Dear Santa,

No doubt you’ve been hard at work gathering the items on my Christmas list—the pink Honda Metropolitan, a small press anxious to publish my new book, plastic surgeries, trip to Europe…But I’ve been doing some thinking, and I’ve decided I need one thing more than any of those others.

All I want for Christmas is a maid, Santa, preferably a live-in. Better yet, make it a housekeeper/nanny/valet. And she can’t be just any old maid, either. We’re not so easy, my family. We’re loud—voices, guitars, drums, keyboard, karaoke machine. We’re messy and don’t have good manners.

There are the dogs to contend with—their preference for wet food in the morning, full bowls of dry all day. Stella's nails always need clipping and Daisy needs cortisone shots. Then there's the narcissistic parakeet, the gimp goldfish, and the special-needs turtle, with his heater that has to be checked and his artificial sunlight.

We have bad habits. My husband leaves his coat hangers on the towel rack in the bathroom, where they breed. I collect mismatched socks, stained t-shirts, and the Tic-Tacs from Jack’s jeans pockets into a laundry basket on top of the dryer, always meaning to deal with them later.

The kids leave ice cream cartons under the beds and scorched instant potatoes on the eye of the stove. There’s always some kind of weird mold growing around Stella’s crate, crawling across the carpet toward the heat vent. We have a hole in the kitchen ceiling and three-month-old chili in the fridge.

Yes, it will have to be an extraordinary someone who could live and work in our home. In order to ensure the best possible fit, she should possess the following credentials: She must be as plump and motherly as Aunt Bea, as detail-oriented as Mr. French, as resourceful as Hazel, as good with kids as Alice, as sassy as Florence, as tireless as Rosie, as laid-back as Tony Micelli, and as loyal as Tattoo.

Oh, and if she could fly like Mary Poppins, so much the better.

Thanks & Love,
Tania


Ps. I’ve been really good.