Fretting About Phone Calls and Taxes

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This whole post is just FRET FRET FRET, in case you want to go read something else. I would not remotely blame you. Maybe you would enjoy Bibliomama’s funny post about subbing in the school office? Kids say funny things about blood; and she forgets to ask a teacher’s name and has to come up with a description of him for the principal on the fly. Or perhaps you would rather read today’s Questionable Content, which is an accurate rendition of how I send care packages.

On to the frets. I kept waking up every morning with a sick adrenaline feeling about phone calls I needed to make, but then Not Making the Phone Calls, which started to seem as if I was deliberately stretching out something unpleasant to make the unpleasantness last as long as possible, which struck me as stupid, so today I Made Two of the Phone Calls, and also discovered it was too soon to make the others.

First I called the dentist and made appointments for all of us for August, by which time I have HOPE of us being vaccinated—or at least that a lot of OTHER people will be vaccinated, including presumably the dentist and staff. Or if things don’t look good as we approach those dates, I can reschedule. But at least the appointments are MADE, and I will not wake up tomorrow imagining everyone else having the same idea, so that the receptionist says “Oooo, yeah, no, everyone else is all of a sudden trying to come back too? so we’re booking into February? Maybe more like March.”

One reason I was so stressed about the call, by the way, is that there are just so MANY of us. With things like this (appointments we need seven of, or in this case six because Paul makes his own; fast-food orders for seven) I fret that I should do it in two separate batches so it won’t be So Much, but that just seems weird. Still, the receptionist always says things like “Hang on, let me write all this down” and “Okay, now WHO’S next?” or whatever. Does she do that if someone calls with a family of four instead of a family of seven? My guess is no.

(Wait, hang on a second: I am sensing that one of you is, RIGHT THIS MINUTE, thinking of informing me that my two eldest kids can actually make their OWN appointments, you know. Oh, girl, you KNOW that I know! And one sweet day, not long from now, we will transition to that. That day is not today, but you can bet your boots I DO have it in mind, and I look forward to it the way I looked forward to my kids being able to fasten their own seatbelts.)

Then I called Elizabeth’s allergist: she has to have an annual appointment/paperwork session with him or the school won’t let her attend in person. My working assumption is that there is a good chance she will be going back to in-person school in the fall, so I wanted to get that appointment made for August too—but when I called, they said they weren’t booking out that far yet. Which reminded me that that’s the same situation with the pediatrician: those appointments were on my list to make, but the pediatrician’s office only books 2-3 months ahead, and I think that’s the case with the eye doctor too, so if I want August I can’t book until May or June. SWEET RELIEF. NO MORE PHONE CALLS FOR NOW.

Now I can go on to worrying about my taxes. I never know when it’s safe to assume that all the paperwork has arrived. I remember hearing/reading that most forms have to be sent to taxpayers by January 31st, which means it would be pretty safe to assume it had all arrived by mid-February, but we have some investment thingies that send paperwork much later than that for reasons that appear to be reasonable/allowed. And then last year, the person doing our taxes emailed and say “Hey, did you guys do an IRA contribution this year?” and we HAD but we didn’t have any paperwork for that, and maybe paperwork isn’t SENT for that? Maybe we just have to know to tell her? I don’t know. My lack of knowing is one of the reasons we finally started having someone else do our taxes, but it doesn’t resolve all the issues, because she only knows what I tell her (or, with time, what we did/had in previous years), so I can still make mistakes. I am trying not to worry about it too much. It’s not like I’m going to fail to remember something BIG. Probably.

[P.S. I am so glad some of you are mentioning that we have to claim the stimulus payments because I DID NOT KNOW THAT and WE DID NOT RECEIVE PAPERWORK. Now I am low-grade panicking because I don’t know what we received for the first payment, or when, or how to find out. (It was sent on a scammy-looking debit card that turned out to be legit.) (Okay, whew, Paul was able to find out how much it was.)]

[P.P.S. I am still locked out of my Target account.]

Grocery Shopping Report; Galentine’s Day Gift Idea for Future Years

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I went grocery shopping yesterday. They were having an issue with chicken nuggets again: almost the whole case was filled with one single brand of one single variety of chicken strips.

They had SOFTSOAP SOAP REFILLS. I have not seen those for nearly a year. They’ve had an Arm & Hammer brand refill that I’d never seen/noticed before the pandemic, but I tried it and didn’t like the scents at all (and they LINGERED ON THE SKIN), and I know that sounds a little picky, and if there’d been no other choice I would have used them and barely even complained at all, but I DID have other choices, and so I went with those instead, but they were more expensive than buying Softsoap refills, so anyway it was very happy to see them available again.

They had NAME-BRAND DISINFECTING WIPES. I have seen those only a few times in the last year. And I didn’t buy any: I have been scanning for them EVERY TIME, feeling anxious every time I didn’t find them—but when they had them, I thought, “Eh, we don’t need any.” Pandemic  Mental Weirdness.

They had lots of paper towels, enough to have a bunch of packages sitting on the floor of the aisle. Plenty of toilet paper.

The canned fruit is still weird: shelf after shelf of cranberry sauce and pineapple, maybe a few cans each of some odd varieties like Triple Cherry Fruit Cocktail, but nothing else.

Still no Grape-Nuts, but I’d found them at Target right before I lost the ability to order from Target (STILL NOT RESTORED BTW, WHAT IS THE EVERLASTING HOLD-UP HERE), and fortunately had ordered several boxes so we were all set.

Everything else seemed pretty normal. Oh: they don’t seem to have cut daffodils this year, at least not yet. Other years, they sell little packs of a dozen stems with still-closed flowers for $1.79, which makes them an amazing cheap date: I’d buy one pack each time I went grocery shopping (which used to be twice a week), taking out wilted ones as they occurred, so I’d always have a nice full bouquet in various stages of bloom. Anyway, I haven’t seen them yet this year. They did have cut tulips, but those are $6 a bunch, and also the cats chew on the leaves.

 

I want to tell you what I did for Galentine’s Day gifties this year! I couldn’t tell you before, because some of my friends read this blog and I didn’t want to ruin the surprise! But they were so extremely fun to put together, and I was happy with how they turned out.

Normally I feel as if most of us already have PLENTY of mugs, in fact TOO MANY mugs, and so mugs are kind of an iffy gift idea. But when I saw these mugs, I changed my mind:

(image from Target.com)

I wanted one for myself, and I REALLY DO have too many mugs, and I am at the point where I need to GET RID OF a mug if I get a new mug, so anyway that is how much I loved these heart mugs.

I put four 2-packs in my cart: there are eight women in my wine-and-appetizers group, including me, so that works out perfectly. I felt like I was really overdoing it to order in mid-January, and maybe I’d have another idea I wanted to do instead, so I thought I’d just wait until the next time I was doing a Target Pick-Up and add them to that order—BUT THEN THEY SOLD OUT FOR PICK-UP AND SOLD OUT IN THE STORE. In MID-JANUARY! So then I ordered by mail, and thank goodness I did, because later that same day they were SOLD OUT FOR MAIL ORDER!!! In, I remind you, MID-JANUARY.

And then they arrived, and one mug was broken. It wasn’t a total disaster: I still had enough for all seven of the women in my group; I just wouldn’t have a mug for me. This was very sad, especially because I WANTED to have matching mugs with all of them. Thus began a Shopping Obsession that lasted a number of days: I would check Target’s site multiple times per day, hoping the mugs would come back into stock. One day they DID!!!—and by the time I’d gotten my cart up to the minimum $35 for shipping, THE MUGS WERE OUT OF STOCK AGAIN. That was a dark day.

From then on, I kept a cart POISED AND READY TO GO, so that if the mugs ever came back again I could order IMMEDIATELY. And that day DID COME, and I ordered IMMEDIATELY—and then worried: what if they both arrived broken?? I had ONE mug to spare, but not two! I should have ordered an extra set. I will do that now. I formed another order, feeling ridiculous—AND THE MUGS WERE SOLD OUT AGAIN, AND THEY NEVER CAME BACK INTO STOCK AGAIN AFTER THAT. Happily, the two mugs I’d ordered arrived unbroken, so I had one for each of the women in my group, one for me, AND an extra, which I sent to my sister-in-law and it did not break in the mail!

So that is the story of the mugs. In the meantime, I thought about what to put IN the mugs. I started by putting in one individually-wrapped teabag each from some of the many, many kinds of tea I’ve acquired. (If I hadn’t already had all those teas, I probably would have bought a few kinds and put in a couple bags of each; I probably would have gotten the fun/yum/interesting ones like glazed lemon loaf, vanilla bean macaron, and wild sweet orange.) Then I added one packet of Swiss Miss Lucky Charms hot chocolate, one packet of cinnamon hot chocolate, and one package each of Starbucks Via instant French Roast and Italian Roast. The coffees and the cinnamon cocoa are sold in 8-packs, which was so perfect; I highly recommend forming a friend group of eight, to take advantage of this for future Galentine’s Days. The Swiss Miss was in a 6-pack, so I bought two boxes, and then I had enough for my four favorite children as well. (Actually I sent one each to my niece and nephew, and put the spare packets in the cupboard to let nature take care of it.)


(I wish I’d put one pink and one red mug in front, so it was easier to see both kinds. BYGONES.)

I put all the little drinks packets into the mugs, then put the mugs into little Valentine’s Day gift bags I’d bought on clearance last year, with a sheet of Valentine’s Day tissue paper also bought on clearance last year. Then I tucked in individual packets of cookies: Pepperidge Farm Mint Milanos and Famous Amos. And then a few Dove chocolates, just to fill in the cracks.

I was going for sort of a “hot drink and little treats”/”tea party” concept, and I was happy with how it turned out, and my only regret was not ordering MORE MUGS and doing MORE OF THESE for MORE FRIENDS. I was thinking only of my wine-and-appetizers friend group because that’s the group that’s done Galentine’s Day parties in the past—but I also have OTHER friends, and it would have been fun to drop off little gift bags at their house, too! Especially in a pandemic! Well. There is no Happy Story of Happiness I cannot find an element of regret/sorrow in, apparently.

Boat Dream; Still Locked

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I dreamed last night that I bought a truly enormous boat, like a multi-level boat with numerous rooms/cabins, and I invited extended family to join me on a delightful boat vacation, without realizing until we arrived at the boat that (1) I did not know how to drive a boat, nor did I know the correct verb for driving a boat; (2) I had not taken into account various Important Boat Issues such as How To Get the Boat to/into the Water; (3) I had not taken into account various boat-related expenses such as storage, docking, supplies, fuel, crew; (4) I had not realized I would need to NAME the boat, and apparently the naming had to be done Right Now before we could put the boat into/onto the water. (I named it “The Cautious Optimist” and then fretted that I should have chosen something else.)

I was so, so relieved to wake up without a boat. Even now, hours later, I keep having an anxious unhappy feeling and wondering what it is, and then realizing I’m worrying about the boat situation.

My Target account is still locked. I called again this morning, because the person I talked to on Sunday said it would be a couple days, and I didn’t want to find out I’d ended up locked much longer than necessary by not calling back. I pretended I was a person who “just picks up the phone” and I called after I had the impulse but before I could change my mind. The person I talked to read the notes on the situation, and then said she would leave a message on the desk of the person who is supposed to be handling this, letting her know I’d called. She said it CAN take up to seven business days to fix something like this, so I shouldn’t worry yet. Well clearly I AM going to worry, considering I am still a little worried about a boat I bought in a dream, but it’s still nice to be told there’s no need. (No need “YET.”)

Still Locked

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Still nothing from Target on my locked account. It’s fine. It’s fine! They locked it on a Sunday; nothing is going to get fixed on a Sunday. Then Monday was a federal holiday. So we won’t worry. Even though some of the things I was including with care packages are now on clearance and will probably sell out before I can order again. It’s fine! We won’t think about it!

I HAVE heard from Target on other topics:

This is the first batch of care packages! Or rather, this is a bunch of individually-wrapped items from the first batch of care packages: notice how many of those emails say that “Your item” (singular) is out for delivery today. If you receive a box with, like, one or two items in it, that is not your entire care package, it is one of what will apparently be quite a few installments of your care package! If you chose for someone else to receive the package, you may want to let them know that this is the way it’s going down.

Oh! Speaking of which: IF AN ITEM ARRIVES BROKEN OR BADLY DAMAGED, do let me know. I can see how that would be an awkward thing to decide what to do about, so I am telling you ahead of time: DO LET ME KNOW. I can think of few things as disheartening as having a cruddy Valentine’s Day, and looking forward to a comforting care package, and then having the care package arrive and things inside are broken/ruined/unusable. We have had situations such as a jar of pesto leaked, a bag of chips exploded, a mug broken, a bag of rice exploded, a bag of GROUND COFFEE EXPLODED AND COATING EVERY BLESSED THING. These things happen, and Target is good about sending replacement items. You may have to wipe and sweep coffee grounds off everything, but at least you will get a new bag of coffee.

Happy Pandemic Valentine’s Day!

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Happy Pandemic Valentine’s Day! I would like to share with you on this festive occasion the advice of my glamorous, charming aunt, who is in her 70s and absolutely still Has It; and who told me, when I asked if she was dating anyone, that she was not interested in “taking care of some old man,” and advised me to cultivate and invest in my female friendships. I have taken that advice to heart.

We are going to be taking a little break from the Galentine’s Day care package fulfillments: I’d sent 25 of them when the “Sorry, we had to cancel your order” notices began coming in from Target. Luckily, so far it seems it is only the 25th order that was canceled, plus an order I’d placed for myself (I was jealous of the packages I was sending out). I contacted Target Online Chat which, after a brief chat, referred me to an actual phone number I had to call, WHICH I DID DO and if that is not proof of my love for you I don’t know what is. I talked to a very nice customer service person who looked over my order history and said yeah, she could tell me right now this was going to have to go to a review process, and that that’s going to take a few days. Which, fair: I WANT them to be concerned if my account suddenly sends 25 packages to addresses it has never sent packages to before.

So! I have every confidence that the situation will soon be straightened out: Target and I BOTH want me to be spending lots of your money on their site. But it may take a little longer than expected. If you were in the FIRST GROUP, the group of thirty winners, then 4/5ths of you should start getting your packages over the next days/week or so (and, incidentally, an AMUSING number of items are apparently being sent out individually-packaged) (seriously, someone is going to receive a single-serve package of hot chocolate, sent all on its own), while 1/5th of you will be waiting awhile longer. If you are in the SECOND group, the group of fourteen additional winners, I have not yet even opened your emails! So don’t worry when nothing arrives. And in the meantime: CULTIVATE YOUR FEMALE FRIENDSHIPS.

Happy Pandemic Galentine’s Day!

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Happy Galentine’s Day! I am drinking out of my festive mug!

This holiday is increasingly fun for me with each passing year, but I think we can agree that this year really takes the cake. I spent THE ENTIRE DAY yesterday working on various aspects of the care packages, and I don’t know if I can adequately describe the happy energized feeling. ALL DAY LONG I felt the buzz of Happy Industry, combined with the fun of Getting To Choose Gifts (if gift-giving is not one of your love languages, this may be baffling; you will have to trust me), combined with the extreme brain chemicals of having so many people being so kind to other people. And I am nowhere near done! More on this later in the post.

There are two anxious elements, because there are always going to be anxious elements. One is that I am worried my organizational system will fail me and I will mess this up somehow; the other is that I feel like I need to HURRY. For the former, my Coping Thought is that we will figure this out, and if something falls through the cracks (an email gets sent to spam, someone gets chosen twice and I don’t notice right away, I choose too many or too few winners, etc.) we will simply fish it back out. For the latter, my Coping Thought is that these care packages were ALWAYS going to be belated! Even when it was just ONE package, it wasn’t going to arrive in time. There’s no actual rush! I will just take it bird by bird! (I am not sure how familiar that phrase is. Paul had never heard of it. It’s from an Anne Lamott book where she tells a story of her brother being overwhelmed by a project that had to be on some overwhelming number of birds, like thirty or fifty or something, and their dad said something like “Just take it bird by bird, son.”)

And there is no sense in RUSHING through something Rare and Fun, when going a little slower means wringing every single good brain chemical out of the experience! So yesterday I sent out the thirty emails to the thirty winners, and then I started going through the responses in the order they came in, putting together the first care package for the first respondent and so on, and meanwhile my inbox looks like this, except there’s screen after screen of it:

Target sends an order confirmation, but then also sends a shipping notification for every single part of the order that ships, and then sends another email to say the package will be delivered the following day, and then sends another email to say that the package is out for delivery that day, and then sends a final email to say the package has been delivered. So far, most of the packages I’ve put together look like they’ll be shipped in approximately three separate boxes per order, so the notifications are going to POUR IN: approximately thirteen per care package. And it was pretty thrilling how quickly things started shipping: by the time I was working on the tenth package, items from the first package were starting to ship!

BUT THERE IS MORE. Because the entire day, while I was working on the packages, MORE DONATIONS WERE COMING IN. MORE DONATIONS. MORE. I don’t even KNOW at this point how many more winners we have, but AT LEAST FOURTEEN MORE, because ONE SINGLE PERSON sent enough for FOURTEEN PACKAGES, and then there are ALSO more emails from PayPal I haven’t even OPENED yet. So here is the task list for the days ahead:

• I will choose AT LEAST FOURTEEN more winners. My goal is to choose those first fourteen today, and add their names to the original post. There WILL BE more winners than that, but it’s a little tricky to figure out exactly how many, so I will keep choosing more winners until all the money that has been sent in is gone, and then I will choose one more winner (because the original plan was that I was going to pay for one myself).

• I will EMAIL those new winners in as many batches as it takes.

• I will go bird-by-bird through the responses to those emails, taking as much time as each package needs to be FUN.

 

I woke up this morning SUFFUSED WITH JOY at the thought of continuing this project. Last night I had to force myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I was halfway through a care package and felt like I should maybe rush to finish it so I could check it off the list, but instead I just left it where it was on the “don’t rush if it makes it Less Fun” principle—and this morning when I woke up I felt so HAPPY that I could spend more time on it!

EXTREMELY FUN DEVELOPMENT

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If you didn’t catch what happened with the Belated Galentine’s Day Care Package thing, what happened was I got a message from commenter Jen, saying that she wasn’t into Valentine’s Day at all but that everyone needed a little sunshine in their lives, so could she sponsor a second package for the giveaway so there could be TWO winners. And I thought that was an extremely fun idea, and I added it to the post and mentioned it on Twitter.

AND IT SNOWBALLED. I spent the rest of the evening adding additional sponsors and updating the post and Twitter, and then I got up this morning and there are MORE. I haven’t even gone through my email yet so I don’t know exactly how many, but before I handle that, I wanted to update everyone on the situation in case anyone else wanted to participate and would have been sad to have missed it. IF YOU WANT TO SPONSOR A BELATED GALENTINE’S DAY PACKAGE, I’m planning on $25-35 per package (that’s the minimum for things to ship from Target). You can sponsor an entire package, or you can put something TOWARD a package and I can combine them. (PayPal: swistle at gmail dot com.)

I could hardly sleep last night, this is so fun.

UPDATE: Okay, cutting it off now! We got enough for THIRTY care packages!! Winners have been chosen!

BY THE WAY! The PayPal payments don’t come with the sender’s email address! And so that is why you may not have gotten an email from me saying THANK YOU SO MUCH, but I sent those words to you WITH MY HEART.

Galentine’s Day Care Package Giveaway

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Clearly I should have had this idea sooner but I JUST DIDN’T, and I think this is a situation where it’s better late than never: if you have a crummy Valentine’s Day, you can at least be LOOKING FORWARD to something arriving soon (or, since I’m going to use Target, like eight separately-boxed somethings).

I don’t want to oversell this. When I write the care package posts, I list EVERYTHING I might CHOOSE FROM, and I think it gives the idea that I would send ALL those things! To manage your expectations (TM Texxie’s…former?…manager?…I think?), I would be planning to spend $25-35 of the Blog Ads Fund, and you know how easy that is to spend at Target. And it probably won’t be very hearts/valentines-y, since almost everything of that sort isn’t available for shipping, and I’m going to ship directly.

Well, I don’t want to UNDERsell it, either! I am going to have fun choosing things, and I don’t know yet what I’ll choose but probably one or two of the sorts of things I buy impulsively, along with a few of the things I’ve listed as care package ideas in the past (I will ask the winner about food allergies, scent sensitivities, etc.). Probably some soap and/or cleaning supplies because that’s apparently my love language now. I’ll go through my old Target orders and find things I ordered for myself and liked. Maybe a book! Maybe I’ll buy us matching note cards, or matching mugs! Maybe you are doing the keto diet too, so I will send you all keto treats, or maybe you are absolutely not doing the keto diet so I will send you all the things I eat on my days off! WHO KNOWS!

The entry rules are NOT THE TYPICAL, so pay attention. This is open to U.S. mailing addresses only, AND it has to be:

• people who are not going to have a good Valentine’s Day, for whatever reason. Telling the reason won’t improve your chances in MY drawing (THOUGH SEE NEXT BULLET POINT), but it makes for a good and interesting comments section full of commiseration and empathy [edited to add: there are some comments about feeling selfish to enter oneself when there is another option—please PERISH THE THOUGHT, this is the PRIMARY option, this is supposed to be a giveaway FOR YOU; the other option is so that people who are going to have a good Valentine’s Day, through no fault of their own, still get to enter if they want to!]

OR

• people who are going to have a perfectly nice Valentine’s Day, but want to win the package on someone else’s behalf. THIS CAN INCLUDE OTHER COMMENTERS. So for example, let’s say you are going to spend Valentine’s Day exactly how you like to (happily celebrating or ignoring), but you have a friend or family member you want me to send the package to instead, I can do that; OR if you want to win so that YOU can choose a commenter from the comments section for me to send it to, you can enter. You don’t have to choose ahead of time! You can enter, and then choose a friend/commenter AFTER you win!

 

Because I thought of this so late, we’re going to do this fast, and I will do the drawing tomorrow (Friday) morning sometime.

 

UPDATE: Commenter Jen has offered to sponsor an additional $25 Swistle-chosen Belated Galentine’s Day care package, so there will now be TWO winners!

UPDATE: Another commenter has offered to sponsor two additional $25 Swistle-chosen Belated Galentine’s Day care packages, so there will now be FOUR winners!

UPDATE: Another commenter has offered to sponsor another package, so there will now be FIVE winners!

UPDATE: Commenter Maggie has offered to sponsor another one, so now there will be SIX winners!

UPDATE: Another commenter!! SEVEN WINNERS!!

UPDATE: Kathleenicanrah has offered to sponsor another, so now there will be EIGHT winners!!

UPDATE: Commenter Julia is sponsoring two more packages, so now there will be TEN winners!!

UPDATE: Commenter Kristen is sponsoring another package, so now there will be ELEVEN winners!!

UPDATE: Another commenter sponsored A DOZEN packages, so now there will be TWENTY-THREE winners!!

UPDATE: Commenter Susan sponsored another package, so now there will be TWENTY-FOUR winners!!

UPDATE: Commenter Suzanne sponsored another package, so now we are at TWENTY-FIVE!!

UPDATE: Commenter Alyson makes number TWENTY-SIX!!

UPDATE: Another! TWENTY-SEVEN!!

UPDATE: THIRTY!!

 

 

FINAL update! Okay! It took me a little longer to choose winners than expected, BECAUSE THERE WERE SO MANY! I am going to put the list here, but keep in mind there are SEVERAL SETS OF DUPLICATE NAMES! So there is still potential for people to see what they first think is their own name, then realize isn’t. I was going to put the time/date of each comment so people could look to see if the name was theirs or not, but urrrrrrrrggggg. But I have EMAILED everyone on this list, EXCEPT FOR the people who specifically mentioned other commenters, in which case I emailed the-commenter-they-mentioned instead. So for example, I am emailing Bsharp on the list below, to get the info about her friend Laura; but since Simone mentioned giving her entry to Marcy, I am emailing Marcy and not Simone. I have a rather exhaustive spreadsheet, so I think I will find out fairly soon if I have messed any of this up, but it was a bit of a muddley process of counting comments and looking back and forth between comments section and spreadsheet, so please do let me know if you see something amiss! (There ARE supposed to be two Marys and two Sarahs and two Kathleens on the list!)

Bsharp, for her friend Laura
Simone, for commenter Marcy
Carolyn, for her friend Suz
Mary
Michelle
Nicole MacPherson, for commenter Melanie
Kat, who will choose someone
Heather
Sara L
Kerri
Another Sue
Bld424
Rose, for her friend Natalie
Linda
Kathleen
Rebecca C
Bitts, for commenter Lisa Ann
Vanessa
Melody
Sylvia
Naomi
Marion
Sarah
Kathy Potvin, for her daughter
Brittany, for commenter Kathleen
Anna, for a friend
Karen, for a friend
Mary
Sarah
Amanda

IT TURNS OUT THAT WAS NOT THE FINAL UPDATE, NOT BY A LONG SHOT. Here are the NEXT fourteen winners, and there will likely be more, but fourteen for now so I don’t get ahead of myself:

Christa Lamb, for her friend Suzy
Samantha
Melissa T
Chrissy, for her friend L
Jennifer in Canada, will choose a commenter
RubyTheBee
Stephanie, for her friend Jen
Alyce, for her mom
Clara
Beth (Feb 12 6:33p)
Anni
Kalendi, for a friend
Erin, for her mama
Bree

Okay NOW it is REALLY the final update! After sending to all the above, I tallied up how much had been spent so far, compared it to the amount of money that had been donated, and found I had $70.04 left over, which is PRETTY TIDY at $35ish per package. Then I scanned through my list of sent packages one more time to be sure, and found I had MISSED SOMEONE, which is like my bad dream, but at least I DID notice it, and maybe that is the only one, so that meant I only needed to choose ONE more winner rather than two. But also I still needed to do my ORIGINAL package that I was going to spend blog-ad money on, so that brought us back to two. And then I found one more donation I’d missed, so yet again we are accessing my stress dreams, but I had put it somewhere I WOULD remember it, and I DID find it, so that’s okay, and it brings us up to three. So here are the final three winners, and I love that all of them are sending to their sisters:

GG, for her sister
Elizabeth, for her sister
D in Texas, for her sister

Four Things I Impulsively Added to a Target Order

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Four things I impulsively added to a Target pick-up order:

(image from Target.com)

HighKey mini cookies. I should have noticed that even on the nice 20% off sale, this was still a TINY two-ounce bag of low-carb cookies for $3.20 (FOUR DOLLARS usually). I had pictured Famous-Amos-sized mini-cookies, but these are even teensier. And the serving is seven cookies, but seriously you could put all seven in your mouth at once, no problem. But they WERE rather tasty. I nibbled them delicately, like fancy little expensive mouse tea party cookies I will never buy again.

 

(image from Target.com)

Starbucks Spring Day Blend coffee. Isn’t that a pretty bag? And doesn’t it give you a tiny whiff of hope to see SPRING-themed things even though we know it is only February? Target was having their sale where the $7.99 bags of Starbucks are $5.99 each if you buy three or more, so I bought two of my usual kinds and added this impulsively as the third. Their special blends (Thanksgiving! Christmas!) always just taste like regular coffee to me, but I enjoy seeing the bag, and it isn’t as if it’s more expensive.

 

(image from Target.com)

Swiss Miss Lucky Charms hot chocolate. I am so…I was going to say “charmed by this.” I don’t drink hot chocolate very often, and I don’t have any special fondness for Lucky Charms marshmallows, but it’s just so CUTE. Each serving is two attached packs: one of hot cocoa mix, and a separate one of the special marshmallows. And I knew I could try one serving of it just for fun, and the kids would consume the rest.

 

(image from Target.com)

Peeps cereal. I can’t explain myself. Well, I can try: I recently bought Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie cereal on impulse because I found its existence funny. And I have eaten a little bowl of it on each of my most recent Keto Days Off, and I have enjoyed it and have not regretted the purchase. So when I saw ANOTHER funny cereal, I bought it. It says it is “marshmallow-flavored cereal, with marshmallows.” HOW can that be good. I cannot WAIT for my next Day Off so I can try it!!

Valentine’s Day

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Apparently there is no way to avoid Valentine’s Day Angst every year, just as there is apparently no way to adequately aforehandle Mother’s Day. I thought Paul and I had finally settled into our solution: I no longer expect anything from him; I buy my own heart-shaped box of chocolates; and we go out to dinner (on a nearby day, to avoid the crowds) and get cocktails AND we split the fun overpriced dessert sampler. I bought heart-shaped plates (last year Target had red ones, this year they have pink ones) to put the kids’ dinner on, and I give each kid a giant Hershey Kiss. I have a cute heart mug to drink my coffee/tea out of. In recent years I’ve had a Galentine’s Day party with my local girlfriends. Some years I send valentines in the mail.

I’ve tried to make the Valentine’s Day holiday be about all kinds of love, and about the cheeriness of pink/red/hearts/candy in the middle of winter, and not about how disappointing heterosexual men can be, and what very low bars so many of them fail to cross. (I have NEVER had a relationship with a guy who could handle what I consider the absolute straightforward simplicity of Valentine’s Day. I am not a TRICKY woman with a series of SECRET PUZZLES that need to be solved or else the man FAILS. I like all The Usual Things. I like a heart-shaped box of chocolates, especially if it is extra pretty ((ribbon, flower)). I like flowers from the grocery store. I like doughnuts and pastries and other bakery things. I like wine, I like jewelry, and neither of them have to be expensive for me to like them. I like meals out or in. I am willing to say all these things I like, rather than making the poor man wrack his own brain to think of something himself, and I am perfectly happy to get the same thing every year, no creativity required; I am ALSO perfectly happy if the guy LIKES to come up with his own ideas! So why is all this apparently TOO TOO DIFFICULT?? GAH. Anyway, apparently it WAS too difficult, so I GAVE UP and released BOTH OF US from the entire annual issue so that we would NEVER HAVE TO DEAL WITH IT AGAIN.)

Anyway, yesterday, one week before Valentine’s Day, Paul heaved a huge sad sigh and said he just didn’t know what to DO about Valentine’s Day. I said I thought we’d already released ourselves this entire thing and no longer had to go through this each year; I reminded him that our plan this year was to get Valentine’s Day take-out and eat it in front of the children, who could make their own sandwiches. He sighed again and said that just didn’t seem like enough. Then he listed all the things that he sadly just could not get for me, either because of pandemic or because he put it off too long or because I already bought my own chocolate or because he didn’t think I’d like the earrings he’d pick out. So here is another thing I realized I needed to add to my Making Valentine’s Day Work For Me list: I am not comforting men about it anymore.