Parenting

9 Things I'd Pay Taylor Swift To Fix For Me

by Jennifer Li Shotz
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Originally Published: 

When Swift talks, people listen. Which got me thinking: Maybe, if this whole music thing doesn’t work out for her, she could open a small business. She can call it Swift Fix. Okay, I’m still working on the name, but basically she could hire herself out as a problem solver—a “fixer” if you will. I’d be the first to book her.

Here’s a sampling of the things that are totally unfair—or mostly just seriously irritating—that I’d pay T. Swift to handle for me:

1. Getting my kids to put on their $#%&#$% shoes at some point in the 90 minutes before school starts. NINETY MINUTES. How hard is it, people?!

2. Explaining to my mother, without hurting her feelings, that 9:30 p.m. is the first moment I have had to myself—or with my husband—in 24 hours, and it’s really not a good time to call and chat. (No, Mom, this is not about you. This is about me.)

3. Convincing my husband that maybe, just maybe, Tom Brady really did know about the deflated balls so he will stop carrying on about some vast NFL conspiracy.

4. Threatening to drop a dome on South Carolina until they take down the Confederate flag. Now.

5. Cutting the outrageous cost of summer camp. Or, alternately, closing the gap between school attendance required of children in summer (none) and work attendance required of parents in summer (lots).

6. Stunting the astonishingly rapid growth of toddler fingernails and third-grader foot bacteria. Both of which always seem to require simultaneous attention. Why is that?

7. Ending the tyranny of crappy all-in-one printers and their pea-sized toner cartridges. Seriously—this has to be a conspiracy. Where are the whistle blowers?

8. Giving dads paid paternity leave. And while we’re at it, giving moms paid maternity leave.

9. Deleting pictures on your phone so you have enough storage space to take a quick snap of your daughter making that cute face in that cute outfit your aunt sent so you can send a quick thank you email, but by the time you clear out enough photos—and didn’t you just back up this phone and wipe out a gazillion photos and free up a kajillion megs? Did your husband ever back up the back-ups? And WTF happened to the promise of the Cloud, anyway? Oh, right, there’s never enough room there either—your daughter has started weeping and throwing ice cream on the ground and wiping her grubby mitts down the front of the cute outfit. Oh well, guess you’ll have to send a handwritten card after all.

That about covers it. Although, if Taylor has any mojo left at the end of the day, maybe she should just go ahead and run for president. She’s got my vote!

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