Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-12-10 - 8:17 a.m.

It's not a Christmas List, it's a complex database

I did the Christmas shopping for the girls over the weekend. This is probably the only time I'll have when they aren't with me AND I could persuade someone to shop with me so I had some company. So I wanted to get through most of the list while I could.

But working with that list is like wrestling the Giant Christmas Squid.

First, we have the list of things that the girls wrote, on request, for their grandparents. This became the Master List, although that is problematic because Paternal Grandparents are efficient and do their shopping early, before the girls have had a chance to see all the television commercials that form the basis for their lists. However, it is a starting place.

The girls' father was also kind enough to tell me what he'd gotten for them, so I can take both Grandparent gifts and Father gifts off the list, leaving me with a small selection of things to assign to Mother, Santa, and inquiring friends. These remaining list items being, of course, the Incomprehensibles (does that say an Automatic Squidgy? Can YOU read it?), the Unaffordables (the Harry Potter Electric Road Race Quidditch Game that would take up our entire living room anyway), and the Reality Challenged (the kitten).

I do get to add to the list, though, because I've been shopping with the girls. I know what's caught their fancy, I know what they'd have fun with, and I know - the dreaded Mother Knowledge - what they need.

So I add a few things to the list, and then I have to go and figure out what I already HAVE for them, since I pick up odds and ends when I see them; so now the list is made up of things they want, things I think they should have, and things they ALREADY have but haven't received.

Now somehow this list must be pared down to the intersection of what they actually should get for Christmas and what I can afford to buy them. Things must be taken off, but not the things I've already bought. Shopping further complicates things, as I discover that some things I thought were affordable or available aren't, and I buy things I simply can't resist and then forget to put them on any list anywhere. And of course, the girls make things easier by continually suggesting other things they've decided they want MORE than the things that have already been secretly purchased.

Now I have stuff, but I really don't know if I have ENOUGH stuff or TOO MUCH stuff, and I don't know if I have an EVEN amount of stuff - the number of packages is still important, since they like to take turns opening things - and there is always at least one "swing" item that could go to either way, depending.

Also, I do not know what should come from me and what should come from Santa. I have this funny feeling that Santa would probably not bring the electric razor. He probably SHOULD bring the younger child that beautiful Breyer Unicorn, but that makes me cross. I want to give it to her, I picked it out and I want the credit for it. Damn Santa hogs all the glory.

Santa has to bring an equal number of gifts to each girl, because Santa is fair that way. Mom is fair that way, too, even though she sometimes puts two t-shirts in a box just to even things up. And then there are the stocking stuffers - which gifts are those? Santa fills the stockings, so they must be things he would bring, and they must be equal, and they have to be small enough to FIT in the stocking but NOT the small things like the mood ring Older Child has been wanting for so long that will lose all its impact in the bottom of the stocking.

Obviously, Santa would not use the same wrapping paper that Mom would; he would use paper that we have never ever seen before, because he gets his at the North Pole (although I think I have convinced my girls that they have a Wal-Mart at the North Pole.) Items that go in the stockings must be wrapped in the Santa paper, not the Mommy paper. A year ago the girls exclaimed, "Oh, look! Santa used the same paper as last year!" I was stunned. I'm confined in the back room for four hours with that paper; they see it for all of the four minutes it takes to rip it off, yet THEY can remember it from last year. That's scary.

This is usually the point where I a) discover those items I bought but never added to any list, which completely screws up the whole equity balancing act; and b) discover that I have wrapped several things without putting sticky-notes on them and I have absolutely no idea what they are.

Also, this is where my back starts to ache from wrestling the Christmas Squid.

It's time to make them read Little House on the Prairie again. Maybe every night in December. "See! Laura got ONE DOLL for Christmas! It was made out of CORN HUSKS! And she was THRILLED!" The girls think I'm a complete loony. They know Laura would have wanted that Harry Potter Electric Road Race Quidditch Game if she'd known about it.

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