Dear Santa

Dear Santa,

It's been many years since I've written a Christmas wish list, but I feel the need for some magical intervention for some of these requests. Everyone knows you're magic, and can therefore maybe help me out with a few things I would really like this year that might not be available at my local Sears. Namely:

1) The ability to sleep past seven in the morning. Because there is nothing more irritating than A. taking Cubby away on a Sunday morning so that Mommy doesn't have to stumble out of bed and wrestle clothes on the little maniac at six a.m. only for Mommy to lie there wishing she could just enjoy this one morning off and GO BACK TO SLEEP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. So, a little help here would be nice.

2) Proper circulation in my hands and feet. You can blame my mother for this. The woman is famous for wearing long johns in Tucson, Arizona and having hands and feet so cold they would stun a corpse. I'm not as bad as she is, but my hands, feet, and nose pretty much stay cold from November until May. This is a serious liability at Blackrock. So amp up that blood supply to my extremities, okay, Santa? Awesome.

3) A dishwasher. This would also be on the MiL's list, I suspect, since she actually does most of the dishes in our house. But when she isn't here, I do them. And DAMN, I am SICK of doing all our dishes by hand. We make SO MANY DISHES in a day, what with A., Cubby, and I all eating three meals a day at home, most of those actual cooked meals. I realize that a dishwasher is an item most people can procure without magical intervention, but most people don't live in 160-year-old house with an electrical system dating to the 1920s (people just didn't use much electricity then, and thus didn't have the amount of current available to them that a modern house might have) and barely enough hot water in the winter to keep the occupants of the house bathed and presentable.

So first we need more electrical capacity, then we need more hot water--so you'd better add a new hot water heater to this list--and then we need a complete reconfiguration of our kitchen to make a spot where a dishwasher might actually fit without blocking one of the three doors that lead in and out of that room.

Maybe I should have made that last one into a few separate requests, but I'm sure you follow.

4) A guaranteed nap for Cubby during the day. Nap times have gotten pretty sketchy lately, and there has been more than one day recently in which I have gotten all of zero naps out of him. He's too young to stop napping. Or rather, his mother is too old and tired for him to stop napping. I need a break sometime between six a.m. and seven p.m. Morning, afternoon, I don't care, as long as I get an hour in there sometime when I can go to the bathroom without a toddler in attendance whose greatest joys in life are turning on the faucet and turning off the lights. Peeing in the dark with the water running is not my idea of a fun time.

5) An immediate cease and desist order for all the damn spiders in my house that are spinning webs with such abandon that the very day I manage to sweep them all away, I find a new one in progress. Although, I suppose I should be grateful none of our spiders seem able to spell as well as Charlotte. I don't think they'd have anything very nice to write out for me.

6) And while I'm at it, peace on earth and goodwill toward men; women; children; and all cute, furry creatures great and small.

Thank you in advance for your assistance,

Kristin