It’s getting to be that special time of year when all sides of the family start emailing to ask for my gift wish list, which means direct links to specific items they can simply click “add to cart” on. I am 1,000% not complaining about this since it virtually guarantees that I get exactly what I want. The problem is uhhh knowing exactly what I want.

Shopping the windows of the internet sounds dreamy until you sit down to do it, and suddenly you’re shunted straight into the starring role of a capitalism-themed horror story. “Don’t click into that website!” imaginary onlookers shout as I cluelessly click into the damn website, and the next, and the next. The highs of finding an item I actually like are counterbalanced by the lows of the item not being available in my size or at the right price point. I’m Jeffrey Lebowski kissing that big bowling alley in the sky and then I’m Jeffrey Lebowski harshing in a cab to the sound of the Eagles. After approximately 170 hours of being buffeted between emotional extremes I finally close my computer and walk away, feeling drained and unsure of life’s purpose except as a vehicle of sorrow. Oh, and I still don’t have all my “wishes” sorted.

I did have a wish list idea yesterday as I was applying eye shadow, and that was: maybe one of my wishes can be more eye shadow. Except then I looked up the names of the colors I needed and they were Sin and Half-Baked. That would be a fun one to explain to the in-laws. “What do you want this year, Lyn?” I WANT SIN IN THE POWDERED FORM, HERE IS THE LINK. It’s like the time my mom was going to the mall and asked if I needed anything so I gave her some money to buy Nirvana’s Nevermind on cassette for me, and by the time she got back she had many concerns with regard to what business I thought I had listening to songs with names like “Territorial Pissings.” I don’t know Mom, maybe it all started going downhill for me morally when your coworker taught me how to put on eye makeup at that Mary Kay party.

Anyway, as I’ve devoted the last several days trying to drum up wish list ideas for myself I’ve gradually come to realize that I actually have A TON of them, but 99.6% are wholly unrealistic. I still think they’re great, though, which is why I’m going to stick some of them here. A graveyard of beautifully impossible wishes.

Rest in peace, friends, I never knew ye:

  • Everyone involved in producing Wayfair’s jingles gets their kneecaps broken
  • The Property Brothers redo my home for free
  • My car spontaneously fixes itself so that I no longer have to roll down the window and blindly reach for the outside handle to open the door
  • Every human being on the planet gets a big empathy upgrade1
  • Life maintenance tasks are no longer necessary
  • Potatoes on demand
  • All ways but mashed, that is the least desirable potato
  • I know mashed potato lovers are legion and I will fight every last one of you on this
  • Gillian Anderson’s hair is now on my head
  • We replace every useless American state with Scotland
  • I am also somehow Scotland
  • A gorgeous antique fireplace mantel rings our bell and offers itself to us for free
  • We live in an alternative timeline where the NRA never existed
  • Republicans get their own planet to do with as they wish
  • It’ll be like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus except replace “men” with political right and “women” with political left and then also send the right to Mars and the rest of us can stay here, I don’t know about you but I don’t particularly need to go to Venus
  • Okay a day trip could be nice
  • There are now 36 hours in a day and 12 of them are earmarked for sleeping
  • Everyone respects that I’m trying to raise my baby to be a humorless feminist mini-me and stops telling her to smile

What are yours?

1 I cannot take credit for this line as it actually belongs to my BFF Kim, who graciously allowed me to pilfer it.

Image credit: Black and white film copy negative, 1914, Harry Whittier Frees // www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3b39359