A Grown-Up Christmas List

I read a comment once from someone who said she dislikes Christmas because she'd rather randomly give gifts of the "I saw this and immediately thought of you" variety than the forced "shop because it's December" kind.  I am tending to agree with her since the base of our tree is remarkably bare right now and threatening to stay that way through Groundhog Day.

My Christmas list was pretty short this year. But my secret list is longer and harder to shop for. Here, I'll share it with you:

• One hour per day to exercise
• That's greedy, I'll take 3 hours per week to exercise
• Time to grocery shop each week
• Time to prepare daily meals from those fresh groceries
• All my maternity clothing sold at a decent enough rate to another soon-mom.
• A one-week staycation during which I could clean and organize my house
• Transport of all to-donate materials to somewhere worthy or selling of other to-go items at a decent rate
• An affordable whole-house DVR
• Single-payer health care system
• To develop a more productive relationship with my breast pump
• Guaranteed, life-long good health for my daughter
• A new, loving home for our cats
• No guilt from sending cats to new, loving home
• Some more of this here pumpkin, cheesecake - why can't I quit you, pumpkin cheesecake?
• A snow weekend in Tahoe, fully-paid for by the Tahoe vacation fairy
• Ski pants fitting again
• To get back to improv
• 2 extra hours between the end of work and bedtime
• For my neighborhood property values to magically rebound in Q1 enabling me to unload this albatross and move to something fab and rented in a more walkable neighborhood. (Bigger house, while fun in some ways, just means more to sit and look at being not-cleaned. I'm tired of it.)
• Lottery jackpot to enable cozy ocean voyages across the pond rather than air travel. Not. ready.
• And $90,000.
• And this. 
• This.