birthday money.

A few days before my birthday, I sent my mom a wish list. We are the kind of family where you can just ask for presents. While Josh was horrified the first time I just came out and asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he was very happy with the results. Surprises are nice, but so is getting exactly what you want. My mom used to send me an email at the beginning of October, which basically asked if there was something specific that I wanted or if she should just send money. That's the kind of straight talk that you can expect from my family.

I guess I asked for the money too many years in a row, because she is just sending cash without asking these days. The trouble is, there are some things that I want, but don't want to buy for myself. Basically, these are things that I'm unlikely to find at a thrift store anytime soon and I kinda really want them now. Here was my birthday list:

a set of widemouth plastic jar caps - I found a boatload of various wide-mouth jars at a yard sale and replaced my entire storage jar collection with them. Unlike my previous collection of hodgepodge mayonnaise and pickle jars, they did not come with lids. I have some of the canning lids, but those are kind of a pain to deal with.

biscuit cutters (double-sided, with both round and fluted edges) - I had one biscuit cutter and I managed to lose it. I do not like using jar lids or drinking cups for cutting biscuits, they just don't work right. You can find these at estate sales once in a while, but they seem to be the kind of thing that people mostly hold on to.

Harry Potter and the Dealthly Hallows, Part 1 DVD - I just want it.

I even sent the list with helpful Amazon links, telling her she could just pick and choose what was in her budget (secretly hoping that she would just go over budget and buy them all). But she responded that she had already sent the money.

And that's a bummer. Because while it is one thing to know that you have birthday credits coming and ask that they be dispensed in a certain way, it is another to have the money in your hand and actually spend it on jar caps and wizard movies. I already had the money to buy those things for myself, but not the inclination. I would instead look at the jar caps and then look at the price, all the while calculating that I could probably spend as little as a dime a cap (maybe even free), if only I could find someone to sell them to me.

So when the money came, I just folded it up and put it in my cash stash. I will probably pull it out next month to stuff in birthday cards for my niblings. Maybe I will buy those things for myself. Maybe I will wait until I find them used, and my secondhand lifestyle will be redeemed. Or maybe I will wait so long that I will forget that I ever wanted them.

Anyway, Mama, thanks for the birthday money.