Confessions

But not the sin kind.  I'm just going to tell you stuff that is kind of embarrassing but afterward you're just going to shrug it off or maybe judge me a little.  You aren't going to absolve me of anything, or molest me.  Because this is the internet, and you can't touch me.

Christmas is fast approaching, and I'm already about a third of the way through my shopping.  I like to start thinking about gifts early so I have time to select meaningful, quality things for people.  Then there's time to just hang out and eat my way through the rest of the season without getting stuck in a mob of procrastinators fighting over the last pair of dress socks at the mall.

My mom is totally awesome and still asks me for a Christmas list.  It's possible that she still feels a lingering need to compensate for the year my dad destroyed the mythology of Santa Claus and ruined Christmas forever.  But I'm going to go with "awesome" because my dad ruined a lot of things and I don't want to think that my mother's love for me is one vicious cycle of making up for his failures.  And also, my mom is actually awesome so there's really no flaw in my logic.

But anyway, I sat down to create this year's list and I just couldn't think of anything.  I resorted to my usual practice of making a booklist.  Thank god David Sedaris put out a new book this year.  What would a Christmas booklist be without him?  So I assembled a respectable selection of Chelsea Handler, David Sedaris, Sarah Silverman, Samantha Bee, and then I gave up.  What do I want?  Do I even want anything?

Yes.  Yes, I want things.  Here are the things I really want, but cannot seem to obtain:

• New clothes
• New underwear
• New bras
• A real job
• Health insurance
• A dentist appointment
• New glasses OR Lasik
• A bed frame
• Washer
• Dryer
• Dishwasher
• House with more than one toilet 
• House with a place to put the litter box that isn't the kitchen closet so I don't have to hear a cat peeing while I'm eating
• House with a yard so I can have a garden and some dairy goats
• Cable 
• A non-CRT television
• A DVD-playing device that isn't a secondhand PS2
• Internet that works at least most of the time
• To live somewhere that isn't Idaho
• A haircut
• Permission to paint my walls and hang nice curtains and install nice carpet that isn't smelly and from the 80s
• A digital SLR camera
• A refrigerator with a vegetable drawer that doesn't stick and jam every time you pull it out
• An oven with a window in the door so I can check on my food without heat escaping
• To live near my family and friends
• To be warm

So that's just the short list.  I'm not listing all this to suggest that my life sucks.  It's pretty decent.  But there's a lot to work for, and many things I would like to change.  Maybe someday.  Just gotta work on winning the lottery or starting an internet meme that I can milk for millions of dollars.  Or you know, find a real job.  Which is high on my list of desires, and would also facilitate many of the other desires.  At this rate, though, the meme seems about as achievable as a job.

I just want a job with regular, normal hours that doesn't require me to stand in one spot for eight hours at a stretch.  And one that doesn't give total strangers the opportunity to say bizarre things to me without repercussions.

Yesterday, a well-dressed, respectable-looking woman came through my line.  She quickly proved that appearances are deceiving, because she may have looked normal but she was weird as hell.  She kept staring at me like I had two heads, and every question I asked her was met with a delayed, slow, and distracted-sounding response.  Finally, she asked me, "Where are you from originally?"

Dammit.  My big hair, Ed Hardy, and orange skin must be giving me away.  I need to tone it down a little.  Maybe choose one of the three?  Nobody ever accuses John Boehner of being from New Jersey...do they?

I immediately figured she was trying to place my accent, and couldn't decide if I was from somewhere else or "special."  I had encountered that assumption many times as a bus girl in restaurant at the shore.  So I quickly explained, "I'm from New Jersey.  Why do you ask, do I have an accent?"  I was about to learn, once and for all, why people always seem to think I'm foreign or retarded.

She responded, still speaking in her slow, dreamy, drinking-the-Kool-Aid voice, "No, you don't have an accent...you're...you're very pretty, but not like you're from the Northwest."

Well shit, lady.  That doesn't settle anything for me.  "Pretty" for this area could mean as little as having all your teeth.  It could mean not having a mullet.  Not having a lap that grazes your kneecaps when you're standing upright.  The standards are abysmally low.  In fact, not five minutes before this exchange, I rang up a man who had six yellow teeth and about ten tiny brown nubs in his mouth.  And he was wearing a wedding ring, so somebody evidently thought he was a real catch.  She may as well have said, "I'm staring at you because you have mastered the art of basic hygiene."

What Idaho lacks in infrastructure and amenities, it more than makes up for with its low cost of living and even lower standards of fashion, hygiene, and aesthetics.