I know. Thanksgiving Day hasn’t even come yet, and I’m
on Christmas already. This year (2016) I
am in desperate need of Christmas, more than ever. It’s one of the symptoms of a disease called
We-Are-Going-to-Have-a-Sociopath-In-The-White-House Syndrome.
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| This would have made my mother say, "It's so pretty, I hate to open it!" |
Everyone likes to get presents. I am no exception. There are times, though, when a thoughtful
gift can turn into a pain in the ass.
Take large plants, for example. There are people who love spending time with plants. I am not one of those people, and there are
many more of us. Plants don’t like
me. I think plants are fine, so long as
someone else is taking care of them. I
am the kind of plant parent who thinks that plants should be seen, but not in
your face. When I DO give a plant
attention, it is a death sentence.
Plants take one look at me and die, because they know they are doomed,
anyway. Never give someone like me a
plant, if you value its life.
Please don’t give me a pet, either. I already have one: Harmony the Cat. She has been an only cat since I adopted her,
and I don’t think she’d take kindly to having competition for her position as
Empress of the Apartment. I don’t relish
the thought of fights to the death being conducted in my living room.[1]
Another impractical kind of gift for me is any kind that
involves large amounts of perishable food.
This includes big baskets of fruit.
Fruit is delicious. I love almost
all kinds of fruits, especially things like grapes, apples, pears, peaches and
oranges. Those things can be easily
eaten. Whole fresh pineapples and whole
coconuts require muscles and/or sharp implements and a lot of patience. Often, there is a whole fresh pineapple in
the middle of one of those big baskets of fruit. To add more craziness, one person cannot
possibly eat all that fruit before it starts to go bad. Have you ever tried giving fruit away to your
friends? Don’t – unless you enjoy
wasting time and carrying oranges around.
Nobody has ever given me a Costco gift certificate, and I
hope that nobody will ever do that. I
have never taken out a membership in any company that expects customers to buy
things in bulk. Families can save money
that way. I would only end up with a
small apartment full of stuff that would go bad or that it would take me a year
to use up. Yes, you can buy a TV at
Costco, but that never occurs to me because there are so many other places to get
a good bargain on a TV. On the other
hand, if anyone wants to give me a Costco gift certificate for a great meal at
a fine restaurant, I will grab it and love it.
Oh, and I live in a small apartment. Before anyone gives me anything that takes up
room, I hope s/he takes the size of my apartment into consideration, especially
if it is a butt ugly thing that the giver is re-gifting to me.
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| ... like this thing! |
Pretty dishtowels are nice, and I have one hanging in my
kitchen. I almost never use it,
though. I air dry all my dishes on the
dish rack because it’s more sanitary that way, and easier. If anything in the kitchen requires wiping, I
use paper towels or a sponge. The
dishtowel is just there for looks, although nobody ever looks at it. My kitchen is full of everything from big
bottles of Poland Spring water to a big bag of cat food to just about anything
a kitchen can hold. One little dishtowel
is lost in the clutter.
Sets of bath towels can be a good gift, but that shelf in my
closet where I keep towels and washcloths is already bursting with them, and I
don’t think they want more company in there.
This is my fault, in part, because the local odd lot store sells nice
towels at cheap prices and there are times when I am in the mood to shop. You can guess the rest. I have more than one useless item that I
bought in that store, along with some good stuff. I discovered Sarabeth’s preserves and storage
ottomans there, for which I am grateful.
One of these days I’ll write something about a lack of
closet space, for which storage ottomans take up a lot of the orphaned stuff
that doesn’t have any room.
That’s a whole other story.
[1] In
fact, you should NEVER give anyone a pet unless you are SURE that the person
will love the animal and care for it and make a lifetime commitment. Seriously!
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