‘Tis the season for Christmas lists galore, and as I am asked what I want for Christmas, this year I find that it’s not stuff. As anyone who has stepped foot into our house in the last, oh, 18 years, knows, we are drowning in stuff. And although I really, really like (and am quite grateful for!) the stuff I have, I think the number one item on my list this year is that I would like some time to actually just deal with the stuff so that I could then enjoy it.

That thought alone made me think about what else I would like that isn’t stuff-driven. So, with the caveat that the true first item is for my kids and family and loved ones to be happy and healthy and all that, here is my 2011 Christmas wish list:

  • Someone to come into my house and clean my bathrooms with no judgement (either about the bathrooms, the house, or the desire itself for someone else to do it)
  • A limo equipped with wireless and a driver who doesn’t talk to me
  • The ability to tell people off with a Southerner’s charm
  • A deck that is a) designed in a way that is actually usable, and, b) not falling apart in the white-trashiest of ways
  • Three additional hours per day during which time for everyone else freezes so that I can get things done without being distracted or tempted by things that are much more fun than what I’d be doing during those three hours
  • The ability to write the above sentence in a much more concise way
  • Someone to put Christmas lights on our house and decorations on the mantle in an almost-but-not-quite gaudy way
  • Patience
  • Someone who will gauge the daily family temper and cook healthy, well-balanced, and yet yummy meals that appeal to everyone and do not include either peanut butter or jelly
  • A week in a not-too-isolated beach cottage so that I can write
  • For Marc Blucas to star in the movie of the best-selling book that I will write there
  • The ability to gain weight during pregnancy and lose weight AFTER having the baby rather than the other way around
  • In the absence of the above (and since there aren’t any more babies coming), the ability to take those extra 50 pounds and give them to an Ethiopian child who really needs them
  • For the world not to end in 2012 (or at any other point, for that matter)
  • A family compound on Cape Cod so that we never have to have the discussion of who gets what room again
  • Enough money to create a trust fund that pays for everybody to come
  • Transporter technology (of the Star Trek kind, not Galaxy Quest)
  • Earrings