Xmas Gifts
Here’s what I want for Christmas:
- an attractive tote bag or very large purse – large enough to carry a change of clothing and/or several books and notebooks and/or bottles of water and/or whatever I might need when I take my kids to the zoo and realize that my regular purses are too small
- bamboo plants – straight or twisty
- black gloves that aren’t made of mitten knit
- lip glosses and balms
- sugar free chocolate
- a laptop
- Ghost World on DVD
- anything on my Amazon list
- anything San-X
- board games I can play with the kids
- sweaters
- clothes
- flowers
See? I’m not that hard to buy for. (Unless you try to buy me clothes.) (Unless you know me very well. Today I’m wearing a black-with-white plaid skirt, a black short-sleeved sweater, and black knee-high boots. And silver hoop earrings, and a silver ring. You wouldn’t think such simple clothing would be hard to find. But then you’d try to find it in my size, and then you’d be sad.) Plus, I like all the normal gifty stuff like journals and soaps and sparkle gel pens and stuff. So… not too hard, huh?
If you know I’m going to buy you a present this year, please post a list on your site or else just call me and tell me what you want. Because, otherwise, I’m going to agonize over it for weeks on end. Please: help me to help myself, here. Just tell me what to buy for you.
I always start off with good ideas. “Oh!” I’ll think. “I know the PERFECT gift for Randy! I’ll get him an inflatable doll!” But then, when I get to the Inflatable Doll Store, I start freaking out. There are so many dolls. They all have different colored hair and shoes. So many choices… which one is the best? Oh, my gosh. I’m so worried. What if I pick the WRONG ONE? Then Randy won’t like his gift. His Christmas will be ruined. He’ll hate me forever. No-o-o-o…
My dad is really good at buying gifts, and so is my friend Letty. They always get me and everyone else such awesome, thoughtful things. My dad does little themed gift packages, a lot of times. Like, the year before last, he got me a tea kettle with a bunch of kinds of tea and then bags of real chamomile and mint. That was awesome, and I use that tea kettle almost every day now. Letty’s technique is obviously to go to stores where they sell really cool stuff, and then just pick out several things that she knows I’d like. One year she got me a bunch of really beautiful journals with all different covers – velvet, croccodile, paisley. I used all those journals and then asked her for more the next year. Then I used the next ones, then had to go buy my own. But I could never find any as cool as the ones she’d bought me. Well – I could, but I was too cheap/self-denying to buy them for myself.
This year I’m going to make my boyfriend Tad help me pick out everything. That way, it takes some of the pressure off my conscience.
I always love it when it’s Christmas time in the books I’m reading. I like finding out what the characters get for each other. Harry Potter and Lawrence Sanders books are good about this. Little Women did it, I think. When I’m reading a book and it has pages that take place on Christmas and the author doesn’t tell us what the characters got each other, I just throw that book out the window and read something else.
I also like online forum discussions of good and bad gifts. Especially bad gifts. Other people’s choices of Christmas gifts, fictional or real, just fascinate me. Probably because choosing gifts traumatizes me and I’m trying to work through the pain.
