big box of joy

I was going to spend Joey’s afternoon nap watching a movie. A chick flick; a movie Eli won’t watch with me. I cleaned the house this morning and got the laundry going and after lunch, once I put Joey down for his long afternoon rest, I closed the shades, lit some candles, and settled in on the couch with my coffee for a nice, relaxing afternoon movie. I made it through twenty minutes and then I had to turn it off because it was so stupid. In case you’re wondering, the movie I rented is Must Love Dogs and it made me realize I Must Choose Better Movies.

I thought about reading for a while, but I’ve been reading too much lately. There shouldn’t be a thing as reading too much, but when you’re losing hours of your days and staying up late nights because you’ve got your face stuck in a book, it’s maybe too much. I need to slow down and remind myself that the books will keep and I’m not in a race to read the library.

So I was looking around thinking about what I should do when I spotted an empty pill bottle lying on the floor where Joey had been playing with it before his nap. The kid likes toys, but he takes the most delight in snagging everyday household things to play with like measuring cups or toilet paper rolls and even my empty Dunkin Donuts coffee cups he sometimes manages to liberate from the trash. He walks around proudly clutching these things that are essentially trash, and if you try to get them away from him he throws screaming fits of baby rage. It’s just easier to let him be. I learned this earlier in the week when I had to let him drag a metal measuring cup around everywhere we went, including Target and the grocery store, because each time I tried to pry it out of his grip he’d burst into tears like his heart was breaking into a million pieces. It’s just easier to grocery shop with a child banging a metal cup against the cart handle than listening to him scream his way through the store. I’ve just learned to ignore the pitying looks of other shoppers who probably think I’m too cheap to buy my kid some fucking toys to play with and instead give him any old piece of crap that’s lying around in the kitchen.

So I decided to put together a box of random household items for Joey to play with. I went through the house looking for things that would meet two criteria: 1) must not be choking hazards 2) must not be toys (in the traditional sense). I cleaned everything up and put it all in a big box and now I can’t wait for the kid to get up so we can have Trash Christmas.

Here’s the box:

And these are the contents:

-Dunkin Donuts cardboard cupholder tray (cut up)
-red plastic taco holder
-empty plastic applesauce cup
-leftover Christmas bows
-two pieces of 6’ long cloth ribbon: purple with yellow polka dots, green with gold trim
-plastic spoon from Wendy's
-empty Dunkin Donuts coffee cup (with lid)
-empty package of eclipse gum (outer slide wrapper with inside gumholder)
-adjustable liquid measuring spoon
-old Brita water filter fitting
-sample size pill bottle with cheerios inside (I thought about trying to pull off the label because it’s for a crazy medicine, but I decided that removing the label may threaten the authenticity of the piece, thus rendering it undesirable as a plaything)
-Pampered Chef chip clip-large
-plastic panda tag that came on Joey’s build-a-bear lion (that’s three nonmatching animals for one toy. It’s a build-a-BEAR, but it’s a lion, and it was wearing a tag with a picture of a panda around its neck)

And if I know my child, his favorite item will be the pill bottle, which he will want to carry around everywhere, not realizing nor caring that he will be telling my secret to the world.