Chick Lit Cheerleader: Making a list...

What would the holiday season be without a post from our Chick Lit Cheerleader, Jen Tucker?!? Are any of her wish list items on your list too?

Jen, take it away!





My Grown-up Christmas List

For years, there were two things that ranked tops on my Christmas list: The Laverne and Shirley board game and an Easy Bake Oven.
And the bell-bottomed generation of the 1970’s just nodded and whooped in unison!

Santa left neither under the tree when I was a little. However, one year, I came close! I remember tearing through reindeer printed paper Christmas morning to find tiny Betty Crocker mixes and baby-sized pans used in conjunction with the Easy Bake Oven, yet there must’ve been a grave mix up because there was no Easy Bake Oven.

“Easy Bake Ovens are dangerous, Jenny,” my electrical engineering father lectured. “You could hurt yourself cooking alone. So, Santa brought you the mixes to make in the real oven.”

Obviously, cooking over a light bulb was lethal in my parents’ eyes yet a 400° oven was perfectly rational for a second grader in which to create Bundt cakes. I can’t make this up, people—honestly!
I was thinking about that little girl who once penned long, detailed lists to Santa and how the decades have changed her. She still believes in the magic of Christmas—giving, blessing others, chestnuts roasting by someone else’s open fire—yet her wish list looks different now that she’s forty-five-years-old.

One of my favorite holiday songs, "My Grown-up Christmas List," was released in 1992 by Amy Grant. Listening to it recently churned my grey matter: If I could, what would I wish for with that same childhood love and abandon I had so many moons ago? Without adult bias or humbug tendencies; just pure childlike-faith that anything was possible?

Well, here goes:

Jen’s (Grown-up) Christmas List

1. A Starbucks barista—oh, I don’t know, maybe named Clive Owen—who magically appears daily in my kitchen, with a perfectly brewed 90oz. mug of black tea, at 6:00 am. No weekends off!
2. A Star Trek-like gadget making all stoplights green upon my car’s arrival, removes crazies from my path, and places bubble force fields around my sons’ cars.
3. The Krispy Krème diet is real—Hallelujah! 
   
4. Laundry magically folds itself and climbs into the dresser a la Mary Poppins.
5. Dog nose prints instantly dissipate from car windows along with the hair tumbleweeds my golden retrievers leave behind.
6. Not one more pediatric oncology hospital bed is occupied—ever.
7. That I’d always be slow to anger, even when one of my spawn eats the last Reese’s peanut butter cup in the freezer. (Side note from Melissa A: "Slow to anger" brought about a Hamilaria moment for me.) 
   
8. That I’d be quick to love, even when one of my spawn eats the last Reese’s peanut butter cup in the freezer.
9. That which makes people unique is embraced, not feared.
10. One more day with my grandma so my children could hear her voice speaking their names; oh, and to hear her laugh while feeling her arms around me. Just one more Christmas. One more bite of her Salisbury steak with all the trimmings. One more time to watch her work her sewing machine magic. It doesn’t feel like too much to ask.
11. To quote the movie, Strange Brew, on command as I did in high school let alone remember why I walk upstairs in my house daily only to recall the reason after I descend.
12. Staying on high school: I want to retrieve all the time I spent making my permed hair even bigger along applying electric blue mascara. We’re regaining months of my life back, friends.
13. That I’d catch up with my endlessly multiplying To Be Read pile of books. Can I get an “amen” my CLC peeps!?
14. For peace on earth and goodwill towards all; always.

Christmas wishes do come true. In 2001, an Easy Bake Oven appeared under my Christmas tree. It wasn’t for me, rather it was from me, to my sons, ages five and three at the time. We can make our own Christmas magic happen all by ourselves and do not need others to make it happen for us, right? Boy oh boy, did that little bake shop live up to my all imagined hype! My boys and I baked tiny devil’s food chocolate layer cakes together over a lightbulb…and it was good…and no one was electrocuted, Dad.

Happiest of holidays to you and yours,
Jen


Check out this vintage Easy Bake Oven Commercial!



Jen Tucker is the author of the funny and true stories, The Day I Wore My Panties Inside Out and The Day I Lost My Shaker of Salt. In September 2012, she had her children's book, Little Pumpkin published as an e-book. She also blogs monthly for Survival for Blondes. She currently lives in Indiana with her husband, three kids and two dogs. You can find her at Twitter, Facebook, her blog and on her website. And in case you missed them. check out her previous Chick Lit Cheerleader posts here.