I have no one to tell to shut the fuck up this week, for STFU Fridays that is. I mean I do, but I’m holding it off until later when perhaps certain factions of my personal life won’t take it so … personally.

In the meantime I have come to realize my gross dependence on certain things. It isn’t until they are absent that you realize their importance, right? With all the back-and-forth of helping my dad after his hip surgery, and staying overnight at his house on an air mattress still, I keep finding myself without the products I have come to cherish most in my every day life. With distance the heart grows fonder, I believe is the saying. Well my heart has grown so fond for some of my most-loved products that I realize that were they men, I would cheat on Poor Nick in a heart beat with them by making sweet, sweet love – rolling around naked in the sand and shit.

Here they are, in no particular order:

#1 Chapstick

The hottest thing ever would be if my husband came home dressed as a tube of Chapstick.

I am so addicted to Chapstick it probably isn’t even funny. But it is, at least to me. I don’t mean that lip balm shit. I don’t mean my lip gloss, that makes me feel pretty and keeps me sane. I mean Chapstick brand chapstick. The plain kind. When I’ve gone for hours – dare I suggest, days – without it, I’ll pucker my lips and put about 200 layers on. Woo! Feels good.

When I was little I used to eat it. Seriously, friends would call and say “whatcha doin’ H-diddy?” and I’d respond “aw nothin’ … just eatin’ some chapstick.” True story.

#2 My Rabbit … electric wine bottle opener

This whole helping with the hip surgery post-op is destroying my growing sense of wine-a-hol-ism. I’m hardly drinking at all – which you’d think is a good thing, although wine is actually really good for you in moderation, and I’m a terrible bitch ball of stress and hostility without the sweet, grape nectar calming me down.

And since I’m such a lightweight generally speaking, this means I’ve really gone to near-nothing on the scale of wine drinking.

One of the reasons I’m not drinking that much is because all we’re doing is sitting around, waiting for my dad’s hip to heal. That’s not really an occasion to have a glass, or eight. Another is that sometimes we’re just too busy going to physical therapy appointments.

The third is that I keep forgetting my Rabbit at home.

#3 Aveeno body lotion

Holy balls of sweet, sweet love-filled moisturizer, I have dry skin. I don’t *really* have dry skin, though – I have eczema from my horrible allergies that are just totally out of control.

Regardless of the terrible suffering I go through when my skin feels like ants are crawling all over it, I keep forgetting my Aveeno. Or rather I forget to slather on a thick layer of it when I go home to shower. It’s really becoming a problem, and has made me realize how much I depend on my body lotion.

#4 My Vizio SmartTV

At home we have a Vizio SmartTV.

It’s really great – I have no idea how we survived without it. Now that we are stuck with my dad’s beat up old tube set for our TV viewing pleasure, the experience is just … lacking. We have to watch Netflix movies on my computer. The resolution on the TV is such that my husband has to wear his glasses. I have to listen to my Pandora on my iPad or iPhone, instead of the television’s surround sound.

I know what you’re all thinking. If I were to attach hashtags to this one, I’d include #firstworldproblems #whitegirlproblems #spoiledbitchshutthefuckupjustbegladyouhaveaTV

I still miss it.

#5 Febreeze

I bought something like nine bottles of fucking Febreeze for my dad’s house last month and every single one of them appears to have disappeared. Or he used them all; I’m not sure.

I just know that there are smells all over the place bothering me. Pookies spilled milk on the carpet and it smells a little spoiled, in spite of how hard I scrubbed. My dad’s spending tons of time sitting on the chair, and showering less – leaving the chair a little … rank.

I just want to find my Febreeze and spray everything and everyone the fuck down.

#6 My Le Creuset Bakeware

If Le Creuset were a French man, I would swoon over him at first site. I would secretly meet him, while Poor Nick was at work. I would wear a scarf over my head and sunglasses. When we finally met – somewhere on the beach, where I would have stripped down to my unshaven pits in the spirit of the French women that do not shave, I would speak to him in my broken fragments of Frenglish left over from graduate school. I would baste him, swath him, kneed him. I would make the most sweetest of love to him, and my husband would never know.

Cooking without my Le Creuset bakeware is like frying an egg on my bare hands. It’s horrible. No one should have to endure such suffering. I realize now that the prying and the incessant suggestive selling of the salewomen at the Le Creuset outlet was really for my own good. They weren’t trying to make a profit by trying to manipulate my kid into getting me to buy special kid-friendly cupcake tins – they were looking out for my best interest.

I miss you Chapstick, Rabbit, Aveeno, Vizio, and Febreeze. But Le Creuset … I long for you.

Do you have products you just cannot live without, faithful blog followers? Are they as obsessive as mine? Or do you have a handle on things? Just when I thought I was the most immaterial person I know, this happens. Now I’ve become a product of my generation. Dependent on my things, and not looking back.