Pardon my sour-cream-and-onion breath: I’m eating Pringles. NO it is not even nine o’clock in the morning, WHAT OF IT. Also, the tube concept is basically a failure: after a finger’s-length of the stack has been removed, the rest of the chips are inaccessible unless there is Tipping and Shaking. Also-also, there is a typo on my can, because it says there are 7 servings in here.

I had a good holiday, did you? I didn’t get the child-safe tranq-dart gun I asked Santa for, but apparently the elves can’t make sophisticated stuff like that, or anyway that’s what I heard about the eyebrow piercing I wanted in high school.

Do I seem a little STRUNG OUT to you, and is “strung out” the expression I want? Maybe I mean “stir-crazy.” I have been in this house with five children for….well, I don’t know how long it’s been and perhaps I should start making chalk marks on the walls. During some of this time, a child has been barfing, and then another child was barfing. The barfing has stopped for now, but who knows which mole will pop up with it next?

I have been just DYING to SHOP, and I was SO dying to shop, I took all five kids with me to Target on Monday. It was not a total fail, but it was not a relaxing opportunity to acquire comforting consumer products, either. Instead we bought diapers and….I don’t remember what else. Nothing fun. Oh: more laundry soap, because of all the barfing.

And my parents babysat one evening so Paul and I could escape the drudgery of our lives go out for my annual calendar-shopping trip. (That link will take you to a Milk and Cookies post about which calendar I ended up buying, and I do hope you’ll leave a comment over there telling me which one you have this year. I don’t know why I find calendars so interesting, but I just DO.) Other than that, I’ve been trapped trapped TRAPPED!

Can we do a little post-holiday survey?

1. When do you take down your holiday decorations? My tree seems to mock me with what once looked glorious and celebratory and now looks tacky and pointless.

2. Do you get “post-holiday blues”? If so, how blue do they get, and how long do they last?

3. Do you buy holiday stuff on clearance for the next year? I love getting gift wrap at 90% off, but I have to use some self-control this year, as I already have lots of paper bought at 90% off (why no one else wanted the glittery purple wrapping paper I’ll NEVER KNOW). Last year I risked some fabric ribbon at 90% off, and it is so gorgeous I’m definitely going to try to get more of it this year.

4. When do you incorporate all the new stuff into the household? We still have boxes and laundry baskets all over the place, each containing a person’s new possessions. I half-heartedly started to put away my new stuff, but then I accidentally “put away” (IN MY MOWF) a Lindt Santa and there went my motivation. I’d like to avoid what happened last year: when I was cleaning for my mother-in-law’s autumn visit, I found the children’s stocking bags still sitting in their rooms. That was in October.

I was so busy today. So busy! And when Paul got home from work I kept trying to impress him with stories of how busy I was today, but he kept not acting impressed.

Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where Apu says he once worked so many hours in a row at the Kwik-E-Mart, he thought he was a hummingbird of some sort? And then they show the Kwik-E-Mart security tape, and first it’s just showing empty/silent store, and then Apu reeeeeeuwwwws by on his tiptoes with his elbows up like hummingbird wings, and then it’s empty/silent store again, and then Apu reeeuwws past again from the other direction? That’s how I was today. Reeeeeeuuwwww! Reeeeeuwww! The children could barely find me, I was such a blur!

First thing in the morning I made muffins, and that was really just showing off foolish, because the children could easily have had cereal, and I had a TON of other stuff to get done. But the bananas had turned and were at the perfect mashing moment, and there was a footie-sleepered, plump-tummed, morning-haired baby saying “Fuffins! Fuffins!” and so I made fuffins. Which no one except Mr. Fuffins liked because we didn’t have quite enough banana so I topped it off with a little teeny bit of whole-berry cranberry sauce. There was, like, one cranberry per muffin, and everyone except Henry picked apart their muffin suspiciously, saying, “What is this BERRY thing here?”

Then I made a bunch of stuff I just realized I can’t tell you about because it’s for gifts, and in fact I’ve said too much already. Well, trust me that I made TONS of stuff. Like, FOUR recipes, that kind of tons. And wrapped and sorted and ribboned, and put out a treat bag for the mail carrier.

Meanwhile, I had the washer and dryer going. I know! But I’d realized that I’d once again neglected to plan ahead, so all the kids’ red and/or green shirts were in the laundry from being worn earlier in the week.

Then I spent a couple of hours….oh, shoot, that’s secret too. Not even INTERESTING secret, in fact BORING secret, but I guess I can’t tell about that either. Suffice it to say it was a long and boring chore-like activity.

And I wrapped a couple of presents! And tidied up a little! And made dinner for the children! Very busy!

Man, no wonder Paul was kind of dropping off.

Well, the upshot is that it was a busy, busy day, with a happy buzzingly productive feeling of “It’s Christmas Eve!” running through it, and only a little bit of “OMG EVERYONE GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN AND LET ME WORK ON THE JOY OF GOR-DURNED CHRISTMAS!!”

I hope you all have an excellent holiday, and that you will also have a pleasant and reeeuwwwwy 2009, which I have GOT to stop writing as 2006 or people are going to worry.

Dear William,

You left an unopened container of chocolate milk in your lunch box all weekend. Probably I should have checked, since you are only in second grade. But do you smell that smell? That is why you have a paper lunch bag today.

Love, Mommy

Dear Rollover Ad,

I did not roll over you. Stop pretending like you think I did. That is so annoying, I am already boycotting your maker.

Love, Swistle

Dear “Recipe-Ready” Chopped Pecans,

You call that chopped? Think again, friends.

Love, Swistle

Dear Mean Anonymous Commenters,

That is not going to look good on your permanent record. Also: sometimes you don’t notice you’ve been automatically logged in.

Love, Swistle

Dear Paul’s Sister,

Sweetheart, Christmas is a completely predictable holiday. It doesn’t get SPRUNG on us: it’s on the calendar from Day 1, and it’s not until Day 359, so there’s plenty of warning. When you mail the kids’ presents too late to arrive for Christmas, and you do it EVERY YEAR, and you KNOW they arrive too late, and you write to say you hope they won’t arrive too late even though you mailed them parcel post on December 23rd…well, I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but doesn’t any alternate plan suggest itself to you?

Love, Swistle-in-Law

Dear Biological Clock,

OMG SHUT IT. Haven’t I done enough for you? We were a good team, but it is OVER. Retire to Arizona or something.

Love, Swistle

Dear Paul,

Me and my biological clock, we are waiting for diamonds. Or maybe a puppy. Or, I don’t know. SOMETHING.

Love, Swistle

Dear Rob,

Think about what you want to say before you start saying it. I am trying to be a patient, listening, here-for-you kind of mother, but it is hard for me to focus on The Moment when you are saying, “Hey, Mommy. Um…when I….um….I mean, when YOU….um…. thing. Um, the other day, when YOU said that WE….um.” Think it out first, cupcake.

Love, Mommy

Dear Coffee,

The idea is that you’re supposed to get me through the day, and then punch the time clock. If your shift starts at 7:00 a.m., I don’t need you here at 11:00 p.m. No overtime will be granted. Kthanx for your understanding.

Love, Swistle

Dear Snow,

You prevented my friend’s 40th birthday present from getting to her on time. Birthdays are always important, but especially decade birthdays. You and I are no longer on speaking terms.

Love, Swistle

Dear Dr. Seuss,

If you have to totally make up words in order to make your books have rhythm and rhyme, maybe you should try a different writing style. Not everyone has the same talents, and that’s okay.

Love, Swistle

Today I saw this Fossil handbag, in “Stripe” as shown here, for $30 (down from $88) at T. J. Maxx. I did not buy it, even though I need a new purse and was in fact shopping for a purse, and I had three reasons:

1. I have never spent $30 on a purse. I’ve always bought them at, like, 75% off at Target for less than $10. And right at the expensive holiday season didn’t seem like the right time to grow as a person in this area.

2. I worried it wasn’t….Swistleish.

3. I wasn’t sure if I LIKED IT liked it, or if I just felt I SHOULD like it.

The question is: Did I make a mistake? Should I go back for it?

The winner of the T. J. Maxx or Marshalls gift card contest is Anna of the 9:30 p.m. comment! Congrats, Anna! Email me your address (swistle at gmail dot com) and I’ll get the card on its way!

********

I’ve hesitated for three days to link to this, because I’m afraid/hopeful that you guys are the type of niceys who would be happy to click through for a good cause, and poor Pseudostoops will end up broke and sorry she ever chose to do what I think is a great idea: giving 50 cents to charity for every comment she gets. She’s doing a series of posts, one for each of five charities, and I commented each of the first three days so I’ve cost her a cool dollar-fifty.

Today is Day Four, and she’s had ANOTHER donor offer to match donations if she gets to over $50 (which would be 50 comments, since she starts at a $25 guaranteed donation), and so I’m going to take her at her word that she WANTS people to empty her pockets. So if you’d like to, click through and leave a comment, and you’ll donate 50 cents to charity without having to actually give up 50 cents—and if she gets over 50 comments, you’ll be donating a dollar without having to actually give up a dollar. Awesome.

My mom and I have been shopping together for a long time. We have several different shopping destinations, we have a particular route we take through each store, and we have particular places we stop for lunch. It’s all established. But there has been a change. It is such a huge and significant change, my mom still hasn’t adjusted even though it’s been well over a year now.

My mom loves Marshalls, T.J.Maxx, and HomeGoods, but all three stores used to send me off the cliff of despair. I used to go through picking up a picture frame, a baby outfit, a kitchen utensil, a book—but then I always ended up putting everything back and leaving with nothing except a disappointed, unfulfilled feeling. It happened so often, I developed an aversion, and my mom ended up shopping there only when her fashionable friends wanted to look for clothes.

I can’t explain what happened to change my mind. Did it start with the mother-in-law dishes? I think maybe it did. I was looking for some Good Dishes to use for company, and I wanted them to be something my mother-in-law would approve of—but something I’d enjoy using, too, and something fun to buy. Since my mother-in-law and I, ah, differ in our personal styles, this task seemed a challenge. I checked Target: meh. Walmart: meh. The mall: meh meh meh meh meh Food Court meh meh.

My mom wanted to check T.J.Maxx and Marshalls, and I was resistant. But there they were at T.J.Maxx, the dishes of my dreams:

(image from Amazon.com)

Johnson Brothers British Castles pattern. From ENGLAND, which makes everything automatically better. And perfect in every way: definitely Good Dishes, but fine for everyday use; definitely to my tastes, but also to my mother-in-law’s. But check out the PRICE: even on Amazon.com, $120 for service for four, and that’s down from $200. YIPE. Go on, guess how much they were at T.J.Maxx. Go on. No, I’ll just tell you: $56 for service for four. Still a pretty penny, but about the same price as the NON-England sets I saw at Target and Walmart and didn’t even LIKE.

The next time we went is I think when I found the super-soft blankies Henry liked, and the next time after that is when I found the $2 measuring spoons that are my reigning favorites, and then I found a really pretty magazine holder:

So then me and T.J.Maxx were B.F.Fxx, pretty much. I still wasn’t much keen on Marshalls. But then—I found the Swistle-colored purse accessories. I still LOVE those. I also found two Melissa and Doug puzzles there, and a Maisy DVD, and a pair of Converse tennies for William, and a pretty mirror, and…well. You know how it goes: it starts out as an innocent flirtation, and before you know it you’re two-timing Target. Or three-timing. Or four-timing, once I’d found a British Castles serving platter, a set of juice glasses, three pictures for Elizabeth’s room, a Hello Kitty journal, and a pack of Maisy notecards at HomeGoods.

And so a year has quickly passed, and meanwhile my house has changed. Take a look at this corner of my living room:

I have drawn an arrow to each thing that was purchased from T. J. Maxx or Marshalls. Metal antique-finish oval decorative mirror on chain? ARROW. Old-fashioned drawing of lady with parasol? ARROW. Metal antique-finish round clock? ARROW. Old-fashioned drawing of birdie? ARROW. Nothing was more than $10. Oh, wait—the mirror might have been $11. But the bird picture was only $5. (Also, could you please tell that FERN THING to BACK OFF?)

This is the last day to order from Amazon.com with the free shipping and still get it before Christmas. If you still have some shopping to do, I suggest waggling your eyebrows in the direction of my new flings.

Edit: Okay, I feel a little dumb because I was thinking T.J.Maxx and Marshalls were just Remarkably Similar (also: I thought “Marshalls” had an apostrophe in it), but it turns out they are, like, basically the same store, owned by the same people. And those people explained it to me very politely and then asked if I would like to give away a $25 gift card to either T.J.Maxx or Marshalls, and I know you guys are not exactly rolling in the big bucks so I said I would.

Normally I wouldn’t make a contest over so quick, but some of you are probably worrying about holiday shopping and so I want to get the gift card to you before the holidays if possible, and so I’m only going to have the contest until tomorrow morning. If you live near a T.J.Maxx and/or a Marshalls, leave a comment on this post by 8:00 a.m. U.S. Pacific Time on December 18th, and tell me which store you’d rather have a gift card to. I’ll use a random number generator to choose a winner and we’ll get that gift card on its way.

I know you guys like you some Arrested Development, so OMG the complete series box set is on sale for $28.99, with free shipping in time for Christmas. Beat THAT.