It Takes So Little

So little to make me happy, that is. A sunny day, $7.99 pillow covers from IKEA, a hot cup of Dunn Bros. and the promise of a later trip to the new SuperTarget and I'm blissful and blithe. I mean, honestly, one would think the bar should be raised a *bit* higher. But I suppose the upside to being an emotional yo-yo who is sent plummeting into the depths of despair by the odd car accident (*ahem* - "wreck") is that it takes equally little to send me soaring to the heights of happiness.

(This is why it is good I am married to a cool-as-a-cucumber engineer. There is a balance - I provide the drama and he mops up the mess.)

The big news in our house is that The Girl has a head start on her Christmas list:

"All I Want for Christmas..." etc. etc.

Her top front teeth have been so loose for so long that they were pretty much flapping in the wind. She re-fyoooosed to help them along, so we had to suffer in silence and watch them dangle. The first one came out in school yesterday; she flashed me a proud, toothless grin when I picked her up and handed me a balled-up bloody Kleenex with a present for the Tooth Fairy. Later on the playground, I got to witness more tugging and tongue gymnastics as she got it so it was hanging by a sinewy thread. (How can such cuteness be preceded by such tremendous grossness?!) One accidental bump by the back of her hand and the other one flew out as well.

So Abigail, the Tooth Fairy, paid us a visit last night. Now although Santa and the Easter Bunny do not exist at our house, the Tooth Fairy does, primarily because I received so very much grief from my coworkers about ruining both Christmas and Easter for my child when I answered her honest question about their existence with an honest answer. She also exists because when I was pressed by my daughter to tell the truth "for *real*, Mom!" and I intimated that there was not, in fact, an actual Tooth Fairy, she began to cry. It seemed that one girl in her class had woken up in the night and had actually seen the TF and had received a sticker.

Well. Fantastical characters who inexplicably hand out money for used dental equipment are an all or nothing deal - either everybody gets them or nobody gets them. There was *no* way that my daughter was going to feel left out, particularly from a non-existent experience. So I back-pedalled and mumbled something about parental subterfuge and found myself typing a letter from "Abigail" to slip under The Girl's pillow to prove her existence. Said letter was excitedly pronounced authentic the next day because "the typing isn't the same as *our* computer's!" (Thank goodness for different fonts.)

So, much to my chagrin, I find myself guilty of lying to my child. But if that is the only way in which I have scarred her and destined her for intense therapy sessions to aid recovery, then I will count myself fortunate.

(For those wondering, the TF shells out the same amount per tooth that she did back in Canada - $1. However, The Girl would have been better off if she'd worked a bit harder to get them out last week on Canadian soil what with the exchange rate and all.)