An Open Letter to Santa Claus

Tweet Dear Santa Claus,

First of all, thank you for delivering many gifts over the years.  I really do appreciate it.  I especially appreciate the fact that you even delivered my brand new bicycle even though I had been misbehaving and being rude to Mama right before Christmas.  I realize you didn't have to do that.

I think the two page "note" explaining how much I did not deserve the bicycle but you felt you had to bring it because Mom had already paid for it *may* have been overkill.

I won't go so far as to blame that note on the fact that it took me three years to learn to ride a bike.  Although, guilt can do crazy things...

Secondly, I'd like to know why I only got gifts that my parents had paid for in advance. I don't remember this being the case for any of my other friends and they got a TON of toys each & every year.

Leslie always smiled.

What's up with that, Santa?

I know my neighborhood was rough. Did you feel like you deserved some monetary reimbursement for putting your reindeer at risk?  I'm okay with it now, but it kind of hurt my feelings at the time.

Thirdly, why did you mostly bring me underwear and winter clothes?  I wanted toys.  I would've settled for books.  Seriously.  Underwear.  From Santa.  Do you realize how mortifying it is to go to school and have everybody ask what you got from Santa?  Underwear.

Snoopy underwear is not happiness

Not cool, Santa, not cool.

Finally, I didn't intend to be so bitter about this.  I do appreciate everything I received growing up.  I'm not very materialistic and I definitely think that's a wonderful lesson to have learned the hard way as a child.

However, I'm really weird about receiving gifts now.  I'm not going to go so far as to blame you for this, Santa, but I do think you have to take a little credit for my strange behavior.

I didn't even need to be home to be weird

Oh, I'm sorry we never left any food out for you.  Mom said it would attract roaches and that you'd understand.

See you soon?

DanaK

PS - I have technically never officially stopped believing...keep that in mind (iPad 2 with 3G)

Inspired by 3.) Open Letter To Santa Claus

PHOTOBOMB: Crappy Playgrounds

Tweet When you drive into our neighborhood, you may notice the nice green space with the cool looking play structure in it.  Additionally, there's a toddler playground right by our house (sounds awesome for moms of toddlers like Klaw, right?).

What you don't see is that both of the playgrounds are unsafe and don't even meet minimum Consumer Product Safety Commission public playground guidelines.  We've been here for 3+ years and didn't realize how bad it was until Klaw was old enough to run & play.

 The Toddler Playground

Yeah, definitely not enough loose-fill, huh?

hard to tell, but there's about 2" of space beneath the post

Broken gate

Broken picnic table

The Kid Playground

So much for a soft landing, eh?

It's missing railings

This trash can is ALWAYS full

I thought this was concrete, it's so hard

 Okay, I do laugh at the graffiti:

"amw is an ugly ass hoe"

"POOP IS GOOD"

I'm writing a letter to the HOA president because this is ridiculous.  Of course, the contact form for the property management group is broken and the HOA website has been suspended.

What the heck do our HOA fees go to?  I totally get that this is a first world problem but I'm paying fees that should cover care & maintenance of children's play areas.  It would be better to just have open, grassy fields for the kids than broken, damaged playground equipment.

Have you ever had to work to get a public playground maintained properly? Ever dealt with an HOA?  Do you have any tips you can share?  Please???

Find Me at "Life With Levi" Today

Tweet Hey, y'all!

After a brief holiday sabbatical, I'm guest posting over at Life With Levi about Why I Chose Cloth Diapers.  Take a few minutes to check it out.

BONUS:  You can enter the Stocking Stuff with Fluff giveaways all week long!