Mall Rat

I thought I was done with the cookies. I am not done with the cookies.

Dogger needs cookies, she knew what I was doing, she was watching what I was doing and she knew that she wasn’t getting any of them and she was unhappy. All she knew was that somewhere out there, other dogs were getting “her” cookies and she was not feeling the love.

And also, I forgot one of the dog people at work and then there is that girl I went to high school with and I’m pretty sure I mentioned dog cookies to her and that I would send her some. The good thing is that she I’m pretty sure is Hindu and her husband is Jewish, so I don’t need to worry about beating Santa to their tree, so perhaps they will get Happy New Year dog cookies instead. But the lady at work, her, I need to get to sooner rather than later. And Dogger is sad, and she does need her very own cookies. But this time, No More Stars. I am over star shapes. I’m going to make these all large bone shaped because the dogs are all large and large dogs need large cookies.

But tonight, tonight I am taking a break from baking and my plans are to wrap gifts. I want them wrapped, I need them wrapped, if they are wrapped they’ll be done and I can take another thing off the old to-do list. Is it too on point to wrap something in gift wrap that kind of comments on what it is wrapping? Say, I am wrapping a stuffed bear and I wrapped the stuffed bear in paper decorated with stuffed bear images, is that just too something? Because I have some great paper that would be so cool to wrap this one thing in but I won’t if that sort of thing is not done for whatever reason.

I could also be deeply over thinking the problem too, which I think is moot because I am making gift wrap into a “problem”.

I looked at my collected gifts and thinking what a good year it had been. I had been able to amass a lot of stuff while saving lots of money. Yay me, yay for my family. Well. I got to wrapping and it started to dawn on me, the women in my family had been very, very good girls this year while the men in my life apparently had been out killing nuns and drowning puppies.

I blame Alphagal and Tiny E and my Mom for being so easy to shop for. I can walk into a store and see eight things Alphagal needs right now, I can walk past a store and see a dozen things my Mom would love. Tiny E is 15 months old, she wants all the cute things, whether she knows yet or not.

Speaking of getting things off the to-do list. I mailed everything I had that needed to be mailed. It cost me $41 which is about three and half times what it cost me to make 360 cookies and buy the two photo frames that I had to mail. Six boxes shipped out of state $41, getting them all out of my life? Priceless.

You started on the second floor of a building that had two floors and a basement, you walk down one flight of steps and you are one the first floor. There is one more flight of stairs going down, where is the basement? Do you stop and ask where the basement is or do you just continue down? Gah.

It’s the oddest thing, since I relegated Dogger back to her bedroom and out of the rest of the decorated and not-at-all-Dogger-safe rest of the house, she seems happier. She seems happy to be able to use her crate again. I took her bed out of the office and put it in the living room so she could be out and I had been keeping the office door shut, you know so my office could function as an office and not as the dogs bedroom – for the first time in five years, and Dogger had her run of the rest of the house (more or less) and it turns out, she was happy in the office. She didn't want her freedom, she wanted her crate back.