and stop licking them!" Over. And over. And over. It's like ... it never actually sinks in.

When this isn't happening, you can find him at any given time with a finger wedged firmly in his nostril. Who knows: maybe he's trying to plug it so it won't run. Or maybe he's trying to touch his brain.

Either way, I just hope he outgrows all this before he tries to, you know, get a girlfriend.

And my four-year-old. He doesn't eat his boogers, thank goodness, but that's only because he seems horrified by snot in general. When his nose starts to run, he starts to scream - and doesn't stop until I've had a heart attack and rushed over to see if he's bleeding. "My nooooooose!" he bellows, in a tone that would usually be reserved for someone trying to snatch it off his face.

He is perfectly capable of reaching the tissues. He is perfectly capable of wiping his own nose (and he's learning to blow, unlike the time he shoved a popcorn kernel up there). I'm not sure what the deal is, but a runny nose renders him temporarily helpless. And more than slightly annoying.

Most of the time, I don't wish the years away. I try to take the advice of all the wise mothers who came before me, who tell me, "It goes so fast. They'll be grown up before you know it." BUT. When it comes to everyone controlling their own bodily functions - properly - I'm pretty sure I'm willing to hit the fast-forward button on that one.


PS - Don't forget to enter the giveaway for an awesome pair of Jax In-Ear Headphones from SOL REPUBLIC! Winner will be announced tomorrow and your odds are GREAT at this point! Just click on the "Giveaways & Reviews" tab at the top of the page!

Holi-diet

I'm dieting, which is probably the stupidest thing a person can attempt at this time of year. Ugh.

Normally I have a strict no-diet policy. I try to make decent food choices as often as I can (which is how I lost over 100 pounds), but when it comes right down to it - I'm a foodie, y'all. Cooking and serving and eating makes my heart happy.

Unfortunately, it also makes my thighs huge and my ass wobbly and my stomach floppy and my chin double. (Yet has zero effect on my boobs, which is a ridiculous level of unfair.) I do teach Zumba three times a week, but when you love buffets and baking, it takes more than three hours of Zumba to keep those extra pounds at bay. So I find them creeping up. And my clothes start to fit snugly. And ain't nobody got time for that.

Anyway, I'm dieting now because my brother Steve and Curtis (the husband) and I entered into a friendly competition to see who can lose the most weight between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And by "friendly" I mean "I'm gonna win at all costs, suckas." Did I mention I can be overly a little competitive? I'm at an automatic disadvantage to start out with because men lose weight faster (the jerks). Yesterday, for example, Curtis went to the grocery store - and came back with three fresh pizzas from their deli.

"What the -!" I exclaimed. "What about our diet?"

"I've lost ten pounds," he shrugged, mumbling through a gooey mouthful of pizza.

WTF.

Meanwhile I'm feeling guilty about the 230-calorie yogurt I had for breakfast (but seriously, have you tried Chobani Flips? This is totally not a sponsored post - I wish! - but I ADORE those things. The Key Lime Crumble and Almond Coco Loco are out of this world). And he's scarfing down pizza like Weight Watchers is paying him to eat it.

It's a horrible time of year to diet because everywhere I go, there are cookies hitting me in the face. Not literally (although that would be kind of awesome), but you know what I mean. I open up a magazine: hot tips for holiday decorating, look great at your company party, CHRISTMAS COOKIIIIEEEEES. I see a sign advertising a holiday festival: fun and games for the kids, free photos with Santa, CHRISTMAS COOKIIIIEEEEEES. My boys bring home a list of holiday traditions they came up with for an assignment at school: trimming the tree, reading Christmas books, CHRISTMAS COOKIIIIIEEEEES.

And there's the aisles at every store. Overflowing with treats. My Facebook feed, where everybody is posting recipes for various holiday hors d'oeuvres involving cream cheese and/or bacon and/or crescent rolls and/or those little bitty fattening sausages. I don't even dare go near Pinterest.

All this is combined with my (unfortunate) instinctive urge to practically live in the kitchen this time of year. As soon as the cold weather hits, I'm in there cooking up hearty soups - you want a good recipe, click here or here - and baking bread and whipping up comfort foods and did somebody say dessert? CHRISTMAS COOKIES MAYBE?!?

So yeah. I've been struggling a little bit lately. I'll be glad to get a few of these pounds off, and if I win the competition I'll certainly enjoy the bragging rights, but man. Of all the times to try and do it. Why can't I just hibernate?

Speaking of winning - I've got an awesome giveaway going on right now! Somebody's gonna win a pair of spectacular Jax In-Ear Headphones from SOL REPUBLIC! Click on the "Giveaways & Reviews" tab to check it out.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to trying not to think about Christmas cookies.

... Damn it.

Crappy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy this photo of pumpkin pie. I don't even like pumpkin pie. Which reminds me - have you linked up to my "Fifty Things" post with your own yet? Hmmmm?

If you're an American, you've probably been salivating over the thought of Thanksgiving dinner for, like, weeks now. You may even dream about it. You're probably going over and over the menu in your head and washing up your best huge T-shirt and yoga pants and willing the time to just hurry up so you can pig out already!*

*Or that may just be me.

Anyway, I'm thankful for a lot of stuff, this and every year. The usual: my family, my home, my health, and everything that everybody who has that stuff is thankful for. But also for other things: days when I don't feel bloated, good traffic flow in the school drop-off lane, frozen hot chocolates from Dairy Queen. Oh, and farts that don't stink when you accidentally let them rip in a crowd. Don't pretend that doesn't happen to you ... or that you aren't secretly relieved when it does.

I've been blessed to have experienced a bunch of really good Thanksgivings in my lifetime. But today I want to tell you a funny story of the one Thanksgiving that was less-than-stellar.

One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving, when I lived at home, was waking up to the smell of turkey. My mom would get up at the crack of dawn (in the same way I do now, carrying on the tradition of stumbling bleary-eyed into the kitchen and hoping for enough coherency to properly start the bird) and put the turkey in the oven, and by the time I got out of bed, the house would smell like deliciousness. I'd make my way into the living room and turn on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and just inhale the turkey aroma like a fiend. Bliss.

But the morning of my tenth Thanksgiving, I opened my eyes and immediately noticed that something was wrong. I didn't smell turkey. The house was quiet.

I went into my mom's room. There she was, still in bed. My mom literally NEVER slept in, so this came as a total shock.

Then I noticed the trash can beside her bed. The tepid glass of water on the nightstand. The rumpled Kleenexes. She was sick.

"Mom?" I whispered. "What's wrong?"

"Arggghrbrrbbbrr," she mumbled, and heaved miserably into the wastebasket.

It was just Mom and I living in our small apartment.  My parents had just gotten divorced, and my siblings were all old enough to have moved out of the house. But our extended family was close, and we were expecting tons of people over for Thanksgiving dinner. I felt vaguely responsible for saving the day, but couldn't fry an egg, let alone cook a turkey - so I did what any kid would do. I called Grandma.

"Don't worry!" Grandma said confidently. "Aunt Eve and I will be right over to take care of things!"

In what seemed like a really long time, probably because they drove fifteen miles per hour, my Grandma and my great-aunt Eva showed up. They were both - well, old. They shuffled around the kitchen, banging pots and pans, trying to locate things, in an old-lady hurry to get the turkey put into the oven. By the time they got it in, it was like ten o'clock. Much later than it normally would have been put in the oven. But at least it was in.

People started to filter into the house at about eleven. My poor mother was sequestered in the back room as the family gathered for the Thanksgiving feast. Side dishes started to fill the counter. Within a couple of hours, everything was starting to get unappealingly cold as we waited on the turkey to finish roasting.

Only there was one problem. "Grandma, why don't I smell turkey?" I asked.

A muttered consensus rippled throughout the room. Yes, shouldn't we be smelling it by now? What's the deal?

When roasting a turkey, you have to get several things right: the right pan. The right seasonings. And? You have to turn the oven on.  A small detail, yet arguably the most important, that the old ladies had overlooked.

Yep, we had a raw turkey in a cold oven.

Thank goodness KFC was open on Thanksgiving. We ended up with a couple of buckets of fried chicken and some Thanksgiving side dishes that had been sitting out, like, all day. My mom ended up having to go to the emergency room. And the turkey? I think it got thrown away. We didn't all want to end up with food poisoning.

Here's to having a great Thanksgiving for all those who are celebrating! Don't forget to turn your oven on!

PS - Hungry for another heaping helping of turkey-day goodness? Check out this Thanksgiving throwback ... a poem I wrote about the things I'm thankful for. If you're a parent, you will relate!