First-World Problems

                Today, my middle daughter asked for another Barbie.  There is nothing spectacular or blog-worthy in that request, as I hear it most days.  Nor was my response (“sorry but we already have every Barbie ever produced and even if I did buy you another, you’d strip her naked in a matter of minutes, break off an arm a week later, and leave her shoes out for your sister to choke on or drop one down the sink drain”).  Okay, maybe that isn’t my actual response, but you get the idea. 

As she launched into her calm (ha!), level-headed (double ha) tirade about the gross injustice of my refusal to purchase her yet another toy for absolutely no reason whatsoever, I noticed my front lawn.  It’s a sickly shade of brownish green.  Clearly, it’s time to start watering for spring.  But this realization led me to wonder when the landscapers come and turn on the irrigation system for the spring.  Or even what the company name is.  Or whether I have to be home when they do it.  It only takes a nanosecond (including the elusive backwater flow test, which admit it, you have no clue what it does or why it’s needed either), and then like magic my lawn essentially starts to water itself without any effort on my part. 

Somewhere between this Barbie conundrum and my panic over the scheduling of the landscaper, I started to worry that our HOA would send a letter about the horrid neon green duct tape my husband stuck all over our swingset canopy to repair the rips.  And it occurred to me that I have a lot of first-world problems right now.  I’m pretty sure I don’t have a single actual problem at the moment (and trust me, with the pregnancy insomnia, I spend lots of hours trying to dream up one), but real problems aren’t nearly as funny to blog about as first-world problems.  So I quickly informed my delightful child that kids somewhere in the world have to walk like ten miles a day just for clean drinking water and that she should take her Barbies and be grateful she has filtered water to bathe them in. 

Since I’m a list-maker (moderate OCD—is that a real problem???), here’s today’s list… First-World Problems:

1)      Figuring out what all the abbreviations used in texts are.  LOL and WTF I get.  SMH or ROFL—no one says those in real life, so why abbreviate them?  And as for the rest, I have no clue and never care enough to Google it.  And unless you’re younger than the hashtag (which if you are, stop reading now—I’m highly inappropriate at times!), you know you’re as clueless as me.

2)      Finding a dual-screen DVD player for the van that saves the kids’ place on the DVD when the engine is shut off.

3)      Cleaning hot pink Hello Kitty nail polish off of upholstered furniture.

4)      Needing to reorganize your toddler’s closet, but only being able to do that while she’s asleep.

5)      Wanting to maintain only one Twitter account but feeling guilty when your kid’s principal starts to follow you since everyone you follow is a 25-30 year old male celebrity. 

6)       Figuring out how to set the thermostat before bed.  This one kills me.  Several of us have nasty spring allergies, so sleeping with the windows open doesn’t work.  On spring nights, the house gets too hot for my swollen, hormonal self to sleep at bedtime, but by 2am, it’s icy cold.  Don’t tell me to get a programmable thermostat—those things are evil.  When I change the temperature, I want it to do what I say, not to revert back to its pre-programmed temp at the next scheduled time.  What I need is a thermostat where I can tell it to keep my house between 66-68 degrees overnight, whether that means that it needs to use A/C, heat, or both at different times. 

7)      Remembering to stay up till midnight 90 days before our Disney trip to try to reserve Fastpasses to meet Elsa, my least-favorite EVER Disney princess. 

8)      Gluten.  BPAs.  GMOs. 

9)      Determining the best way to store all my kids’ crap.  I mean, toys.  When you have three+ kids, figuring out where to arrange all the stuff so the kids can play with it but can also theoretically put it away independently requires something akin to an engineering degree. 

10)   Deciding if the upright Dyson or canister one will be less likely to scratch hardwood floors.

11)   Realizing you should buy your kids organic fruit but refusing to pay $40 a day for their uncontrollable raspberry-eating habit.

12)   Reconfiguring my Pandora stations after my preschooler gave a thumbs down to all songs not by Taylor Swift or Katy Perry. 

13)   Trying to sync my ipod playlist with the laptop without accidentally getting any of my spouse’s Radiohead songs.  If you question the dilemma here, you’ve obviously never tried running while a Radiohead song plays.  You might as well try taking Unisom before a race.

14)   Finding maternity pants that aren’t too big in the morning but still fit at night.

15)   Determining if the dishes in the dishwasher are dirty or clean or mid-cycle when you have a ridiculously quiet dishwasher with more buttons and controls than a space ship.

16)   Remembering to put the food you’re trying to cook in whichever oven you actually preheated.  TIP-  it won’t cook if you choose incorrectly.

17)   Deciphering the Barbie Dreamhouse construction manual.  And no, that’s not a typo.  It’s not an instruction manual because it’s useless and requires you to literally construct the house out of a million plastic pink pieces.

18)   Preparing a nut-free, dairy-free, gluten free snack for preschool that your kid will actually be excited about.

19)   Finding a case for your smart phone that fits in your skinny jeans pocket but still protects the phone when your toddler drops it in the toilet, your preschooler throws it at you, or your first grader runs over it with her bike.

20)   Determining which silver-blue Honda Odyssey is yours in the sea of identical minivans at Super Target.

 

As always, thanks for reading and PLEASE SHARE!  If you haven’t already signed in as an actual follower, please “follow” me.  I’m also on Twitter as @elizabethmallov and there you can get all of my snarky humor without the long-windedness.  And in other big news, I’ve officially signed with Serendipity Literary Agency!  Hopefully soon I can share details of a publishing contract for The Brothers’ Band and start pressuring you all to buy copies J