It’s International Women’s Day.

According to what Google said about this year’s theme, I’m supposed to be wishing for empowerment via social protection and sustainable infrastructure, or something like that…..

But I’m not.

I know that sounds kind of mean and unsupportive, and I really don’t mean it that way.  It’s just….sustainable infrastructure is not very much fun to daydream about, no matter how hard I try.

Here is a list of stuff I actually want instead:

1. A pause/erase/do-over on all voicemails – Yes, I know some voicemails offer that option, but why the heck is this not a standard thing? There is nothing worse than being halfway through a voicemail and realizing you said the wrong thing and sound like an idiot, or you gave them your cell phone number instead of your work number, or, or, or…..
   
   … but it’s too late, you can’t fix it because you’ve already started talking and now you’re being recorded, LIVE, and every single thing you say could conceivably be saved forever, or be turned into a viral video, and maybe if you get lucky you can figure out a way to talk into the judgy silence of the voicemail recorder and save this situation….but no. 
   
   No, you’re not that lucky, and now it’s too late. 
   
   
   
   
   
   Now you’re sounding weird and rambly, and you don’t sound professional or coherent at all.  In fact, you passed the line from too-talkative into “hey listen to this weird voicemail I got” about five or six sentences ago, and oh geez, you just keep hoping that you’ll find the right combo of sentences to make you seem like a functioning, intelligent adult who represents your company with pride, but you can’t, you just sound like a freak,  and it’s 2019 and technology is nearly limitless and WHY CAN’T I DELETE THIS VOICEMAIL AND START OVER?!
   
   
2. Sarcasm font- How hard can this be?! It’s such a simple fix. You could use italics for emphasis, and then you could use backwards italics (slanting to the left instead of the right) for sarcasm.
   
   
   
   Do you know how many arguments and hurt feelings could be avoided by letting people text as sarcastically as they speak?
   
   
3. A giant plastic/wooden model of a horse that I could use to practice mounting, posting, dismounting, and maybe even trick riding – You could set it up in your backyard, and not only could the kids could play on it, but it would be a great workout, too. Forget squats, or Pilates, or CrossFit – just practice mounting without cinching up the saddle very tight, ten times in a row. Could you imagine the workout you could get, and how much happier a horse would be if you could practice this sort of stuff without having to flop around on their backs? I could practice trotting without stirrups and build my leg muscles without worrying about whether my crookedness is going to make a horse chiropractor necessary. Plus, I could slowly but surely teach myself to swing up bareback onto a horse, or how to do that “run at them from behind and vault over their butt” without worrying about getting kicked.  I’d get so much use out of one
   
   
4. Wireless/Bluetooth Video Game Edition Of The Giant Fake Horse – Once someone invents the fake horse from the last daydream, I want to have an indoor, electronic version that pairs with my TV/Video game console.  It would be like Wii Dance, or Wii Sports, but with horses.
   
   
   

   Kind of like this, but full size and a bajillion times awesomer.

   
   You could “compete” against friends in a cross-country jumping edition, or practice “riding the fence” in a reined cowhorse competition, or just practice your two-point on a virtual ride in Mongolia… ALSO,  DUDE, JUST THINK HOW COOL THE NEW RED DEAD REDEMPTION WOULD BE IF YOU COULD ACTUALLY RIDE INSTEAD OF JUST USING A CONTROLLER!
   
   
   
   I think I remember seeing somewhere that this technically exists in some “just for Olympics level” riders, but I want one in my living room.
   
   Also, I want my giant fake horse to have hinges so it can fold down small enough to slip under the couch when I am not actually using it.
   
   
   
5. 19 Acres for dirt cheap: I would like my two next door neighbors to grow irritated with owning land, and decide to sell all their horse/hay pasture to me for a ridiculously low price.
   
   “Are you sure?  That’s so…. So cheap!” I would exclaim. “I would feel bad buying it from you for so little.”
   
   “Oh, seriously, don’t feel guilty.  We just don’t want the hassle of all this land ownership. Owning all this land is such a drag.  If you can just take all this rolling, treeless pasture off our hands, you’d be doing us a real favor.  We’ll even sweeten the deal by fencing all of it with brand new horse fencing before we sell it to you for .30 cents an acre.”
   
   “Well…. If you insist……”
   
   
6. A Robotic Perpetual Puppy – Sometimes you want snuggle a puppy, but you don’t actually want another dog and all the care that goes with it.  The Robotic Perpetual Puppy would have all the cuteness and fluffiness of a 7-week-old puppy, but when you don’t want to deal with it you could just turn it off and stuff it in the closet.
   
   I admit I daydream less of this now that I have the goats, because honestly, they’re kind of like puppies that I can legally lock away whenever I’m tired of playing with them. I cannot recommend baby goats highly enough. 
   
   
7. An Indoor/Covered Arena: 200 x 100, please.  Also, if it could have a raised, covered area with a couch for the kids to hang out in, that’d be great, too.
   
   
   

   I would never leave. Ever. I would happily live on that couch the rest of my life. The Bean could take over the entire house as his man cave.

   
   
   
8. Jeans with shapewear sewn on the top, like maternity pants – I know some people hate pregnancy wear, but at the risk of sounding stuck up, dude, I rock maternity jeans. They’re the only jeans that I can wear down low around my hips, where the back pockets sit low enough to make my butt look good. I mean, I suppose I could wear all jeans like that, but maternity jeans are the only ones I can wear like that without worrying about bending over the wrong way and flashing the mom version of plumbers crack.
   
   With my imaginary shapewear jeans, the jeans portion would be completely normal, but then there would be a bit of shapewear sewn to the waistband. To keep it from rolling down you could make the shapewear kind of like a tank top (the shoulder straps would keep it in place). Not only would you never have to worry about plumber’s crack, but you’d also never have to worry about muffin top or sucking in your belly or wearing a belt to keep your pants from slipping down. Control top jeans. Why don’t these already exist?  I’d buy the heck out of them.
   
   
9. Stitch-Fix, but for broke people – It’d be exactly the same as Stitch-Fix, but they’d fill your monthly box with stuff from Goodwill so you could actually afford it. Who spends $40 on a single shirt?!  Are you high, Stitch-Fix?!
   
   
10. A minivan capable of hauling a horse trailer –  Wouldn’t that be amazing?  Then I wouldn’t have to choose between fitting all the kids in one vehicle and being able to haul horses places. Also, I’d really like it if it could get decent gas mileage. Also, also, it would be affordable, unlike those big SUVs that are still going for 30k when they have 100,000 miles on them.
    
    
11. Facial Recognition Glasses  – The glasses would have facial recognition software, and then you could program them to show you important information about the people you run into (only you could see what you programmed into it.) It could be something as simple as the person’s name, or as complex as where you met them and why you sort-of-but-not-quite remember them. I know this is verging into Black Mirror territory, but there’s nothing more frustrating than recognizing someone, starting to say hello, and then remembering too late that the reason I recognize them is that they were a total jerk to me (nobody goes to City Hall to be nice to the person behind the counter) and I don’t actually want to talk to them but now it’s too late to back out of the conversation because I was the one that waved at them, and Hiiiiii, how are youuuuuuuu?
    
    
12. Affordable Kids’ Summer Camps: The camps would be local, and affordable, and educational…. And the kids would think it was really, really, really fun.  I would send the kids to it for a week while I went on a catch-up-on-all-our-lost-sleep vacation with The Bean, and then when I came back I’d discover that my children had not only had a great time, but they had also they learned how to cook healthy meals, build a fire from scratch, how to change the oil in a car, and also maybe they accidentally learned how to do pre-algebra while playing nerf wars with the camp counselors.
    
    “Did you have a good time, boys?”
    
    “It was wonderful! We learned so much, thank you for sending us, Mom!”
    
    “I’m so glad you guys enjoyed it.  What was your favorite part?”
    
    “I think it was when they taught us how to be kind to others, and how to always be polite and well-spoken with adults so that other people think you’re an amazing parent!”
    
    “No, no, my favorite part was how they read to us every evening and now we are magically voracious readers completely in love with books, and they taught us the secret of how to persevere even when it’s difficult, and always be grateful for the small things, and make our beds, and eat salads even when offered a candy bar. Can we pretty please go again?”
    
    “Well, I dunno boys, it’s $25 a week with all your room and board included…. but okay, I suppose we could afford another week!”
    
    
    
    

    Look, we’re learning how to divide fractions and having a great time doing it!

    
    
    Shhhh. It could happen.
    
    
13. Human Kibble. I’m serious about this one.  If they can make a dog kibble that my dog gets excited about, and if they can make canned cat food that my cat will sprint across an entire field for, then they can come up with some kind of cereal that has all the protein and vitamins and whatever a human body needs, but also tastes like Reese’s Pieces or something.
    
    Dude, I’m so tired of cooking. Cooking all the time for four kids is exhausting, even if you liked cooking (which I never have.)
    
    Human kibble. We needs some.
    
    
14. Tinder For Writers: It’d be like an online dating service, except instead of swiping right and having to deal with STDs or marriage or whatever it is all those single people do with Tinder nowadays, you would find someone to coauthor a book with you. I used to play an online Pern-based RPG that was text based – it was called Dragonsfire Moo, I think? I always had a good time, but every once in a while I’d stumble across someone whose writing style just absolutely meshed with mine, and writing scenes with them was pure magic.
    
    I have absolutely no idea how this would work, and I’m sure in real life the paperwork involved would be a giant headache, and now that I’m really thinking about the practical aspects of it I imagine most people who used it would end up with more lawsuits than actual money, but I don’t care. This is my wish list, and I want a Tinder Writing Service to help me find a coauthor. In this scenario I could come up with the big picture ideas and the zany female characters and funny situations, and they would come up with the boring middle section of the book and the witty male dialogue, and we’d churn out, like, five books a year and live like royalty on the proceeds. We could totally be the next Ilona Andrews team, and end up with a bunch of giant movie deals, and then I could afford most of the stuff on my daydream list just by the money we brought in.
    
    
15. Alfalfa Candle: I want a candle I can burn in my house that makes the whole house smell like fresh cut alfalfa warming up in the summer sun.
    
    
16. The Forever Outfit: I’d like the ability to hire someone to come up with the perfect, wear-every-day-for-the-rest-of-my-entire-life outfit for me. This person would look at my skin tone, and coloring, and body type, and then they’d design the perfect outfit.  The jeans would fit me just perfectly and never need a belt to keep from sliding down my hips as they stretched out throughout the day… the shirt would be long enough that I would never have to worry about it riding up when I reached for something above my head.  It would be tailored at the waist so that I didn’t look like I was wearing a box with sleeves, but not so tight I felt uncomfortable. It would be layered, so that I could wear the outfit in both summer and winter…..
    
    And then I could just order that same exact outfit, forever and ever, and nobody would ever think it was weird.
    
    
17. The Everyday Cloak: Okay, so if nobody actually ever invents The Forever Outfit then I want to be able to wear whatever I want, whenever I want, and not have it be weird. I know I live in America so nobody really judges me on my clothes, and more specifically I live near Portland, so I really could wear whatever I wanted and short of it being a MAGA hat or literally  being on fire, nobody would judge me….  but I want to wear weird stuff and not have people stare at me, even if they’re just staring out of curiosity.
    
    Okay, if I’m actually being specific…. I want to be able to wear cloaks again. I just have a thing for cloaks, okay?
    
    
    
    
    I want to have an array of cloaks hanging up in my closet, and some kind of, I dunno, basic adventurers outfit beneath it, like a black tank top and a pair of jeans. It’d be like the Forever Outfit, only it’d be Awesome Cloak edition.
    
    
    

    She must be overwhelmed with the awesomeness of her cloak. That’s the only reason I can figure for her weird, blank expression. I don’t blame her. It’s a COMPLETELY awesome cloak.

    Every day I’d put on a pair of jeans, a tank top, my Ariat Fatbaby boots, and then I would just pick out my cloak depending on my mood that day, and stride down the street looking totally magnificent. I could swirl through the aisles of the grocery store, with my cloak flaring out in whirling, colorful splendor behind me.  I could use it to sit down on the grass at the park without worrying if my butt was gonna get wet.  I could pull up the hood whenever I was cold, or just didn’t want to talk to anyone.
    
    
    
    I know I could wear cloaks and maybe I’d be the person to help them make a comeback… but I don’t’ want to be a fashion trendsetter.  I want cloaks to be normal, the same as wearing a hoodie.
    
    
    
    Also, I want them to be easy to wash and dry and be wrinkle and stain-resistant.  If I’m going to daydream, I might as well daydream in a practical fashion.
    
    
    
18. Book On Demand Coffee Shop – I want a coffee shop that can print a book on demand. Like, you go into Starbucks and you sit down with your coffee, and enjoy it, and then you order your book on demand with an app, and 2-3 minutes later a kiosk spits it out, all warm and freshly printed and smelling deliciously of paper so you can sit with your coffee and read your new book.  It’s 2019.  Why is this not a thing?

So, there you have it.  That’s what I want. 


What do you want?