~Dear Santa~

I am a little late getting my letter to you this year because I haven't been sure what to ask for, or how to editorialize my year so that it sounds like I was a good girl. It isn't that I was a bad girl, but I was naughty a few times. By 'naughty' I do not mean to suggest that I was bad bad girl and I need a spanking, what I mean to suggest is that I did some things that weren't super cool.

But since you are not the big JC I don't have to confess all of my sins, so let's just say I was a good-enough girl and get down to business.

Remember the year I asked for a vehicle and I got one? That was a sweet Christmas and I loved the vehicle--but I am still making monthly payments on it--so let's not have anymore of those types of gifts okay? What I mean is, if am going to have to write a check for my gift for the next thirty-six months, let's just skip it.

What I would really like for Christmas this year is a little peace. It's been a suck year and I would be most thankful if you could gift me with health and safety for all of my loved ones--I would like an entire year without a funeral. I am not sure how you can package that, probably a gift certificate would suffice.

I would also like to have some personal peace, perhaps the best way to achieve this would be a vacation to someplace warm where I could lay in the sun. I know I have been talking about the cabana boys for years and maybe you have always thought I was kidding. But I am not. I really do want a vacation with hot and cold running cabana boys and massages and drinks that contain rum and come in coconut shells and little tasty plates of food for whenst I hunger.

Earlier? When I said I was just good-enough girl, I was just being modoest, in fact I was a great girl this year.

I would also like to take a vacation with my family someplace that requires a passport. I am thinking Italy. Or Greece. Or Italy and Greece--you can surprise me with the exact location. I would like to stay in a villa for a month someplace in the country, but with metro access to Rome. This can actually count as a family gift, as I would want to look at the Sistine chapel and the Coliseum with my children in attendance. Perhaps I alone have not been good enough for this gift--but if you multiply my goodness by the goodness of each of my children and Martin? Well, it becomes a number of good with an exponent.

There is one more thing I would like to have for Christmas and that would be a cleaning person that came to my house--just once a week--to do all of those things that I never complete until company is coming over, things like dusting and mopping. I know that sometimes you like to pull out a surprise gift that is guaranteed to make my eyes roll back in my head--this the sort of gift that could do precisely that.

That's really all I want this year, just four things. I have enough jewelry, I don't want kitchen appliances and my clothing is fine--sure I could use some more socks and potty pants, but those two things are not very high priority on my list.

Alright, that's it for me.
Thanks in advance Santa!
XOXO
Deborah


P.S. If you should decide to go the sock and potty pant route, could you please make the socks toe socks and the potty pants cotton? You are a doll.