Ask Lemmy

I'd like to skip Christmas, I get nothing out of it but headaches. I don't enjoy the family get togethers (individually or in small groups my family is mostly fine, but all of them at once is too much) I don't want anything that can reasonably be asked for or given as a present, and I don't have any space for the useless junk I'll inevitably receive.

What I need/want is money. I'm not struggling, but I have projects and things I'm saving up for and whatever they'd spend on gifts if they feel like they need to give me something I'd much rather them just give me the cash or Venmo me. They're not going to gift me a new heater, deck, washer/dryer, paint for my living room, etc. the best I can hope for is some gift cards to Lowes, home Depot, etc. and inevitably the cards will all be to different places so I can't even use them all on what they're intended to go towards, and there's a good chance that once I've saved up enough I'll get the best price at a store I don't even have any gift cards for, so they're going to sit around collecting dust because I'll never remember to grab them when I need to go buy a box of screws or something.

Just give me cash.

To have my dad and aunt cured of their disease so I can finally feel happiness again

The Return of the British Empire

The same touchscreen gloves I got two years ago that are no longer being made. There's three pairs on eBay and if no one buys them for me I'm buying them all for myself.

To win a housing lottery so I can move the fuck out like why the fuck do you need to be lUcKy to FUCKING LIVE IN THE CITY YOU WERE FUCKING BORN IN? Some apartments and condos had yearly incomes of 100k to 150k yearly. Bro. If you're making One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars every year, you're most likely making $1500 a week. You should be considered rich or well off. Why the absolute fuck are literal rich people unable to fucking just live on their own in their city without needing to be lucky? The US Government is a humongous failure. Any country with homeless and desperately poor people has a failed government. Then you have these exact poor people fighting each other for enough money to escape poverty on Mr Beast Games and everyone's watching it without understanding how fucked that is. That poor people are given a carrot on a stick to chase for everyone's entertainment.

A (significant) raise in salary (after tax) to invest and hopefully increase my portfolio.

A single family home... it'd sure be nice though.

A whole new life, but I’ve already been there, done that—it’s not what it’s cracked up to be.

A reason not to do it

Time. I just want time. And so far haven’t gotten any.

Is it bad that I’m grateful to COViD? I invited my ex and her father for Christmas dinner so they could also spend time with our kids, but we never had compatible meal routines and they’re insisting on dinner at 3pm. However she came down with just enough COViD that they probably won’t come. I can have dinner at dinner time! I get time to sleep in, time to enjoy Christmas with my kids, and even time to put dinner together.

If the rest of my week could go like that, I’d be so grateful

I want Saturn, somebody please buy me Saturn and all it's moons.

A no gifts agreement. You get nothing, I get nothing, we all save money and some sanity while not feeding the system by collectively buying a ton of unnecessary stuff at double the prices.

But anyway, if I wanted something, a Mullvad voucher would be useful.
Something cool, but mostly just a toy, an external eUICC chip, "eSIM adapter". Either JMP because their app is open-source and on F-Droid, or 9esim because it's far cheaper and has more storage. But as I said, it's not something I need, mostly would serve me as a toy and I'd have a bunch of random foreign eSIM profiles. There's even some free eSIMs like Firsty Free that I'd like to try. They promise "basic speed" unlimited data access with a time limit for watching ads. But there's also some like BNESIM which have no expiration and some usable prepaid data amount.
My current phone doesn't support eSIMs natively, but seems to support the required OMAPI to make this work.

ThinkPad Thales card would be far cheaper, and probably work too (with EasyLPAC), but it's out of stock everywhere.

But again, not something I need, just something for fun.

I’m certain I won’t get it, as it’s not on my wishlist nor have I ever mentioned it to anyone, but my number one desired object right now is a life-sized, anatomically correct model of a specific non-human animal body part.

To not be alone.

For all the children of the world to join hands and sing in the spirit of harmony and peace.

Peace and quiet.

Peace and quiet. I usually end up cleaning more than anyone and regulating my kids emotions. I get a break when they go to school. Now they're home for 2 weeks. I miss when they were younger. It was far simpler.

Day off

Medical debt for my disabled friend/roommate's cat who had a bad accident which severed a tendon. I'd love to pay it off for him if I could. Emergency visit to the vet for a severed tendon, all the follow-ups, and drugs over his month long recovery. I recently used up my savings and added debt myself to renovate my entire previously unfinished basement for said roommate/friend and have nothing left to give. Took him and his two cats in because he needed to escape his abusive mom. It's been a big fucking stain on his fresh start from my pov and I'm bummed out about it /rant.

rest

Anything. I haven't gotten a Christmas gift in years. My family isn't big on holidays, but I like the idea that someone was thinking of me. I think a card would be nice.

With the way the weather goes anymore due to climate change in my area, a white Christmas. I think either last year or the year before we had one, but that also came with the first subzero temperatures I've ever dealt with.

This year there's been basically no snow at all outside of maybe a day or less and not even that cold. I've been able to use a leather jacket I've been wearing most of fall and haven't needed to pull out my actual winter coat besides once this December. I really do like my winter coat, so I'm bummed about that, but also bummed because I associate Chrismas with snow because there was always snow every winter in my hometown compared to now.

A dual battery charger for Dewalt 20-volt batteries… I think in gonna get a BB gun instead, so I’m still pumped.