The "good stuff" has been defined both as high quality liquor and the good life. (If you don't believe me, listen to Kenny Chesney singing "The Good Stuff" and I dare you not to tear up just a little.) At my house, it’s actually good STUFF. We bicker over who gets the good stuff. Sometimes we hide the good stuff where others can’t find it and take it over. Sometimes we magnanimously give the good stuff to someone who really needs it. What is this stuff? And why do we covet it?

Well, first and foremost, there is the good pillow. My husband and I sleep in a king-size bed with four pillows. There is one pillow that is really good. Strictly speaking, it is my husband’s pillow. But he travels a lot, so I use it when he’s gone. And sometimes I go to bed before him and hope that he doesn’t have the nerve to pull the good pillow out from under my head when he goes to bed. Could we buy another good pillow or even several? Sure, but buying pillows frightens me. What if we don’t like it? What if it turns out to be just another tolerable pillow? For now we will continue to passive-aggressively fight over the good pillow.

I like to drink seltzer water … pretty much constantly. I like to drink it out of the good cups. I like these cups so much that they appeared in a post on my blog titled, “13 examples of ‘stuff’ I like.” I like  Tervis Tumblers. They are the Lamborghini of drink cups. They are insulated so they keep your hot stuff hot and your cold stuff cold. I have taken a cup of seltzer on ice in the car with me and three hours later could still see the remnants of the ice cubes and the drink would still be cold. Insulated also means that they don’t “sweat.” So they don’t leave rings. They make all different sizes, even ones that are specially sized to fit in the cup holder of a golf cart. And here’s the kicker …. they are guaranteed FOR LIFE! Yes, if a Tervis Tumbler takes a beating and somehow gets a crack or the inside separates from the outside, you just send it back and they send you a new one! Believe it or not, I’ve done this … and I’m the type of person who has had a $30 computer cable floating around in my van to be returned to Wal-Mart for months. In the case of this good stuff, my family pretty much defers to my preference. I don’t think they would dare take the last Tervis Tumbler from the cupboard. I get really mad when we don’t have any and they are all in the dishwasher that hasn’t been run. I take them everywhere I go, so consequently many of my Tervis Tumblers now reside in my friends’ garages and cupboards.

My family is quite fond of blankies. I knitted blankies for each of my children before they were born and they were quite attached to them. When it’s a little chilly, we like to sit around with blankies on our laps and down to our toes. We have an orange and blue Gators blankie. We have a Mexican blankie that I have had since 1989. We have a fleece blankie that I think belongs to our friends in Merritt Island, Fla., and somehow got in my van when we were driving back. But the queen of all blankies is the off-white blankie that is furry on the outside and silky on the inside. It floats between our rooms. If I’m sick, I’ll ask one of my kids to go find me the good blankie. You see, being sick trumps covetousness.

None of our good stuff is Waterford. None of it is saved for company. None of it can only be used in the dining room. None of it is exceedingly expensive. All of it could be pretty easily duplicated with a quick Google search and a credit card. But somehow we must like the idea of having something special, something unique, something that can be bestowed on another with gravity. Are we strange? Or do you have your own versions of the “good stuff?”

Di appears Wednesdays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Di at her blog Live and Let Di.