Somebody’s got a birthday comin’ up…!

Yup, me!  When?  Don’t ask.  Soon, maybe.

Preamble to this year’s Master Gift Wishy-Wishy List:

In one of Stuart McLean’s wonderful Vinyl Cafe stories, he talks about how Dave and his friend Kenny Wong (of Wong’s Scottish Meat Pies – read the books!) celebrate each other’s birthdays.  Any day of the year can be their birthday EXCEPT the actual day, provided they give each other enough notice (maybe two weeks’?).  I don’t know if an actual calendar year has to have gone past since the last one – something like that would stand to reason.

And when I was listening to the story (you can listen to them, too!), I thought, “hey, that’s perfect!”  I should do that with my birthday… but instead, I just sulk until the actual date gets too close or my mother gets too insistent, and then I pick a day to celebrate, and done.  It always feels anticlimactic.

(yes, this IS a 40-year-old woman moaning about birthdays… please feel free to skip this post, as it sure doesn’t highlight moi at moi’s finest)

Last year, in the name of positive visualization, I posted a birthday wish list, which actually worked VERY well.  Even some of the items I thought would never come through – a laptop! – actually were gifted to me over the course of the year.  And some I have bought myself, of course.

I actually already started a wish list on my bread blog, listing all the bakey-type things that I don’t have yet.  So what else do I want this year – other than baking stuff???  (Elisheva thinks I’m simply deranged, requesting kitchen appliances for birthdays etc)

Hand blender!!!  Doesn’t have to be fancy, doesn’t have to be Cuisinart (though the one shown here actually IS).  What it does have to be is a workhorse.  I use this thing all the time and my old one died a few weeks ago after, well, more than twenty years.  Sigh.  Actually, it didn’t die, but the blade was misaligned and it was shredding plastic into our food and screeching every time I used it.  It was melted in places, warped, stained, battle-scarred… and now it is gone, and I am stuck blendering our lovely puréed soups (like tonight’s!) in batches in the blender.  It’s a good blender, but many soups take six batches.  Blah.

Looking over last year’s list, I do still want a bench.  I have a really cheap one, which is great – well, which is okay.  But if I were being honest, a nicer bench would definitely make happier the kids who have to sit on it every day.  I know, I know… that’s FURNITURE, not a gift, as such.  But in the interest of positive visualization, I’m leaving it on here.

Now, I want to be very clear:  I’m quite grateful for the headphones I got last year.  VERY.  (Thank you, Ted!!!  I love them!)  But they have made it onto the list again for the simple reason that I feel extremely tethered by the current headphones.  They have a very long cord, but a very long cord is NOT the same as dishwashing freedom, as any chained dog can tell you.  (I don’t listen to music much at home, but free library audiobooks are what get me through the hours of dishwashing)

Here’s something I don’t want anymore!  Even though we didn’t end up with a new BBQ, I realized that if I’m serious about this aliyah thing, I’d rather stick with the small one we have than spend a fortune on something that will be too big to cheaply move.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  Here are a few more things I have found myself wishing about lately…