Thank you, 2009. It was a very strange good year.

{Happy New Year. And thank you for reading. See you in 2010.}

Your husband, a driver for UPS, will get home from work at 10:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

Your children, one who is eight and likes to get the party started and the other who is two and wasn’t feeling well because he had a bacterial infection (but you won’t find that out until Tuesday after Christmas because you will have to take him to Urgent Care), will not go to bed until midnight on Christmas Eve.

You and your aforementioned husband will begin assembly on the magical wooden kitchen and the coveted wooden dollhouse at 12:30 a.m Christmas morning.

The instructions for the kitchen contain 28 steps that are translated loosely from Dutch to English.

The instructions for the dollhouse contain 17 steps detailed for us in English.

You will not understand either.

You will finish wrapping presents at three a.m.

You will finish the assembly of the presents at 5:30 in the a.m. on Christmas morning. You will go to bed just in time for your oldest daughter to get up and inspect our Santa’s work.

She will wake her brother up.

And they will run to the wrong toys.

Just so you know.

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas. We had a lovely time, despite being bombarded with relatives, none of whom we really remember inviting. Eh, bygones. We all played nice, see drank wine, and are grateful that the holidays are only once a year. My husband does want it noted that during Christmas dinner, he and I had to sit at the kids’ table because there weren’t enough dining room chairs and no one offered us seats. Even Zoe. (Troy was asleep.) Two shots of Jim Beam later (secretly in the kitchen), we really could have cared less where we sat.

That’s really not what we need to discuss. What I would like to discuss is Christmas cards. Or more importantly, the lack of Christmas cards that I received in the mail.

Let’s review the statistics:

ZDub=Sent 43 cards
ZDub=Recieved 11 cards

Looking at these numbers do not make me feel good about myself. It makes me feel very unpopular and obviously affects my self-worth.

I would also like to report on the quality of the cards. With the exception of Beth’s rad card, the card from Uncle Steve’s mother where she included a photo AND a poem she wrote about 2009 and the card that my friend Chris sent where he wrote his greeting on a sheet of paper so I could reuse it (hot idea), the rest of the cards I got in the mail sucked hard. There I said it. I mean, someone we are related to sent us a card that looked like it had been stuffed in their junk drawer for months and was one of those free cards the SPCA sends you with a dog that has sad eyes wearing a Santa hat and they spelled my name wrong.

I am putting my address book on warning. Do not just send me a card because I sent you one. Put some thought into it. I’m not saying that the world should send custom letterpress on pearlescent card stock handmade from reprocessed elephant dung (I ordered my photo cards for $23 for 40 and got free rush shipping), I would just like a card that says “Happy Holidays, ZDub. We care about you because we put some thought into our card, spelled your name correctly and managed to mail it to you before Christmas”.

You know who wouldn’t let me down? The Internets. Next year, I’m sending all my good cards to my blog friends and my address book is getting our names signed in Sharpie on a sour cream lid. Stuffed in a Dorito bag.

Now if you will excuse me, I’m off to recycle my cards. Did you know that you can mail them to St. Jude’s Ranch Recycled Card Program and the children and volunteers re-purpose them into new cards that you can purchase next year? And that the money benefits St. Jude’s?

That makes me so happy that I can almost look past the craptasticness of the cards I received.

I said ALMOST.

Happy Merry everything, y’all.

XO-ZDub

I desperately wanted to finish Christmas shopping on Saturday. I didn’t really have that much to do, as the children are getting a gift from Santa and a bit from us under the tree and that’s it. Their birthdays are in November and January and quite honestly, we are drowning in toys. Zoe has every Polly Pocket/Barbie/Webkinz/stuffed animal that’s not a Webkinz/Hello Kitty paraphernalia known to man and Troy, well Troy likes to vacuum. And play blocks. Quite frankly, these kids do not want for anything I was pretty annoyed over the fact that I had to go out and spend my dollars on MO’ CRAP.

(Stay with me, I know I sounded like a terrible, no-good mutha. Admitting you don’t like buying your children Christmas presents?! GASP!)

I must confess, Zoe is almost nine and getting easier to buy for. She really wanted a puppy wool peacoat and that was nice finding her one that I knew she would like. I didn’t really do too many toys for her this year because she owns them all. Her gift from Santa was pretty easy, she just told me what she wanted, I bought it on sale and it was pretty painless.

Since Troy is two and lacks verbal skills, we took him to the toy store to get an idea of what he might want from the man in red. When we walked in, he threw a fit because we wouldn’t let him empty out the rack that held the weekly auto ads. We took him into the store, but he kept running back to the papers. And yelling.

So there’s that.

We were kinda at a loss and then I took Zoe to the dentist. (THIS POST JUST GETS MORE AND MORE RIVETING) The dentist office had a play area with a little play kitchen and Troy was all about it, almost as much as he is all about vacuuming. He played with that kitchen like it was his job.

I decided that nothing would complete my life more that Troy having his very own kitchen on Christmas morning.

But then I got down to the actual business of trying to find a play kitchen. For a boy. A wooden play kitchen. You know, one that doesn’t have hearts and is pink and covered in glitter. Now I have absolutely no problem with boys and items that are considered “girly”. On any given day, you could walk up in here and Zoe and Troy will be playing Barbies and Cabbage Patch and he might be wearing a pink boa, all courtesy of his sister. Its just that Troy is the proud owner of a very manly toy vacuum and I really need his appliances to match.

I started local. I was prepared to spend a bit more, I’m all about supporting local business, but they didn’t have jack. Next step. Target. NOPE. It’s pink. Wal-Mart. NOPE. Only plastic. (He will devastate a flimsy plastic kitchen. He devastated a plastic outdoor slide. One that was built for OUTDOORS.) I then went big guns. Online, baby. I can find ANYTHING online. And probably get free shipping.

Except they were all sold out. Or $399. Next logical step? Ebay.

I found the kitchen, it’s BLUE, and started watching and bidding. I was totally going to get Little Troy a manly kitchen if it killed me.

And then the bidding went up to $140 plus $40 shipping for a kitchen that retails for $79.

As if.

I regrouped and buckled down. I went back online and I found one that would work. It wasn’t my favorite, but it was wooden and not girly. It was out of stock online, but the Toys R Us website said to call the store. After being hung up THREE times while being “placed on hold”, I told Jeff to get the car. We were going to go down there and check with our eyeballs.

It happened to be the last Saturday before Christmas and there were a whole bunch of people there with their eyeballs and my husband was pretty annoyed. He doesn’t like crowds and it took him 15 minutes to find a parking spot. Once inside, we make a beeline for the faux kitchen aisle and I find the display of the one I want. There is one ticket left, YES! They have it! Jeff goes out to the car while I hop in the checkout line.

There is a TON of people in front of me. They have three lanes open and they are not moving, but I am stoked. I found the kitchen! This kitchen situation was starting to bug.

I get up to the front of the line, 26 minutes later, and hand the cashier my ticket. He calls the stock room and reads the item number to the guy. The guy repeats it and I know it’s just a matter of minutes before I have the set and we are on our way to eat Thai food.

And then I hear guy radio back, “WE DON’T HAVE ANY OF THOSE LEFT; THERE SHOULDN’T BE ANY TICKETS OUT.”

Um, yeah. I might have cried. But I didn’t make a scene. I cried when I was leaving with my head down, I had the major sads.

I go to the car and tell Jeff that we are failing as parents. We are just going to have to buy Troy a pony because deep down I know his little two year old heart will be CRUSHED if he doesn’t get a kitchen and he won’t be able to tell us because he doesn’t have the words and then I will have to read about it in his memoirs thirty years from now. How his mother ruined his life because she didn’t support his dreams.

Jeff knew he had a situation. He stopped and got me a coffee and then told me not to worry, we would figure something out. He then took me to HomeGoods because everyone knows that a trip to HomeGoods is better than Prozac. I sipped my coffee and halfheartedly browsed the scarves. I was making my way back to the baskets when I noticed Jeff and Troy were in the toy section.

I went through the toys and happen to glance down on the very bottom shelf. There, sandwiched between a Dora chair and a Nerf something or other, was the EXACT KITCHEN I TRIED TO BUY ON EBAY.

I bent down, hugged the box and started yelling for Jeff. The people around me stopped and stared, they thought I had lost it. I refused to take my eyes off the kitchen, like it would evaporate once Jeff got over to the corner and assumed I imagined it due to my traumatic stress of shopping.

We loaded that bitch up-there was only one-and got out of there. For the incredibly low price of $59.99, ZDub once again believes in the magic of Christmas.

Santa works in mysterious ways, y’all. It’s almost too bad because I was really looking forward to picking out that pony.