Whenever I see something that seems like it would make a good gift, I make myself a note. Sometimes these notes clump into categories, and sometimes not. This is post of gift ideas I’ve been meaning to mention, but they keep not fitting with other posts.

Marmar Magnetic Necklace Sets (photo from the shop). Wait, because these are even neater than you think. FIRST, they’re neat because to change the pendant on the necklace, you just click a new magnet into place. But THEN, they’re ADDITIONALLY awesome because they work with all the Marmar refrigerator magnet sets! So, like, you get yourself a necklace, and you have magnets all over your fridge, and in the morning when you’re getting ready you can PICK A MAGNET OFF YOUR FRIDGE AND PUT IT IN YOUR NECKLACE. A squirrel one day, a cupcake the next! A famous scientist one day, a Santa-hatted cat the next! This idea appeals to me so much, I really really wish I wore necklaces. I would buy ALL THE MAGNET SETS.

Sons of Anarchy temporary tattoos (photo from fxnetworks.com). (I mean, clearly the photo is from fxnetworks.com. Clearly I do not have this nice young man in my living room posing for a photo for me.) I saw a mention of these in an interview with one of the cast members, and I immediately thought “OMG THAT WOULD BE SO COOL FOR A FAN OF THE SHOW.” Or for the partner of a fan of the show. Ahem. No-judging zone.
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Last week’s post:
1. Puzzles
2. Thinning out the list
3. Valerian root
4. Smoothies

This week’s post:

5. Lavender stuff (photo from BathAndBodyWorks.com). This is similar to the superfoods thing: I have FAITH IN THE RELAXING POWERS OF LAVENDER, and so even if it’s NOT working, it works because it makes me feel like I’m DOING something, I’m FIXING it. Plus, anything that instructs me to inhale deeply is going to help.

6. Doing each thing in the right time frame (photo from Amazon.com). If I write when there are kids around, it takes me about five times as long to do the same amount of work as if I write when there are no kids around—and as I’m taking five times as long, I’m also snapping and resenting and feeling awful.
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Things are stressful right now. (Work/too-much-to-do kind of way, rather than personal/family-distress.) I feel like I’ve heard meditation and exercise and bubble baths and yoga advice mentioned a million, billion times; here are some of the other things I do (some of which may also have been mentioned a million, billion times):

1. Puzzles (photo from Amazon.com). I’m working on KenKen now; I’ve also done Sudoku. I find puzzles soothing and distracting: they take my mind off things, but also make my mind feel tidied up. They’re a good thing to work on in a waiting room, or if I have a few minutes between tasks. I like the feeling of a small accomplishment.

2. Thinning out—not necessary in order of priority. Sometimes when I am feeling very, very stressed, the issue is that I’m feeling all the many things I need to do buzzing around me in a cloud. And sometimes when that’s the case, there is a percentage of things that are low-priority but could be done in a short amount of time.

If I write down the twenty things I need to do, including even the small things like changing the battery in the bathroom clock or responding “Okay, I’ll do that!” to an email, not only does that let me stop rehearsing the list mentally, but also I can often do, say, five of the things in five minutes. Getting the list down from twenty items to fifteen makes a huge difference in how stressed I am—whereas if I’d done the things in strict priority order, I’d still be on the first item and still feeling the other nineteen looming.
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My friend Heather is moving across the entire country with children aged almost-3 and almost-5. If I were her I would say that as “ages 2 and 4,” to maximize the Pity Factor.

She is looking for ideas to keep the children entertained on the trip. If your first suggestion is “OMG don’t do it at all! Fly instead!! With the children in animal crates!!” you can save your breath because I already tried it. They will be in the car at least six days, and that is final.

I suggest we see if we can make this easier for her in any way. Donations of prescription medications would be excellent too, but I was thinking more along the lines of travel tips and toy ideas.

My tip, based on taking two much-shorter trips (1.5-days in the car each trip) with a 2-year-old and a newborn, is to plan to stop at places that have a play area or a grassy run-around area, and include in estimated trip time the amount of time it would take for the kids to run/play/climb for 15 minutes or so at each stop. Plus assume triple the number of stops needed with adults. This makes the entire trip take much, much longer.

My second tip is to save some stuff aside and not bring out everything on the first day of travel, or else the children will play frantically with all the toys on the first day and be bored for the rest of the trip. (This is a pointless tip, because if it were me, I’d be desperate enough on the first day to bring out anything, ANYTHING I had.)

Now for things to buy:

1. Fresh TV/movies. Heather tells me that they already have a DVD player for the car, so I suggest buying several new DVDs. …This doesn’t seem like it’s brilliant enough to suggest, but that didn’t stop me from suggesting the kids could run around at rest stops. Blue’s Clues (photo from Amazon.com) is one of the ones I got for the just-turned-2-year-old on my own trip, so it may be too young for the 2- and 4-year-olds—but anything, ANYTHING they would like that wouldn’t be intolerable for the adults.

2. Water-drawing thingie. The H-2 Whoa is the one we had. It’s two-sided, so by the time you finish drawing on the second side, the first side is mostly dry and ready to use again. But if I were buying now, I’d buy the travel-sized Aqua Doodle (photo from Amazon.com). (In fact, I DID buy it, and we still keep it in our car. I like it less because it has pre-printed rainbows/grass on it, which can kind of ruin an outer space drawing. But it IS more sensibly compact.)
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January is one of the more dismal months. No more decorations. Back to the regular routine. Diets and exercise. Bills. There’s MLK Jr.’s birthday to look forward to, of course, but other than that it’s just one long stretch of deprivation and paying the piper.

This is why I recommend that January be a month of small treats. “Small” because it’s a month of many kinds of restrictions, and we are not going to get anywhere by thwarting all of them. “Treats” because if we don’t find ANY small way around those restrictions we’re going to lose our will to live.

(And make sure you price it right: if it’s something you’d need buy anyway, the treat is only the amount EXTRA it costs. That is, if your regular fabric softener is $6, but the scent you really love is $8, buying it is only a $2 treat, not an $8 treat. If packing a lunch would cost you $2, but buying a lunch is $6, buying it is only a $4 treat, not a $6 treat.)

(photo from MrsMeyers.com)

Treat Idea #1: A nice smell. If you have perfume you don’t usually wear, wear it sometimes. Or buy a new candle, or get some perfume samples to try, or choose a new hand soap, or a new air freshener, or a new fabric softener. We are not thinking BIG here: even very small and ordinary things can be cheering.
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This week a little virus sped through our household: sore throats and 103-degree fevers for everyone except me. If I ever wondered if I might have been a good and kind and angelic nurse in, say, an army tent with rows of patients, the answer is “Probably not.” Six people asking for more juice, more water, a blanket, the remote, maybe another piece of toast, was pretty much all I could handle pleasantly, and probably the adverb “pleasantly” is pushing it a bit, even in much nicer conditions and with much less upsetting illness/injuries than would be in an army tent.

There are certain things I keep in the house always, so I have them on hand when illness visits us and don’t have to add “running to the store” to my toast-fetching list:
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That’s kind of a specific title, isn’t it? I expect the items we come up with will also work for non-relatives staying in non-hotels.

I am hoping to access the wonders that live in your skulls and come up with a list I can use right now—but that we all can use if/when we need it in the future. You were so helpful with the party favors thing and the face moisturizers thing (I’m going to try Olay Complete first, because I found a bottle in the cabinet, but after that I will probably have to say eenie-meenie-miney-mo because there were so many appealing suggestions).

Let’s say you have a relative, not in your immediate family but not distant either. Aunt-level sort of relative. And let’s say the aunt-level relative is going through something tough of an uncertain-outcome-bedside-vigil nature, and could use little carepackagey gestures of the sort that could be sent to a hotel room (as in, not a lot of stuff she would then have to lug home with her afterward).

The question is, what sorts of things would you send? I am thinking bakedy things (brownies, oatmeal cookies), but what ELSE?
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It is time to CHOOSE A CALENDAR, and I am not even a little bit kidding when I say this is one of the purchases I most look forward to each year. I had trouble limiting this post to only twenty possibilities, and in fact caved and added one more at the last minute. (All photos except the last one are from Amazon.com.)

1. Charley Harper. I had a Charley Harper last year, and I don’t usually repeat. But if you’re looking for a good calendar, I REALLY liked my 2010 one. Plus, the 2011 one is half off.

2. Master of Illusion. I’m not fond of people calling themselves “Master of” anything, and usually optical illusion is more my kids’ thing than mine. Still, this one appeals to me this year, and it too is half off.
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Farrell writes:

How DO you do Santa shopping for all of your kids? Online? In store? Coupons? Buy throughout the year? Tips + strategy please; ’tis the season.

Ah! It does vary. When I’m not gift-shopping, just buying normal household stuff (sheets, towels, non-perishable groceries) my general shopping strategy is “Buy it before you need it, when you find it cheap.” I do this for stocking stuffers: little toys or novelty candies (pacifier lollipops and similar) go on clearance all year, and I especially have luck in the party-supplies section where I can sometimes find 4- or 6-packs of party favors on 75% off.

But that’s not going to work as well for presents: a child might like Bakugan in the summer but be totally over it by Christmas.
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There are things that I hear people talking about for ages, about how great those things are, and I’m too Anxious About New Things to try them. And then one day I DO (or else someone does it for me, as when I was 21 and my dad signed me up for an email account, knowing I wouldn’t have done it until my thirties otherwise), and my life is REVOLUTIONIZED. My parents use the expression that something “has improved the quality of our lives.” And while that sounds like the kind of thing people might say about a new vaccine or an economic upturn, they use it for things such as a new shower caddy.

Ever since I had my second child (and, perhaps more importantly, moved to a house no longer within walking distance of the post office), I’ve been whining about how hard it is to go to the post office: the lines, and the limited hours, and hauling children in and out of the car for what ought to be a 2-minute errand, and why don’t they have a DRIVE-THROUGH?? My dad kept saying and Saying and SAYING that I could get a pre-paid label online and have my mail carrier pick up the package, but I felt like…maybe I couldn’t. Like what if that cost more money? what if I weighed it wrong? what if my mail carrier hadn’t heard of it and thought I was being presumptuous? what if I had to print it on special label paper instead of regular? what if there was a pick-up fee, or or or?
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