I have eaten
the cooked bacon
that was in
the fridge

and which
you were probably
saving for our kid’s
breakfast

Forgive me
it was delicious
so bacony
and there.

*With apologies to William Carlos Williams.

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Twelve years ago today, my beautiful Big-Eyed Boy was born. Weighing 9 lbs and 11 oz, he seemed ginormous at the time. (Hey, I’m a short woman!) And then came his first poop. Oh, how we ooohed and ahhhhed over it. Weird, isn’t it, how new parents can find crap so adorable? I remember grabbing a baby wipe and realizing that, despite how it felt like I’d shot out a watermelon, that wipe was HUGE compared to his little butt.

And now, as we close out his Tween years, I no longer find his poop adorable. In fact, laundry day pretty much squicks me out. But him? Oh, yeah. I still sigh sometimes when I look at him… when he’s not talking… which is, basically, only when he’s asleep. Oh, and the baby wipes? Yeah, I’m the one using them now on my own ass. It’s the circle of life, y’all!

Oh, and it’s also my blog’s 9th birthday. Yes, that’s right: I started Electric Venom on my son’s third birthday, a time when most other mommies would probably lie through their teeth have been doing something all nurturing and stuff. Me? I’d spent the previous six weeks single-parenting a child who would not. shut. up. (Some things never change.)

Here’s hoping that, a year from now, I post another entry celebrating both birthdays again.

 
 

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Looking back, I think I’ve been going through a mid-life crisis since I was 36, when I realized I’d never be a rock star. Or the host of my own television talk-show. Or taller.

For the most part, I’ve handled those realizations by drinking vast quantities of liquor as well as the next woman, pushing them out of my mind so I could go about my day-to-day life as a housewife without screaming in abject horror over having fulfilled the soul-crushing prediction of my fourth grade teacher, Miss Niles, who’d scrawled on my report card: “HAS THE I.Q. OF A GENIUS BUT THE SELF-MOTIVATION OF A SLOTH.” (Thanks, bitch.)

And, for the most part, my tactic has worked. I can look in the mirror every morning without seeing the fine lines around my eyes, or noticing that my gray hairs are coming in curly, whereas the rest of my hair is straight. That’s because I don’t put my glasses on until sometime after my coffee has kicked in, by which time I’m far too behind in my daily chores to bother tending such things. Also, I’ve reached an age where I no longer dither about what I’m going to wear for the day. The only decision I have to make is whether I’ll be wearing the black sweatpants, or the blue ones, and that choice is made simple by checking the color of my cleanest t-shirt.

Up until recently, I was so busy drinking being a housewife that it was easy for me to ignore the fact that my oldest child, my beautiful daughter, will be turning 21 this summer (and, thus, no longer a reliable designated driver) and that my baby boy, who’ll turn 12 next weekend, is unmistakably in the first throes of puberty…and almost as tall as me. Besides, every birthday they celebrate is another chance to call my mother and point out that, contrary to what she’d once told me, I didn’t starve, strangle, disown or misplace my kids. Yay, me!

Then today, while cutting out coupons, I ran across one for a baby pacifier twin-pack — or, as we used to call them, binkies! They were absolutely adorable: one was painted to look like big, red kissy-lips while the other looked like a bunny nose. Cute little binkies, with a one dollar off coupon, y’all! But I didn’t need to clip it, because MY KIDS ARE TOO OLD FOR BINKIES AND THEY’LL NEVER BE BABIES AGAIN!!!

As irrational as that realization sounds, it’s nothing compared to the sound that came out of me right at that moment — a weird half-sob, half-laugh which, if anyone had been around to hear it, they’d have thought was a pretty awesome burp. But I knew better, just as I knew why I clipped that coupon, anyway, despite my kids being to old for binkies: GRANDBABIES.

Sure, my eggs are too pickled to produce more offspring, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. And, no, my daughter isn’t pregnant (that I know of) and she’s not married (or even, according to her Facebook status, dating anyone). But you never know. After all, she is turning 21 this summer and, as a good percentage of us know from experience, booze is often the first ingredient in baby-making. Not that I’m trying to rush her, mind you.

Even so, statistically speaking, I’m likely to become a grandmother in the next four years, which still puts me under 50 when it happens. You know what that means: I went from being a tired, slightly disheveled, frumpy middle-aged housewife to (future) HOT GRANDMA in a matter of seconds, all thanks to clipping that coupon.

Suddenly, my midlife crisis is over.

 
 
 

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Fourteen months ago — on December 30, 2010 to be precise — I went to a decidedly boozy birthday celebration. So boozy, in fact, that long before the other celebrants were ready to call it a night, I asked the bartender to call a cab for me so I could go home. The next morning, I woke up with one of the worst hangovers I’ve ever had… in addition to a goose egg-sized bump on my forehead from when I’d had to bend over and squint so I could get my key into the lock on our front door, at which point I’d overbalanced, whacked my head on the front door, over-corrected from that, and landed smack on my backside, which is how I was still sprawled when my smirking husband finally took pity on me and let me into the house.

It was not my finest moment.

Anyway, after spending several hours trying not to throw up napping on the sofa, I remembered that I’d taken several photos with my iPhone 3GS and had promised to send them to the rest of the gang. One problem: my iPhone was missing.

Now, had I been a smart woman I would’ve had Find my iPhone installed, and tracking it down would’ve been easy as pie. Then again, had I been a smart woman I would have realized — as I since have, I assure you — that a woman of my age and responsibilities has NO business going out and drinking like that.

My first thought was that maybe it had fallen out of my purse when I’d ricocheted from knocking my forehead against the front door to plopping on my ample posterior. But, in all honesty, I was in no condition to step outside looking for my phone, so I asked my husband if he’d conduct the search for me. He huffed a bit, then stepped out front and stomped around. Not two minutes later, he was back inside grumbling about how cold it was and that, even assuming my phone had fallen outside, it would either have cracked as it hit the ground or would have died in the frigid overnight temperatures. In sum, he said, I was screwed.

“You weren’t out there for very long,” I said. “How could you have looked all over the front yard in such a short time?”

“It’s in a pink case, okay, against white snow. It wouldn’t be that hard to see, okay?” he replied.

“But what if fell into a drift? You wouldn’t see it then,” I said.

“I looked for it, okay? It is NOT there. No doubt, you left it at the bar or in the cab or someone stole it from your purse, but IT IS NOT OUTSIDE, all right?”

Have I mentioned that my husband gets very, very touchy when we have to spend money on anything, and doubly so when we have to spend money replacing something one of us has lost?

Yeah, so I spent the rest of the morning using our land line to call everyone in the group, each of whom was as hungover as I was, and none of whom had seen my phone. To a man (or woman), they all pointed out that the bar we’d been at was — how to put this — a nasty little dive filled with such unsavory characters that none of us felt safe going to the bathroom unless: (a) someone would come with us; and (b) someone else was actively guarding our drinks. In other words, someone might have nicked my iPhone out of my purse when I wasn’t looking.

Because I use my iPhone intensively, I had a lot of sensitive data stored on it. Waiting and hoping it would turn up just wasn’t an option, so we called AT&T that day to deactivate the thing. Wouldn’t you know, they had a special going if I wanted to upgrade to the iPhone 4? Yes, please, I told them, and two days later my pretty new gadget, and new case, arrived in the mail. After getting my data transferred to the new unit, I never gave my old iPhone another thought.

Until yesterday.

See, yesterday we had absolutely gorgeous weather. Since this winter has been so mild, and our local weather gurus all agree we’re unlikely to get any significant snow or even another hard freeze before things warm up for the Spring, I decided to do some gardening. I weeded, raked, and pruned stuff, then planted four dozen frilly pansies in the front garden to give the house some much-needed curb appeal. Then I reached behind the foundation plantings next to the front step so I could turn on the sprinkler and water my perky new plantings.

Lo and behold, there was my iPhone, half-buried in mud and looking so similar to my current iPhone (I do like those pink cases) that for a moment I thought I’d just dropped it. But no, my iPhone 4 was in my pocket. What I was looking at was the iPhone 3GS that I’d lost not this past December, but the one before that.

As in, fourteen months ago.

Fourteen months, during which I’ve severed contact with everyone who’d been at that party, for what I think should be an obvious reason. Fourteen freaking months, during which time the Venomous Hubby has reminded me, every single time I’ve left the house, to be careful that I don’t lose my iPhone. Fourteen months during which we’d had over 70 inches rain/snow including one all-out blizzard, during which we shivered through the third coldest winter on record, then sweated through weeks of temperatures above 90F. Fourteen long months during which bugs, spiders and that damned woodchuck have scampered around behind the foundation plants doing whatever it is yucky creatures do outside.

What does an iPhone look like after it’s been exposed to all of that? Like this:

Needless to say, I did a happy dance which involved waving my old iPhone in my husband’s face while telling him, in a singsong voice, “I found it! I found it! It’s not lost anymore, ‘cuz I found it!” which was my way of telling him to shut the hell up about the incident already, m’kay?

His response: “So, you found it, big deal. And now you’re the proud owner of an overpriced paper weight.”

There are few things that I enjoy more than being right, so I slipped the thing out of its case and gave it a good rubbing with a barely damp cloth. I was surprised how few scratches the screen had, and how easily it cleaned up. No doubt, the case had a lot to do with that.

But then came the big question: would it work? I really didn’t have high hopes, considering the kind of weather we’d had since I lost the dang thing, but then again, it had been sheltered by both the foundation shrubs and a foot or so of roof overhang. Even so, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I plugged it in and the thing powered on right away.

And, just in case there are doubters out there, here’s a snap of my new and old iPhones side-by-side:

.

Well done, Apple. Well done, indeed! Not only did you help me shock my husband into speechlessness (yay!), but you’ve made an Apple convert out of him, too. Most importantly to me, now he’ll have his OWN iPhone to use when he wants to find tomorrow’s weather forecast, check the game scores, or maybe even call the florist and order a bouquet for his wife.

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A not-so-secret secret: I don’t like children, unless they’re my own, both of whom are better looking, smarter, funnier and all-around more loveable than anyone else’s kids. Just ask me. Or them.

Unfortunately, the kids in our neighborhood (and various small animals) gravitate toward me. I suspect this is because I’m so short they simply cannot believe I’m a full-fledged adult. Or maybe it’s because I’m not above whipping up a batch of cookies and offering them as many as they’d like if they’ll GO HOME and eat them. Hard to say. Also unfortunate: some of the kids in our neighborhood are just downright stupid. No, I mean it. They’ll come over and ask my son to play outside with them, then swarm my yard until the sheer noise of the throng drives me nuts.

Now, when I say “throng”, I mean it. There’s one family in the neighborhood that consists of six siblings and an endless rotation of cousins (at least two on any given weekend), all of whom are required to play outside as a group, despite the vast difference in their ages, and add two other pairs of siblings — who also seem to come as a unit, like “Invite one! Get two!” — plus my son. Now, I suck at math but that’s a coven a shitload of children. All playing in my yard.

(Come to think of it, I bet their parents send them with instructions to play in my yard just so they can get a break from their noisy little brats. Oh man. THAT is going to come up at the next block party, I assure you.)

Anyway, after a while I just can’t take it anymore. By that point, they’ve played ‘Ding Dong Ditch’ a half-dozen times even though I never, ever bother answering when the bell rings. (All of the neighborhood parents, having been similarly victimized by this stupid game, know to knock .) They’ve each had a turn being It in Hide-and-Seek, which means I’ve heard “One…two…three…um, six…twelve…five…” at least a dozen a shitload of times. And, more often than not, I’ve passed out numerous Band-Aids or ice packs, depending on whether they were riding bikes or playing tag that day.

Then I snap.

That’s when I’ll go outside to pass around cookies — “Take one for each hand and GO HOME, kids!” — and they’ll stand there, grasping their cookies, completely oblivious to the GO HOME part, until I say for the fourth or fifth time, “No, really. It’s time to GO HOME!” That’s usually sufficient enough to set them on their way, although I’m not above pointing out to the stragglers that if they continue hanging around they have to give me back their cookies. After all, we had a deal.

But it never fails: some kid always forgets something at my house — gloves, a hat, their Pokemon cards. (Once, I even found a rather nice lacy bra, which is weird since none of the kids are old enough to wear one. I didn’t know which kid to confront, so I put it away for safekeeping. That, too, will come up at our next block party. Count on it.) Fortunately, the kids never realize they’ve forgotten something, so I don’t have to worry about the doorbell ringing again just when I’m finally getting my drunk on to settle my nerves things are calming down around here.

Now, on one recent evening after VH, the Big-Eyed Boy and I had finished our dinner and gone downstairs to watch TV together, I kept hearing things. At first, I thought I heard a bump in the garage but figured it was just our cat, who sometimes likes to go out there to smell what’s new. A few minutes later, though, I was certain I heard someone talking, but by the time I’d nagged VH into tearing his hypnotized gaze from the TV to find the remote and mute the volume, the noise had stopped.

“You’re hearing things,” he told me.

“Well, duh,” I said. “Isn’t that implied when someone asks ‘Did you hear that?‘”

A few more minutes went by, and this time I was certain: someone was knocking on the door. And that, of course, means one of the neighborhood parents was standing on my doorstep. And THAT means some kid did something stupid while they were here, so I glanced at mine to see if he looked particularly guilty, but he was obviously as confused as I was. Which is why I sent him to answer the door. Who (besides me) is going to go off on a kid, right?

He came back to the basement shrugging. “No one was there. Guess someone’s playing Knock, Knock Ditch?” He thought this was particularly funny until we heard yet another knock, this time louder. Only, this time I could tell it wasn’t coming from the front door, but from the garage, instead. As in, the door inside the garage that opens into the kitchen. So I raced up the stairs worried that we’d left the big, outer garage door up and some thief was now trying to get in our house. (I know, I know: like thieves would knock, right?) So I grabbed the baseball bat we keep in the coat closet and flung open the door to confront the intruder.

The instant I flung open the door, I saw that the large, outer door was closed and realized we must’ve trapped a wild animal inside. And just as I was realizing this, that very animal emitted an ear-piercing scream. Naturally, I screamed, too, and it went on like that for several long heartbeats: the beast screaming, me screaming, both of our screams making the other one scream.

That’s when I pulled it together and took a good look at the rabid thing and saw… it was a three-year-old little boy who’d tagged along with an older sibling to play with my son earlier. And, from what I could decipher between his chest-shaking sobs and snot bubbles, he’d crawled into my minivan in the garage and fallen asleep while everyone else was playing, only they’d forgotten all about him when it was time to go home. (Naturally, they’d taken their cookies anyway.)

He was obviously terrified, and who wouldn’t be, waking up in someone else’s dark garage and not remembering how the hell they’d got there. It’s scared the crap out of ME every time it’s happened. Poor little guy. So, holding him at arm length while I wiped the snot off of his face with a wad of disposable tissue, I assured him I’d walk him home and, yes, he could have his two cookies.

Now get this: when his mother finally came to the door, she had the audacity to ask why I didn’t know her son was still at my house, much less that he’d crawled into my van and fallen asleep. It was such an unexpected, blame-shifting question that I just stood there and stared, blinking slowly, my left eyebrow raised in that disdainful, Spock-like way that I’d practiced in front of the mirror for hours when I was a kid.

Eventually, she’d replayed her own words in her head. She has one of those faces that pretty much telegraphs every thought in her head as it happens. One minute, she was scowling at me, her eyebrows lowered into an angry V over her nose and jaw jutting forward beneath puckered lips. The next, her face went blank and slack, like she was listening to some far-off tune. Then — BOOM! — it hit her: why didn’t she know her son was still at my house? And that’s when I turned on my heel and left her standing on her front porch, contemplating her own stupidity and calculating how long it’d take the story to make its rounds of the neighborhood.

The next afternoon, the same neighbor came knocking on my door bearing a plate of homemade cookies and an apology for having gone all unreasonable on me the night before. As she explained — and she was very nice and contrite about it — with so many kids in the house, sometimes it’s easy to lose track of them, which is why they’re supposed to keep an eye on each other, too. I totally get that. Really, I do. I can’t imagine having more than my own two, who keep me at my wit’s end. So we made nice and everything, and we were all smiles and stuff, as I closed my front door.

But just in case, I tossed the cookies into the trash. Who knows what snot-nosed kid of hers had touched them.
 
 
 

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Yesterday, picking my son up from school, I had to wait while he finished a conversation with a friend. It went like this:

Son’s friend: (farting loudly) “Wow, that was a good one! Can you smell that?”
Son: “Dude, you’re not supposed to fart in front of other people unless you’re married to them! ‘Cuz wives are nice people, and they’ll love you anyway.”

So, word to the Venomous Hubby: we’ll be having chili with beans for dinner tonight. See how much I love you?

 
 

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One thing about being a stay-at-home mom: personal maintenance takes a back seat. Oh, I know I could claim that my life is all about my kid, which would make “letting myself go” sound far more saintly. But the truth of the matter is that my appearance just doesn’t matter like it used to; my forays into public consist of driving to and from school (at which point sunglasses and a slap of lipgloss suffice), and the occasional trek to the grocery store, pediatrician’s office, or karaoke night at the local bar (all of which require that I actually change out of pajamas).

And yet, sometimes it just gets to me… the unkempt hair, the complexion that looks like I’ve been washing my face with a Brillo pad, the eyebrows that look more like caterpillars facing off for battle above my nose. Seriously, thanks to the Iranian part of my heritage, if I don’t keep on them at least every few weeks, I start looking like this guy:

Not a pretty sight.

So, the other day I got a wild hair (I mean that literally, since bikini waxes are something else I seldom make time for) and decided I simply had to put down the bon-bons and get my ass off the sofa make time for personal maintenance. I shaved. I exfoliated. I oiled, steamed, filed, buffed and polished. I even picked up a home highlighting kit and decided to give myself a few sunny streaks to liven things up while I grow out the short “Mom haircut” I got a few months ago. Besides, I figure, highlights would hide just how much gray I’m getting up there.

Well, it turns out, I’m not just getting gray hair on top of my head. (No, this is not where I write about using a home hair-coloring kit to tint the downstairs carpet. I solved that little problem with a big jug of Nars, thank you.) My eyebrows are getting gray, too! Egads, is there no end to the indignity of middle age? So, after a stiff shot of vodka (which, by the way, tastes like crap in one’s morning coffee), I dusted off my tweezers and magnifying mirror and settled down by a sunny window to take care of business.

That was Mistake Number One. Because those mirrors? Oh, man. Every pore, every broken capillary, every wrinkle, flake and itty bitty hair looks ginormous. It’s enough to make one cry, really. Or to dump out half the coffee and replace it with even more vodka.

Turns out, drinking alcohol is not a smart thing to drink before deciding that waxing an arch into one’s eyebrows might be a good idea, since alcohol increases blood flow to the skin, and hot wax combined with increased blood flow to the skin leads to big, nasty looking scabs when you rip the wax off. Also, a lot of swearing.

By that point, the kitchen timer was telling me it was time to rinse the highlight solution out of my hair, but I was too busy mopping up the rivulets of blood flowing down the bridge of my nose and settling into the massively enlarged pores on my cheeks. So I grabbed an ice cube, telling myself I’d rinse my hair just as soon as I staunched the bleeding.

Naturally, I forgot all about the time. Apparently, drinking coffee mugs full of vodka will do that to you.

It wasn’t until an hour later — yes, an HOUR — when my husband and son came home from wherever it is males go when it’s time to do family chores on a Saturday. And there I was, puttering in the kitchen, my gait decidedly bow-legged (hey, YOU try waxing your crotch at home for the first time in years and see if you don’t walk funny, too!) with folded wads of tin foil sticking out from my head like shingles and the skin above my nose finally starting to scab.

And they said nothing. Not one word. Because, although I’ve apparently failed to train them to help out with household chores, they’ve somehow trained themselves not to comment negatively about my appearance… even when it’s much deserved. (It’s possible my shrieking temper tantrums when they’ve pointed out that my pajamas seem to be getting too snug again may have had something to do with this.)

Flash forward several more minutes to when the third mug of coffee with vodka (hold the coffee) hit my system. My bladder about to burst, I dashed to the bathroom to pee where, of course, I saw my reflection and screamed, not because of the huge red welt and dark scab between my brows, but because the damn highlighting foils were STILL there!

Convinced my hair was going to break off in chunks, leaving me once again with hair short enough to prompt strangers to assume I had gender identification issues, I carefully unfolded the bits of foil and found… perfection. Carmel and honey-colored streaks the shade that my stylist, despite repeated efforts, never obtained without first taking my hair platinum and then trying to disguise the damage (and frazzled ends) with toner. Beautiful, pretty streaks that added volume to my hair and, most importantly, disguised the gray. Streaks that were, in fact, so gorgeous I wanted to style my hair and go out somewhere to show off how awesome it looks.

So, after dabbing on aloe and a thick layer of foundation in an effort to conceal my eyebrow-waxing mishap, I suggested to my husband and son that we all go somewhere, maybe for a nice lunch at a restaurant we’d been wanting to try.

And darned if they didn’t immediately remember that it’s Family Chore day, and that they needed to tackle their bathroom, clean the garage, wash and vacuum the cars and rake leaves in the yard. Since I’d finished all of my own chores, they said, I should take some time for myself to do something relaxing, like maybe take a long bubble bath followed by a nap. In hindsight, their sudden interest in doing chores can probably be attributed to the fact that, thanks to three cups of vodka laced with coffee, I probably looked a lot like this:

But who cares, right? I not only got time to tame my eyebrows but ALSO time for a nice, hot bubble bath and a nap…which, thanks to the vodka, occurred simultaneously.

 
 
 

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This is the first year in memory that I’m making New Year’s Resolutions. But, as I’ve realized recently: we either grow as people, or we just grow to be old people. So here’s my list; ambitious it is not:

1. I will plan to blog more often.
2. I will try to eat more veg and less processed foods
3. I will do my best to “get” Twitter.
4. I will make time to exercise on weekdays.
5. I will drink less.
6. I will work at resisting change less.
7. I will read more stuff that makes me seem smarter.
8. I will think less negatively.
9. I will remind myself that every asshole has a momma who sees something special in him/her.
10. I will try to be nicer to my husband when he’s not pissing me off.

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Long time fans of Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series — and I’m certainly one of them! — have much to rejoice about in her latest, A Perfect Blood. Harrison’s ability to craft an engrossing, multi-layered plot just keeps getting stronger. As for the characters we’ve all come to know and love, they’re all here:
 

• Our strong, yet vulnerable heroine, Rachel Morgan, who continues to grapple with the knowledge that she’s the demon’s only hope to save their species.
• Rachel’s roommate and best friend, Ivy, a sexy vampire who is literally a femme fatale.
• Jenks, the chivalrous and defiant Pixy who is the third member of the Vampiric Charms detective agency with Rachel and Ivy.
• Algaliarept, otherwise known as Al, the demon who’s been both Rachel’s mentor and tormentor for years.
• Glenn, the human FIB detective who’s been in Rachel’s corner for years and now, much to Rachel’s surprise, is also in Ivy’s bed.
• The loveable yet awkward Bis, a teenage gargoyle who’s moved into the tower in the church where Rachel, Ivy and Jenks live.
• And last, but certainly not least, Trent Kalamack, the capitalist/politician Elf whose complicated relationship with Rachel has kept the sparks flying throughout the series.

When we last saw Rachel, she’d surrendered her ability to practice ley line magic out of fear that an angry Al would trap her in the Everafter where, due to her demonic genetics, she could single-handedly (womb-edly?) save the demons as the only one capable of giving birth to more of them. But a witch without her magic is vulnerable in ways even Morgan couldn’t imagine, though she quickly discovers just how great of a danger she’s placed herself as she’s hired to investigate murders committed by HAPA (Humans Against Paranormals Association), a militant human group bent on destroying all the magical species.

But practicing ley line magic isn’t the only thing Morgan’s isolated from. Jenks continues to recover from the loss of his wife, thanks in part to the attentions of a fairy warrior named Belle, while Ivy continues to solidify her romance with Glenn. Even Bis has someone to keep him company in the form of Wayde, a werewolf hired by Rachel’s step-father to act as her bodyguard. With her friends moving on with their own lives, and maturing in ways that she has rejected out of fear of getting hurt again, Rachel is forced to confront how her emotional shields have not only isolated her from finding love but, thanks to HAPA, might very well lead to her own destruction.

[Read more of my review at Amazon.com where you can pre-order your copy of Kim Harrison's A Perfect Blood (The Hollows, Book 10) to lock in Amazon's low price guarantee before it's release date on February 21, 2012.]

Sadly, here’s something Kim Harrison told me on her Facebook page when I mentioned how excited I was to receive my advance copy of A Perfect Blood: “I hope you like it, Kate!!!! I’m starting to set up the last book…” As someone who pretty much drops everything to read Harrison’s books as soon as I get my grubby hands on them, I have to say those were the very first words of her that I didn’t like. Then again, I’m fairly certain I’m going to enjoy whatever project she pens next. I just hope it’s soon!

 
 

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Are you avoiding your phone, turning down invitations, and refusing to answer the door rather than get caught without a gift for someone at the last minute? If you’re willing to shell out for overnight shipping, it’s not too late to shop from my list of 10 Types of Great Gifts for Under $20.

Whip up some Gingerbread Body Scrub with a few spices from your kitchen, a neutral oil (olive oil works!) and some brown sugar for under $1. In another bowl, shake the same spices together with 1 lb. of Epsom salts ($1.50). Put both in pretty containers, print or write a nice tag, and put them in a box or basket with a loofah ($3) and a pretty ivory-colored pillar candle ($3) from Wal-mart. Voila, a treat for the senses and skin!

2. An art set for creative kids.

Pick up crayons ($0.50), watercolor paints ($1.00), and a ream of blank paper ($3.90) from the dollar store. While you’re there, grab five or six packets of unsweetened Kool-Aid or similar drink mix ($0.10 each). Make a batch of Kool-Aid Playdough and package it in small containers which you can get at the dollar store for $0.50, or well-scrubbed jars. (I save jars from pimientos and marinated artichoke hearts all year for this.) Put them all together in a box or basket and present it to the little artist to keep him/her entertained for hours.

3. Goodies for Guys.

They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Guess what? The way to making him happy on Christmas starts there, too! If you’ve got a guy you need an inexpensive gift for, it’s as simple as finding a large container (oatmeal containers are perfect for this) or picking one up from the store. Make a batch of microwave fudge and some microwave peanut brittle. (Note: if he or anyone in his household has a peanut allergy, make the brittle with some other kind of nut like cashews, or even shelled sunflower seeds!) Alternate layers of them in the container, separating each with some wax paper, and put a label on it that declares it’s all his, because if there’s one thing guys like more than goodies it’s not having to share them!

4. Cocoa for Co-Eds.

College kids are a hungry lot, but many of their dorms don’t allow any kind of cooking more complicated than using a microwave. Know how many would turn down a box filled with yummy things to suit those midnight munchies? None! So whip up a batch of homemade cocoa mix (ingredients cost $4.70) and put it in a pretty jar. In a second jar, combine a box of angel food cake mix with a box of chocolate cake mix ($2.75), then attach a printed card telling them how to make Cake in a Cup by adding 1/3 cup of the cake mix and 3 tbsp. of water in a large coffee mug sprayed with Pam and microwave it for 90 seconds. Bonus points if you throw in a pretty mug for them to use, too!

5. Pamper The Parents.

Oh, sure, everyone knows how tough it is for couples to take time off from their roles as parents and reconnect with each other. And, of course, we all make noises about how important that is, but unless the couple has family living nearby or a reliable babysitter (do those even exist?), it’s just a lot of empty talk. So imagine how much the pair would appreciate if you gave them a $25 gift voucher (that’ll only set you back $10) from Restaurant.com to a nearby dining spot AND you insisted on watching their kids while they went out for a nice dinner together… alone. As a mom who hasn’t had a Date Night with my husband in almost two years now, trust me, a gift like that is worth its weight in diamonds. Really!

 
 

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