Small victories

Looks like any ordinary food processor, doesn’t it? But it’s not! It’s actually a step towards a better me.

This little baby is my Christmas present from my family in Australia. Except I paid for it. Now, that sounds like I broke the rules. But here’s the story in bullets because we’re all busy:

• Our family is large, so we do a Kris Kringle for Christmas. Meaning everyone pulls one name from a hat and only buys for that person.
• We send around lists of the things that we want. Because frankly, my 60 year old engineer stepdad has no idea what my 35 year old fashionista female cousin would want. And my fisherman/prison warden cousin has no idea what my Ma would want. And basically noone knows what my brother-in-law wants, not even him (Love you, Chris!).
• I said I wanted a food processor.
• This on was on sale on amazon.de, last one!
• Instead of immediatenly buying it, I called my family and asked if I could buy it and they pay me the money for it into my Australian bank account.
• This saves shipping fees and currency conversion credit card charges. It also means I can transfer less money home from this side back to my account at home. Altogether meaning I get more for my Christmas money.
• They said yes.
• I bought it.
• It arrived in the post.

Now here is the part where I realised I’m changing. The deal was that I could buy it only if I agreed not to use it until Christmas. In the past, I would have nodded and then torn the box open and started using it right away. After all, I’m half a world away, noone would be any the wiser! And there are recipes to make, damn it.

But this time I stopped and thought about how I would feel on Christmas day when I had nothing to open. By then, the food processor would have been regularly used and wouldn’t have that special “new” feeling anymore. And I would be empty-handed. Christmas wouldn’t really be special, and it’s already hard when you’ve no family around.

I’m not good enough to keep it in my apartment and not use it, but what I have done is give it to a friend. I’ll be seeing him and his family around Christmas time and he says he’ll wrap it and give it to me then. So that will be lovely.

I’m slowly learning to wait for the second marshmallow. 🙂