Worst. Present. Ever.

Some presents are just bad.  Like my first Christmas with Dave.  We had been dating for about four months and I was probably thinking he’d get me a nice pair of earrings or maybe we’d go see a show or something like that.  Well, he got me a gas grill.  Which I have insisted over the last 15 years is actually a nice gift, very thoughtful, but he still feels kind of bad about it.  I don’t think he knew at that time that I don’t like fire (and I mean, who does like fire, but I have never lit a match in my life nor have I ever grilled anything.  EVER.  So, the gas grill was mainly used by him whenever he visited.)  Of course, I also got him a car vacuum one year, my thought being that he spent so much time in his car and I know he likes to keep it neat, so, you know, it would be so useful.  My bad.

Anywho, those presents pale in comparison to this one, and the only thing that makes me feel a smidgen better is that Santa brought it.  I had nothing to do with it whatsoever.  Nothing.  Because if I actually were the person responsible for spending good money on this craptastic piece of, um, plastic, then I would have to sit myself in a corner and think hard about what I had done and promise never to do it again.

So.

Don’t those children look happy?  They’re making their own Dippin’Dots!  The ones that cost $5 a pop at Hersheypark!  And it’s fun, not just delicious!

But in real life, the Dippin’ Dots company, in their woefully lacking wisdom, did not include any Dippin’ Dots mix with the kit.  No, you need to buy those separately.  But they did say in the instruction book that juice works too.  So we filled those little bottles with juice, then Maddie pushed the button that would release the juice from the bottles into the mold, then the cap came off the bottle and juice went all over the counter and down onto the floor onto my NEW slippers and I was all “My new slippers!  Sticky counter!    Sticky floor!”  And Jack was all “Waah!  Now we won’t have Dippin’ Dots!”  And Maddie was all “I swear I just pushed the button!  I swear I didn’t break it!” and Ben was all “Whatev.” And Dave was all, “It’s okay!  We can just fill the little Dots makers by hand!”  (He’s so levelheaded, it’s why the gas grill made perfect sense at the time.)

So that’s what we did,we filled the stupid little molds by hand with orange juice and cranberry juice.

And while they were freezing…

…we threw that sucker away.  I briefly considered saving it for the neighborhood yard sale in May, but could not bring myself to sell that little piece of misery to another family.

So how were they, you may ask?

Hmmm.  Well, they were not quite round.  And the verdict from the children was that they tasted “really cold, like frozen balls of juice.” Perfect.

And all I can say is, Santa, you owe us big.