For Christmas this year one of her aunts gave MJ the perfect present: money.

Not the real kind, mind you. MJ received, rather, a generous apportionment of fake gold coins and paper dollars. Monopoly money, essentially. Talk about genius. It’s been a huge success. She adores it. The coins are “treasure.” She can’t get enough of them. But it’s the dollars she’s really insane for. When playing, she uses them for everything. They’re money, of course–“Trader Joe’s” is one of her favorite games– but they’re also boats, sheets for small animals, food for dolls, hay, toilet paper, bandages, or any number of other “props” for her endless and quite imaginative play.

And as such? The stuff is everywhere. Everywhere. At the end of the day, when I clean up, there are dollars scattered in every part of the house, in dog bowls, under blankets, in drawers, in shoes, under dressers, in the tub. It’s amusing, but also, after a long day, exhausting. I find myself muttering “again with the fucking money” as I grunt to pick up the umpteenth piece of it more times than is probably healthy.

But although some days I long to toss it all out, I won’t. You can’t throw away money, after all, right? Even when it’s ersatz. Plus, who am I to deprive my dear girl of her latest obsession? God knows it’ll blow over soon enough. Before I know it she’ll be asking for the real thing to go buy some hideous pair of vinyl boots. Then we’ll have a whole new set of problems on our hands.

But I’ll be too busy working two jobs to worry about it.