I’ve only utilized an online wish list once.  That was when I was pregnant with Lukas and all the family 3,000 miles away wanted to buy things for the new baby.  I went on to Target.com and made a baby registry.  It worked out great.  After that, however, it just never occurred to me to use an online wishlist.

I’m one of those people who is a huge pain in the ass when it comes to buying gifts for me.  When people ask me around Christmas and my birthday what I want, my reply is always “I dunno,” or “You don’t need to get me anything.”  I get yelled at all the time about it.  When it comes to Jessie buying me gifts, he usually just takes me to a store and says “Spend X amount of money.  Merry Christmas.”  I’m usually ok with that since I don’t feel that I need wrapped gifts under the tree.  That morning is for Lukas and for Jessie to get his one surprise present.  That’s where my fun happens.

Last week I was on Amazon looking at books that I wanted to get.  Since I am terrible at remembering things like that, I started adding these books into an Amazon Wish List.  As the night wore on, I started searching for other things on Amazon and adding them to my wish list.  Things like imported salted and canned fish that I’ve always wanted to try.  Weird things.

I mentioned through Twitter that I was making a wishlist on Amazon when a friend told me to try Kaboodle instead.  I took a peek that night before going to bed, and wasn’t super impressed.  Then the next day I took a longer look and was like “Holy shit, I should have been alerted to this a LONG time ago!”

The great thing about Kaboodle is that you aren’t restricted to only what’s on the site.  You can go to other sites that offer online shopping and add those items to your Kaboodle wish list.  But that’s only half of why it’s so awesome.  This site has a huge community of list-makers of every category.  I can spend hours and hours looking through these lists and adding items to my own lists.  Seriously.  HOURS.

I was just doing this for fun and as a reminder to come back and buy these things later when I realized, “HEY!  Those people who are always bugging me around Christmas and birthday times would really benefit from this list!”  Yes.  I had a revelation.  Instead of sulking in front of a computer two weeks before Christmas, angrily trying to find some stupid little gift someone can get me, I can just tell them to go look at my list!  There’s a wish list and a list for stuff to get Lukas.  Oh this will simplify my life greatly!  And it’s fun to sit on there and daydream.  And look at kitchen gadget lists.

Go.  Look.  Make a list.  Friend me.  Maybe I’ll buy you stuff.

Jessie:  “We’re going to have sex now, ok?”

Me:  “Ok…..”

Jessie:  “Now get a condom out, put it on me, and rub some of that excitement gel on yourself.”

Me:  “What the hell, Jessie?  Are you really that lazy that I have to put gel on myself to get myself excited?  That kind of defeats the purpose!”

Jessie:  “Listen woman, it takes a lot of energy to get a boner.  This is the best you could hope for!”

Sound reasoning for reading the fine print on that whole “marriage” thing, huh?

I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas.  I know we did.  We laid around all day in our pj’s and watched Lukas play with all of his new toys.  This year was definitely better than last year.  Jessie’s parents came up and visited us for a long weekend and spent some time with Lukas, and we went to my mom’s place for Christmas Eve for dinner and presents.  It was a lot more like the Christmases that I remember as a child.  Lots of family, lots of presents, and lots of laughter.  So much better than the last 3 Christmases.  So much better.

I don’t really have any over the top hilarious stories, though (besides Jessie being a wanker).  Jessie got a Wii, I got kitchen stuff and clothes, Lukas got enough toys to fill the house up, and we adopted a kitty from the Human Society as a family present.  I’ll talk about the kitty later.

I have a bunch of pictures that I need to upload from this holiday season…it’s just been kind of hard to get away from Jessie.  He gets a little grumpy with me if I get on the internet while he’s home, and since it’s an easy conflict to avoid, I stay disconnected.

I’m enjoying myself in my new home, my new city, and my new outlook.  I’ve got things to look forward to.  I’ve got projects that will keep me busy for at least 5 years.  Ahh, it’s lovely.  I’m so glad that we made that move.  I’m so glad that we were able to finally realize our dream and buy a house of our own.  And I’m glad that my internet family has been patting me on the back on my bad days and laughing with me on my good days.  Thank you all so much for sticking with me.  Have a Happy New Year, everybody.  2010 is looking up already.

HI!  How are you?  It’s been a very long time, hasn’t it?  Well let’s see here, I’ve uprooted my family from Washington, stayed with my mom and stepfather in the boonies of Pennsylvania for 3 months, and bought a house in a sort-of suburb of Philadelphia.  I’VE BEEN BUSY!  Being without a reliable internet connection was torture for me, and it killed me to watch the rankings on MWC and SMP fall to nothing.  Now I’ve got to work to get those damned things back up to something.

Ok, so what have you missed?

The plane ride from Seattle to Philadelphia was the longest plane ride of my life.  I will never ride in a plane with a toddler again.  Ever.  Then getting Lukas adjusted to life in a huge house full of breakable things was equally awful.  Jessie’s drive from Seattle to the boonies of Pennsylvania was awful and I’m sure he’ll never want to do that again.  Ever.  Then Jessie had a 3 hour commute EACH WAY to his job.  That means he was spending 6 hours a day in commute.  THAT SUCKS.

Lukas turned two while we were in internet limbo.  Jessie’s parents and brother and sister-in-law and their daughter came and we had a nice little party.  The kids had fun playing and the grown ups had fun catching up and eating ungodly amounts of food.  I made Lukas a dinosaur cake.  It was cute.  He got a million presents as always.

We went into Clarksburg to see friends and family we hadn’t seen in three years.  We brunched with the Canon’s and had a nice visit.  We visited my father and his parents and had a nice and slightly uncomfortable visit.  And then we met up with Aschlie and the rest of a visit was an absolute hoot.  Aschlie and I went to my grandmother’s grave and instead of crying, we told morbid stories and laughed.  My grandma liked to laugh and I think she would have appreciated laughter over tears.  Then we went to the Hussmann’s where I got to hold itty bitty beautiful babies and get slobbered on by Riley.  We had good food, had great company, and felt completely at ease with super nice people.  I was happy for Helen and Mary that their husbands are just super nice guys, to the point of being disarming.

We visited with Aschlie and had great talks and B.S.ing.  It was so nice to talk face to face.  We had breakfast the next morning all together and then said goodbye.  We headed to Morgantown to see Jessie’s brother’s new house.  It is ENORMOUS.  Then the long-assed drive back to the boonies of Pennsylvania.

Somewhere in there we decided that we needed to at least look at a few properties in the area and get an idea of what our budget could afford us.  We found a WONDERFUL realtor and set up a viewing day with three houses.  The first house was dirty and scary.  The second house was on a gorgeous tree-lined street and was fantastic.  The third house needed to be condemned.  We went back to the boonies and talked about looking at other houses.  Then we decided that we actually really liked the second house so we asked our realtor to talk to the listing agent to inquire about it further.  The listing agent said that the price had been reduced recently and they were getting a lot of foot trafic through the house.  We talked about it some more and decided it couldn’t hurt much to put in an offer (after Jessie had about 20 panic attacks).  We put in an offer, got a counter, countered back, and were under contract in one weekend.  It happened really fast.  Then Jessie had another 20 or so freak outs.  We got the place inspected, was told everything is in great shape and after the mortgage company dragged their feet until the last effing minute, we closed.  So yeah, we now own a house.  We looked at three houses before buying one.  The whole process was not as stressful as some people make it out to be.  You sign a zillion papers, you fax a zillion papers, and then you sign a zillion more and then they give you a set of keys.  I’ll be posting pictures later, right now I’m just catching up.  Trust me, I’ll be talking about this place a LOT on the future….and you’re going to read it and like it or else!

On a little side note here, I feel that I should post something funny.  Two nights ago, we went to Home Depot to get a big garbage can for recycling.  It was too big for our car, so we had to readjust everything and ended up having to recline the front passenger seat and setting it in there.  Well with Lukas in the back, there was no place for me to sit besides curling up into a ball and smooshing myself into the space behind the reclined seat.  Our car is tiny and sucks sometimes.  Anyhow, Jessie was talking to me and turned his head to say something and I heard a loud *THUMP* and then him yell, “OUCH!  I just punched myself (I’ll tell you the rest in a second).  Believe it or not, I hear Jessie yell “I just punched myself….” about 3 times a week.  Sometimes he punches himself in various regions of the crotch, and sometimes he punches his chin.  He does this a lot, so it wasn’t a surprise to hear him yell the first part.  It was the second part of this yelp that put me into hysterical laughter only because it was so unexpected.

“I just punched myself in the face with the trash can!”

You tell me where else you would hear that exclamation.  Where?  Who else would say that besides Jessie?