Can't even blame it on Blitzen

Remember when you got your first email address and you loved email from anyone, including dirty jokes, smartly photoshopped animals and inspirational poems? Now all that crap and sometimes their senders are unilaterally dismissed to the junk, ahem, recycle bin. Well, I always remember written by Irma Bombeck that amounted to a message about appreciating life. She commented something like "if I knew how short life was I'd have burned those candles shaped like rosebuds". There are a number of other sentimental woulda, coulda, shoulda's. You get the idea.

Now, overlay this sentiment with the fact that I have really really loved those Pottery Barn Reindeer FOR-EVVVER. If you aren't familiar, they are a kitchy version of Rudolph and friends acting out a quality of their name: Vixen is cloaked in a plush stole, Dancer is meant to be twirling, Blitzen, well, you get the idea. They are stupidly priced. I could never justify buying any of it. After adoring the whole motif since graduate school when I had to couldn't afford to spell reindeer, much less have frivolous dishes, I treated myself to the set of bowls 2 years ago.

They are ceramic, hand wash only and have a metallic band prohibiting them from going in the dishwasher. Ridiculously impractical!

Yet....

SOSOSOSOSOSO fun for little boys. Truly, what am I going to do? Use them for the soup course at Christmas dinner? No. I'm going to bust them out for as many meals as possible, let the boys wager on whose got which reindeer, and seek out bowl-able meals and maybe even throw a sandwich in them from time to time so that we don't accidentally miss using them on any day during Advent.

Well, as of today, Ms. Bombeck,we've got one down, seven to go and I will not be sad for a minute.