The Britney Mystic Gift Guide for Realheads

It’s gift guide season! That wonderful time of year when we get to window-shop the life of the privileged. I like to click a link to a vase or a face cream or “a simple white T,” behold the $800 price tag, and sit in silence wondering what is wrong with me. This year, however, I am done wearing the hair shirt. I have realized there is nothing wrong with me, other than the fact that sometimes I have to make the choice between re-upping on my trusty Neutrogena face wash or buying allergy meds, because it just feels too wrong to spend more than $50 at the Walgreens. Often, I will just scrub my face with a washcloth and water until I feel like I can drop the $8. In other words, what is wrong with me is that I do not have the kind of money to gift anyone an artisanal anything. These gift guides often feel like tours of good taste, proof that the guider is evolved, has a real eye for special things, and I want to throw back my Target-holiday-sweater-clad shoulders and yell, WELL OF COURSE YOU HAVE GOOD TASTE, JOANNA GAINES*! YOU ARE A MILLIONAIRE! I, TOO, WOULD CHOOSE THE PEWTER WHATEVER YOU CALL IT THAT SERVES NO PURPOSE OTHER THAN TO “GROUND THE ROOM” BUT I LIVE IN THE WORLD, THE ACTUAL WORLD, AND SO MY “TASTE” IS WHATEVER CHEAP SHIT I CAN FIND ON AMAZON THAT I WON’T CRY ABOUT WHEN MY KIDS BARF ON IT!

You know?

I am 44 years old and a large part of me feels indignant that I am not comfortably wealthy, that the work I have done and the life I have built is fulfilling for my soul but not my bank account. It feels pathetic, especially around this time of year! But I know I’m not alone. I see all you kindreds out there adding water to your drugstore foundation to make it last longer, all you bosom buddies of the coupon code, the deal, the prioritizing of necessity over curation. I see you splurging on a silly thing—the Dior mascara or the Anthropologie blouse that, even though it has been marked down 60%, is still half what you spend on groceries every week. I see the excitement in saying “fuck it, I’m getting this!” And I see the doubt, the guilt that sets in when the receipt is in your hand.

This is my gift guide for you, the realheads.

1. As hinted above, Walgreens is the place where hope goes to die, because it is filled with the things I need—the aforementioned facewash and allergy meds, the toilet paper, the weird NyQuil things that make your room smell like eucalyptus—and thus I end up spending a horrific amount of money there (anything over $50 and I’m welling up at the register). We are all like this. Give your bud or your sister or your mom a gift card to their fave drugstore. Holy shit, the high I would get after waiting in line watching an old woman buy sixteen jugs of water and a single light bulb that she has misplaced the coupon for, handing over a gift card to the exhausted, half-dead cashier and realizing that I am spending $80 but paying only a portion of that from my own exhausted, half-dead bank account? PRICELESS.

2. Listen. You need a TV tray that clings to the arm of your couch. Your kid spills so much crap on the couch that that cushion is a whole shade darker than the rest of the couch, despite how much you scrub and wipe. This tray is cute and significantly increases the chances of the yogurt or the juice or the goldfish crackers flopping onto the floor rather than the couch, the floor being easier to clean on account of the dog, who will run right over and hoover it all up.

3. If you are married or partnered or cohabitating, why not gift your loved one some peace and quiet? Just head out for the day. Or hand your spouse a gift card to Walgreens and whisper, “When you get back, I’ll be out for four to six hours.” Wow! A chance for your partner to hear their own thoughts? What? The fact is, they will likely start freaking out after about 20 minutes and haul out the vacuum with a podcast blasting in their ears, but they’ll be doing that ALONE. Alone time! I may be biased because I have three (wonderful, beautiful, amazing!) children that all talk to me at once, but alone time is a gift for everyone in your life—the child-full and the child-free. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

4. Go to your local bookstore right now. Right this minute. Buy a book you loved and give it to someone. So easy! You can wrap it in an old paper bag and tie it with a ribbon you stole from the bottom of your daughter’s dress-up box that only exists to explode tattered princess dresses all over the floor. Then, when she asks you where that ribbon is, say Hmm, I’m sure it’ll turn up! How about some floss, as that is ribbon-ish? But back to the bookstore: you can also buy a gift certificate IN ANY AMOUNT, isn’t that wild? You can do $5. You can do $10. If you’re one of the gift guide people I murdered above, then you can afford to do $50, $100! A $5 gift certificate brings all the boys to the yard. It is not enough to buy a book, but it burns a hole in the recipient’s pocket. It brings them to the bookstore, where they can buy my book so I can one day spend $55 at Walgreens without folding over in the parking lot and wailing.

   

5. Gift a friend with the knowledge that you’ve changed the password to their social media account! Hire a hacker to get in to their X account and mix. it. UP. None of us should be on X; are you kidding me right now? Get off of X! Are those 17 likes you get over the span of 5 days that worth it to you? Are the ads for butt hair removal or dodgy companionship speaking to you in a deep way? No! You’re still on there because your hand taps the icon on your phone without you even noticing. Let’s all spend less time online and more time seeing for ourselves that our faces don’t look like that unless there’s a sparkly filter washed over it, that while yes, we did make pancakes with our children and they did eat some of them, they made an absolute hellhole of a mess and we later found a green pancake under the couch that clearly had mouse nibbles in it. We’re all, as my 11yo says, selling! None of us are how we seem in the perfectly square snapshots of a single moment in our long, long days. Let’s see for ourselves more. tl;dr you’re still on X?!

6. If you were like “selling”?! Huh? This means you don’t live with a tween, or maybe you do, but when they’re talking to you, you’re on X trying to reply to a porn bot. Great news! They sell a literal hard copy of the Urban Dictionary, and I find this hilarious. I may fire a couple of these at the grandparents.

7. One of the best gifts I was ever given was a poem a friend wrote for my then unborn son. I know a lot of creative, talented, artsy ass people. Write something for someone. Make something for someone. Did you know you can stick whole cloves into an orange and make pomanders? Did you know you can crumple up a wad of aluminum foil and call it an ornament? My kid once traced his hand on scrap pieces of paper and sold them in an “art sale” out front of our house. He made like $10 on coffee-stained trash! And you’re telling me the economy is bad?

8. Trader Joe’s sells incredible self-care stuff, and it’s also seasonal! Their body creams are excellent, as are their hand creams. Right now I’m deep into my jar of candy cane shimmery lotion. I have been known to drop the (painful) $10 on their eye cream. Their seasonal candles are cheap and throw like a m-fer. (See that candle jargon? Now you know I’m not jerking your chain.) They also always have gift sets during the holiday season, and they’re affordable. Less money than a trip to Walgreens. You may not live near a TJ’s—and for that I’m sorry. They do sell some of the stuff on Amazon. Go with God.

9. Subscribe to someone’s Substack. Bro (you can also look “Bro” up in your Urban Dictionary!), I’m human so I know the dread that sometimes accompanies a Substack landing in your inbox, wedged between the Famous Footwear spam that you’ve unsubscribed from SEVERAL TIMES and a 10-week old email you have been keeping as “unread” that the sender has already forgotten about but that plagues you in your nightmares, but I also do enjoy seeing what my favorite artists are up to. It feels less ick than opening Instagram and piling everyone’s emotional baggage onto my shoulders; it feels like…what’s that word? Reading. Actual absorption of content. And it lets your fave artists know that you care. That they matter to you.

10. Tell someone they matter to you.

Happy holidays, everyone. You matter to me! Thanks for making it this far. Go buy my books!

What I’ve been loving:

From - genuinely scary, genuinely baffling, totally addictive show from the creators of Lost

Woo Woo, by Ella Baxter. Hot off the presses! This is everything I love to read. White-hot, woman on the verge, knife-sharp, hilarious and moving. It’s about art and being an artist and a woman. Yum yum, ate it right up.

Reading all the books on my nightstand! I am often reading something I have to read for professional reasons. It feels luxurious to be able to pick my way through books I’ve chosen over the years but never gotten to.

My beloved longtime companion dog, Wanda, passed away in late October. A couple weeks ago we welcomed Colette Marshmallow, who can never replace Wanda but has already forged a place in my heart (and my lap).

Writing again. I’m writing again! I have vowed to write the most feminine book I can fathom. Period blood soaked, rage filled, shrill voiced, screeching rant. That is this new novel.

What are you giving as gifts this year?

*I love and would die for Joanna Gaines.