LBL’s Holiday Greatest Things Wish List

Each year, Now Husband asks Life in the Boomer Lane what he can get her for Christmas/Hanukkah/Some As Yet Undiscovered Holiday. LBL always answers, “If there is anything I wanted, I would have gotten it myself, or, it’s so expensive that it would be ridiculous to spend that kind of money.” The conversation usually ends there, and instead, LBL and Now Husband go to the little neighborhood restaurant close by and have a salmon dinner.  This year, LBL has decided to list her material desires, just in case Now Husband and Assorted Offspring and Spouses of Said Offspring are reading this. She thinks of this list as her own personal Oprah’s Greatest Things list.

In no particul order, here goes:

A Tesla At a price tag tickling $100,000, LBL truly believes she would rather give that amount of money to charity, instead of driving around in a vehicle that could eliminate the need for an entire refugee camp, somewhere in the world. But she hasn’t actually tested that theory.

Two electrical outlets  LBL’s vintage 1912 house came equipped with one outlet per room, the common belief back then being that electricity was a passing fad.                  since then, LBL has added a handful of new outlets, but there are still a couple                    areas  with unsightly cords running up and down (or across) walls to reach existing outlets.

An additional wall (a secret one) in the family room. LBL has a corner of the family room where her desk is located that is covered with family photos. There are so many now, that the entire bookcase next to her desk is also covered, as is the wall next to that. She has personally never seen as many photos in any of the hundreds (thousands) of homes she has toured. She doesn’t understand how people have just a few photos on display. She is unable to do this. She has seriously run out of available wall space. She refuses to start putting photos up on any of the other walls in the room. She is already a photo hoarder, and it scares her. Therefore, she needs a new wall, that will be visible only to her. (A note to Readers: To her credit, she does not put photos on the refrigerator. Even she has her standards.)

 Black silk pajama pants.  Readers with more prurient interests can just stop themselves in their tracks right now and smack themselves. This item has nothing to do with sex. Rather, it has to do with the current nighttime crisis LBL is experiencing with what, exactly to wear to bed. What she normally wears is great for lounging around the house in the hours leading up to bedtime. It is great for being in bed. It is even great for being in bed for several hours. Then, at whatever point it happens, LBL wakes up, in a silent overheated rage. She must immediately divest herself of her pajama bottoms, or she will die of heat.

Now Husband sleeps through this, happy with the briefs he wears to bed throughout all seasons (not the same pair.)   He has no need for the entire wardrobe that LBL must take into account for various seasons: No pajamas (warm weather and cold,) no tee-shirt, no sweater, no socks. In sum: LBL has heard that silk pajamas are good for such a conundrum as LBL is having. But silk pajamas are expensive, and LBL can’t justify the expense. She believes that silk pajamas are solely for people who own Teslas.

Mac Air  LBL is seriously ashamed of even having this on the list, since she has been considering buying a good laptop for years, and instead, keeps purchasing $169 laptops with very short shelf lives.  This time, she even visited the Apple Store, got a lot of good, useful information, before ultimately purchasing another cheap laptop.  She would like to put all the blame on Now Husband, but this would set her belief in the power of women back to pre-Women’s Liberation late 1960’s days. She is ashamed of her inability to plunk the moolah down on a good laptop, so, instead, continues to live in laptop limbo.  She needs someone to save her, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone available.

Suzanne Sullivan ceramics  Suzanne Sullivan is a brilliant Brooklyn ceramicist who LBL has been stalking for years. Her work is all over Pinterest. She has a website. She has an Instagram account. She is sold in a couple of stores. All the photos she displays are described as “Latest batch of work for sale!!!” In spite of this perky message, there doesn’t seem to be any way to actually purchase any of her work. All items listed For Sale on her website are actually already sold. The stores that are supposed to sell her work have nothing to sell.  LBL sent her an email that Sullivan actually responded to. Sullivan felt terrible that LBL was having no luck with finding pieces to buy. She directed LBL to the stores that have nothing to sell. If anyone out there in Readerland has an idea, please let LBL know.  LBL is willing to pay the Big Bucks to own a piece of Sullivan’s work, but she suspects even that will not do the trick. She is thinking that she should, instead, contact someone who owns a Tesla. They may have access to Sullivan that LBL, with her pre-owned car and cheap laptop, would never have.

A final note: LBL has just realized that loyal readers may have now been introduced to Suzanne Sullivan, via this blog post. So, in effect, LBL has just made it even more difficult for her to purchase anything.  But, it probably doesn’t matter. She has a much better chance of someone gifting her a Tesla or a MacBook Air or even a place on the beach on the Bodrum Peninsula in Turkey, than on giving her a piece of Sullivan’s work.

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa.  Happy/Merry Some as Yet Undiscovered Holiday.