Santa, Baby...

My stepfather used to tell a story about his ex-wife, who didn't care for grapes.

This made two of them.

His ex-wife one day, he said, came home with a big bag of grapes from the grocery store. He was perplexed. "Why did you buy these?" he asked. "You don't like grapes. I don't like grapes. We don't like grapes. So why did you buy so many grapes?"

"They were on sale!" he says she said. "25 cents a pound. What a bargain!"

Sales are like that. They represent huge savings over what you would have paid if you needed the thing you bought, which you didn't, so you get this tremendous sense of value for the money you've just wasted.

I became pinko commie scum so gradually, I never even noticed it happening.

But what is it with this? I really want (do not need) a few things: a new TV, because mine goes all wibbly-wobbly when I put on the new "Jeeves and Wooster" DVDs that my daughter gave me for Christmas. So this 13-year-old piece of crap (the TV, not my daughter) is giving out already, which is aggravating, because I don't think those newfangled wide-angle flat ones will fit inside the TV alcove of my entertainment center, which means I also need new furniture.

Not to mention that HDTV makes everything look like a 1987 episode of "All My Children."

The battery adaptor on this laptop only works if it's plugged in at a very specific angle; otherwise, it's running on battery power alone, which lasts approximately one minute and forty-seven seconds. So I may be needing a new adaptor, or something.

It's better than my desktop computer, a 2001 PowerMac G4. Don't get me wrong, the computer is going strong. It just can't handle video, GIFs, flash, Java, or any kind of animation, which wouldn't be a problem, except that these things seem to be prerequisites for using the internet lately. Fine. Characters typed on your keyboard will show up soon enough on your screen. Be patient. Go play a couple of games of solitaire while you're waiting. You like spinning rainbows, don't you? Well, there you go.

My iPhone 4 is getting a little slow and will no longer sync with the abovementioned laptop because there isn't enough free space unless I delete my entire music library and reinstall it every time. It won't sync with the desktop at all, because plugging anything new into a USB port causes the mouse and keyboard to stop responding.

My wi-fi off my DSL modem is too slow to stream video content and I have to turn off wi-fi on my phone in order to get Pandora to play or my Facebook app to work, which it sometimes does, but not always, because reliable cell service in Travis Heights can't be had for love or money, no matter who your provider is.

And the motor on my coffee grinder won't activate unless you line up the base just exactly so and whisper prayers of devotion to whoever the god of coffee is, probably Vulcan or Mercury or somebody like that.

And I'd like a new mattress. Mine was bought when I was pregnant with Anna and has pretty noticeable butt impressions.

So there you go: a wish list of things that I probably really will purchase at some point in the not-too-distant future, but just those things. Then we're done... right?

Mind you, I am pretty fond of grapes.