Gift Ideas for Grown Children: Mostly William and Elizabeth Edition

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Normally I title gift posts “for a 13-year-old,” “for an 8-year-old,” etc., but it looks funny when it’s “for a 23-year-old” or even “for a 19-year-old.” If you have older kids to buy for, here are some of the things my kids have on their wish lists. I’ve done mostly William’s (23) and Elizabeth’s  (19) shopping so far, so this is mostly from their lists.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

A pomodoro timer. I don’t know what it is, either. William put it on his list, and he said it was a productivity timer; I see in the description it’s good for time-management, ADHD, etc. I asked Edward if he would enjoy such an item or if it’s like getting a chore chart for Christmas, and Edward said it seemed fun BUT that he was already using a good phone app for that. So then I got one for Rob, who has nothing on his wish list and DOES seem interested in productivity/time-management and DOESN’T have a smartphone so can’t be using an app.

 

(image from https://www.ebay.com/str/sebastiansclassiccollections)

A Chinese abacus. (There are also Japanese ones, with differently-shaped beads.) This is William again. He asked for one that would look nice on his desk, not the rainbow-colors kind made for children. I used a fair chunk of missed-work hours on this task. I just could not decide. There were miniature ones with brass beads and a marble base, but I thought those looked too small, especially since he wants to learn how to actually use it. I narrowed it down to three or four vintage sets on eBay, all pretty similar but different colors/glazes, and then just picked my favorite. (The one I bought is of course no longer available, so I linked to one that looks the same.)

 

(image from UsefulCharts.com)

A Useful Chart. William has this Timeline of World History one, and wanted a Timeline of U.S. History and/or Writing Systems of the World. I got both, one for Christmas and one for his birthday. I also got Rob the Evolutionary Tree of Life.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Elizabeth had Birkenstock sandals on her list, and I texted her to ask did she know Birkenstocks were like $100, and she modified her entry to be “Birkenstock-like sandals, basic/black, to be easy indoor shoes.” I looked for ones that seemed to match the description of Birkenstocks, with pretty good reviews, available in her size, and chose these. Sometimes with this sort of gift idea I consider my choice a First Attempt: if this isn’t right, they can come back with a better description (and/or LINK) next time.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

She also wanted “a world map, for wall decoration.” I thought: I am NOT getting this on Amazon, I do NOT trust them not to have some AI-generated garbage full of errors, I am going straight to either Rand McNally or National Geographic. I studied the options on both those sites and picked a National Geographic map (I liked that it was neither the usual pastels nor the also-nice-but-very-familiar sepia tints) and clicked the Buy link—and it took me to Amazon. Well FINE.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Elizabeth wanted “one or two” coloring books, and declined to give further information, and even you who know me so well might find it hard to believe how much time I spent looking at coloring books and reading reviews. The trouble is that for every review that says “WONDERFUL, my FAVORITE, pages don’t leak through AT ALL!,” there is another that says “BORING, coloring areas too big/small/dark, pages LEAK!!” The other trouble is that there are a TON of Amazon-self-published ones saturating the search results, many of them AI-generated and full of weirdnesses. Finally I chose these two, figuring that she is an art student and can source her own art materials/information if needed: Color at Home: A Young House Love Coloring Book with pictures of interiors and fun things to color like book spines and throw pillows; and Worlds of Wonder, chosen agonizingly among the various Johanna Basford options, because there seemed to be widespread agreement that her coloring books were wonderful, but also widespread talk about how they had changed in recent years, and also all of them looked so good, and anyway I finally chose one.

 

(image from Target.com)

This is more a stocking stuffer: I like to get the kids socks/underwear for their stockings every year, and as I was shopping the possibilities I turned to Henry and said, “You wouldn’t wear strawberry-print socks, would you?” (thinking he might, but it’s so hard to tell), and he regarded them for a moment and said “I would.” I took a risk and got the mushroom ones for Edward, figuring they could always end up in Henry’s sock drawer if Edward doesn’t want to wear them. And these are a different brand, but I got these cute retro striped crew socks for Elizabeth.

Positive

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After Paul and William tested positive for Covid last week, I told work I wouldn’t be in Thursday or Friday. I felt a little silly doing this, with no symptoms and after testing negative: I feel as if no one else is following any guidelines at all, not even testing or masking when they have symptoms; and also even though I am in my 50s and love my job and do it on purpose because I want to, I still always feel as if my bosses will think I am faking reasons not to come in. Over the weekend I texted with my supervisor, and we agreed that since Monday would mark five days of isolating/testing, then if I tested negative that morning, and didn’t have a fever or any new symptoms, and wore a mask, and stayed away from everyone else, I could come back to work.

By this morning (Monday), I’d taken a few more tests, all negative, and I didn’t have any new symptoms, so I hopped out of bed even before the alarm went off. I had that “Lots to do, places to be!” feeling. After showering/dressing (with an eye toward which shirt would have a good coordinating mask), I went downstairs and turned on some lights and opened the blinds and gave the cats fresh water and took a Covid test. While the test thought things over, I got some coffee and checked to see if some gifts I’d had my eyes on had gone down in price, and one of them had and I realized I didn’t want to wait any longer for the other one, so I placed an order.

I went back into the kitchen to give my not-hot-enough coffee a 30-second boost in the microwave, and I saw the test was positive. I was surprisingly surprised. I KNOW this is WHY we wait five days and test again. But I’d felt as if people would think I were BEING SILLY and SHIRKING WORK when I did so, and so I think part of me thought I WAS IN FACT just making a silly excuse not to have to work. When I WAS NOT!! And if I’d gone to work Thursday and Friday, my bosses and coworkers sure wouldn’t be glad about that NOW, when I’d have just found out that I exposed them all too!!

BECAUSE so many of my coworkers are not even testing when they’re sick, and several of them have been sick-and-at-work in the last week or two, my initial theory was that I’d been the original person who’d had Covid at our house, and that by the time Paul and William showed symptoms, I’d just stopped showing as positive on tests. But instead, it looks like Paul is once again the first patient—unless it was Henry. Henry has cat/environmental allergies and is always kind of snarfing and coughing, and he’s still in the school system and that’s an absolute cauldron of every virus, so it’s possible that HE had it first, then passed it on to us and was testing negative by the time Paul had a fever. Or maybe no, and he’ll test positive next. Well, who knows.

An upside is that this gets Covid out of the way before Christmas and my knee surgery: it would be way harder to have either of those disrupted. A downside is that I’ve already missed two days of work, I think I’m out all this week too if I remember right how this goes, and then there are some days we’re closed for Christmas and New Year’s, and then I have my knee surgery January 7th and am out for who knows how long. So I am missing a LOT of work. Partly I am feeling bad for my coworkers: if a checkout-desk person or manager is out, we all just cope with it and share the extra busyness, and the problem is resolved as soon as their shift is over and normal staff levels resume; but if I am out, things PILE UP HIGHER AND HIGHER and start to be real logistical problems for everyone. Partly I am feeling bad because of the imagined (or possibly not) feeling that managers always think their employees are looking for fake excuses to be out, and I don’t like to imagine my managers feeling that way about me, and maybe they don’t and I’m being ridiculous, but here we are, this is the temperament and brain I was assigned. Partly I am feeling bad because I really do like my job, and I feel restless and itchy when I can’t do it; and I get a fair amount of social/interactive replenishment from work, too. Partly I am feeling bad because of uncertainty: the twins have finals this week; how will we pick them up from school, will Paul be negative by then? Or maybe they gave this to us when they were home for Thanksgiving, and are now enjoying some short-term immunity. And will I continue to feel pretty much fine (very slight runny nose; occasional sneeze or cough; very slight Throat Feels Weird), or is this only the beginning and I will soon feel very much worse? Well, we shall see.

I am trying to continue to see this as Found Time: I was feeling stressed about having too much Christmassing to do and not enough time to do it, and now I have this bonus time to work with. I am also trying to see this as a happy little lesson for my workplace: my newish supervisor in particular seems to see the paging job as not a very big deal, and so he hadn’t been making any plans for the month or so I’ll be out after surgery; NOW he sure is making plans, as apparently when I was out for just two days last week, CHAOS DESCENDED. Distressing but gratifying.

Christmas Lights

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I had an over-reaction to Christmas lights—and actually, already, mid-sentence, I want to go back and say it was NOT an over-reaction, and I am not sorry, and I was right.

If you use and like LED lights, I would like to warn you that you may find yourself getting a little protective of your lights during this post. I am going to use judgement words such as “right” and “wrong” and “ruin Christmas.” Normally when I write a post like this, where I know for sure that my view is subjective and other subjective opinions are just as valid, I temper my vocabulary to reflect that knowledge. And as each sentence unfurled, I attempted to do this, but I could not do it FULLY—not without tempering the strength of FEELING. So you will have to know, as you read, that I KNOW that LED lights are almost certainly morally and ethically superior; and that I KNOW that many people like them and even PREFER them to incandescents; and that I know that they are not wrong to feel that way because this is only about PREFERENCE and I know that; and that I KNOW that LED lights are great in many ways, such as that you can plug so many of them together, and they don’t cause fires, and you can use so many more of them without creating a horrifying power bill. I know all these things. I DO. But you are going to have to read this post as FEELINGS. If necessary, change the words around: imagine it is someone talking about how they used incandescent bulbs and found them so pallid and old-fashioned and wasteful and outlet-hogging and dangerous they couldn’t stand it and had to start over; rejoice with them, as I would, as they go back to the store and get LEDs and now they are happy! Know in your heart that I only care about MY tree in MY living room: I don’t have important feelings or opinions about YOUR tree because that is YOUR tree. This is a post about Christmas-light FEELINGS at a time when feelings are already elevated by many other things. It is a post about ANYTHING that causes intense feelings at this time when feelings are already elevated by many other things. It is a post that lets you skip a boring argument about which lights are better and why, and instead say “Oh, I know: I had a similarly intense reaction to star vs. angel this year” or “I can’t explain it, but I started crying when the particular holiday stamps I’d chosen were out of stock” or “For some inexplicable reason, this year I am spending WAY too many hours dithering over gifts—and when I finally choose something and order it, then I spend the next days hand-wringing that I made the wrong decision, and sometimes canceling the order so I have to start all over.”

To finally begin the story: I’d started at a certain level of stress just because it was important to me to get the tree decorated during the few days the twins were home for Thanksgiving. We didn’t do it Thursday, and Edward was away most of Friday getting a Crohn’s treatment, and we were going to be driving them back on Sunday, and here it was Friday evening and the lights weren’t even on the tree yet. Paul brought down the lights from the barn, and these were expensive good-quality “heavy duty” indoor/outdoor lights purchased within the last 1-3 years, and all of the strings failed to light. ALL of them. I tried other outlets just in case: nothing. I looked at them for obvious damage: nothing. On two of the strings, a short (two-foot, maybe?) section DID light. On the other strings, nothing lit. Inexplicable and maddening, and what a colossal waste.

I went to Paul with the issue. Normally I would wait for a sale on lights; normally I would buy them on one of my errand days; but this was the situation, and tomorrow was the last day to decorate the tree, so we drove to Target 20 minutes away and bought lights. Paul thought we should get LED lights. We both remembered that I don’t like LED lights, but we both thought maybe my various issues with LED lights had been resolved: the picture on the box looked exactly the same for the incandescent and the LED lights, so maybe LED lights were good now, and not cold and too intensely colored and overbright-yet-unglowy. My beloved little lighted birch trees are lit with LED lights and those are nice and warm and glowy! And anyway we’re liberal progressive Democrats and we should have the energy-saving lights.

We got them home and I started to put them on the tree. I had bought more lights than I’d thought we’d need, but they only covered 2/3rds of the tree. I unwound all the strings and started over; now they covered 3/4ths of the tree. I attempted to rally: I told myself this was fine, we would just decorate the bottom 3/4ths together, and then after the twins were back at school I would go buy more lights and decorate the top 1/4th myself. No big deal. I went out of the room to wash my hands and get rid of the empty boxes—and when I came back into the room, I noticed I hated the lights.

I talked myself through it: I don’t HATE the lights. The lights are FINE. I was fine with them the whole time I was putting them on the tree (twice). They’re just DIFFERENT THAN BEFORE. Of course there will be an adjustment! Just because they look like PRIMARY POSTER-PAINT COLORS, and are FAR FAR TOO BRIGHT, and there is FAR TOO MUCH BLUE HERE, and they have NONE OF THE MAGICAL GLOW OF CHRISTMAS LIGHTS….*pant pant* NO no, it’s fine, they’re fine, I’m just adjusting. Besides, what is the alternative at this point? Yes, we spent more than double to get not-enough LED lights and they weren’t even on sale and I don’t like them, but it is mid-evening and we only have one more day. Am I really going to box up all these lights, drive BACK to Target, get the WASTEFUL incandescent lights, and start all over putting lights on this tree??? No. No.

…Yes. I unwound all the strings of lights off the tree. I carefully packaged them up exactly as they had been, all the little twistie-ties and extra bulbs and paperwork. It took forever, but not as forever as I’d feared. I was almost meditative as I did it: focused, calm, resolute, driven by certainty that this of all Christmases is not the one to try to get through without enjoying the Christmas lights on the tree. Nor do I want to wait until mid-December (when the twins are back again) to do the tree. The options therefore have narrowed, and the one that gives me what I want involves considerable time and hassle; nevertheless I choose it.

I went to Paul. I hate the lights. There aren’t enough of them. They ruin Christmas lights for me, and Christmas lights are one of my top favorite things about Christmas. One single car dealership (and we live among MANY) uses more electricity in ONE SINGLE HOUR than our little tree will use ALL MONTH, and our tree will bring significantly more joy. Somebody asking ChatGPT A SINGLE DUMB QUESTION TO GET A SINGLE DUMB ANSWER probably uses more electricity than our little tree will use. He got his coat and we drove back to Target, another 40-minute round-trip. We returned the lights mere hours after we’d bought them, and the clerk didn’t even blink. “I changed my mind about LED lights,” I said apologetically. “You’re allowed,” he said pleasantly. “I’m still a liberal progressive who thinks the environment is one of our primary worldwide concerns,” I managed not to add.

We bought incandescent lights for less than half the price of the LED ones. We bought the cheap store-brand ones, because buying the expensive heavy-duty ones hadn’t prevented the wastefulness of strings breaking. I bought half again as many as I’d bought before, and still had to add in the two 50-count light sets I’d had on hand to send back with the twins (who had already said they didn’t want them). The tree looks wonderful. The lights look right. During dinner William put on a couple of episodes by a YouTuber who feels as I do about LED lights, except the YouTuber has found a brand/kind he likes, whereas I still don’t think they’re right.

Christmas Mug

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I am still testing negative for Covid, so Paul and William are still isolating. I don’t know what the guidelines are, since we seem to be working with old ones from a couple years ago, but my guess looking at the last missive from my workplace on the topic (from 2022) is that if I am negative on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I can then go to work wearing a mask on Monday—especially if I can work mostly in the stacks, and not be near other people. I will consult with my two bosses on that.

In the meantime, having Thursday and Friday off has been a tremendous boon. I am using almost all my time to work on Christmas things. I’m trying to focus on one giftee at a time; yesterday I focused mostly on William. When I was pretty much done with his shopping, I turned my attention to my niece, and spent some delightful time researching combat boots (it’s an item on her wish list) with the help of Henry who is a couple of years older than my niece and has friends who wear combat boots. It was QUITE fun: one of his friends was sending link after link, and we were sending links back, and now we have narrowed it down to…let’s see, eleven pairs. Today I will attempt to narrow that down further, and then pick another child to shop for—probably Elizabeth.

Whenever I get tired of paging through online shopping options, or when I start feeling chilly from not moving around enough, I go out to the barn and fetch a box of Christmas dishes, or the Melissa & Doug Countdown Tree, or a couple of decor items. Because of this effort, this morning I am drinking my coffee out of a Christmas mug and feeling happy about it. FURTHERMORE: it was a Christmas mug I have not seen for YEARS, because I had for some inexplicable reason tucked it down into the corner of the wreath box?? Probably what happened was that I was putting away the wreaths and noticed one more mug in the dishwasher, and just added it in—not knowing that the following years I wouldn’t bother with wreaths. (This new house doesn’t work with them the way the old house did.) I found it this year only in a last-ditch effort to find the Christmas tree skirt we apparently lost in the move. I dug my hand down into the wreath box feeling for velour, and found china.

The mug is a Stechcol (a brand I often find myself picking up admiringly when I’m at HomeGoods or Marshalls), and I remember choosing it on a shopping trip with my mom: there were four different designs, and we stood there for awhile ranking our favorites and deciding how many we would each buy. I think I bought two, but I’m not sure: I might have only bought one; I might have donated the other one if it seemed too similar (I am always TRYING to cut down on the number of mugs I have) (while also constantly buying new mugs); it might be tucked down into the corner of a DIFFERENT box of decor.

Having Trouble Christmassing

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I am having some trouble Christmassing. Which is not surprising, given the state of Everything, and really I am doing better than I did in 2016. But: I am having trouble. I have a to-do list that gets longer every day. I feel as if I might genuinely not be ready in time, and also that I am highly likely to feel regret that I didn’t enjoy this last holiday season enough before it was bleak, bleak, BLEAK late January, which is scheduled to last for many years. I have not started the Christmas cards. I have not been listening to Christmas music. I have not brought down the Christmas dishes, or put up any decorations except for the tree, which I was highly motivated to get up and decorated while the twins were home for Thanksgiving. I have bought very few presents. I am getting that quiet, dazed panicky feeling I get when I seem to Simply Not Be Doing something that needs to be done.

I am attempting to Work on Christmas Things at least a little each day: even if I cross a very minor and unimportant item off the to-do list, it is still OFF THE TO-DO LIST, which can lessen the oppression and also motivate further action. Today I brought out the pine-scented things: hand soap, dish soap, candle, and, this year, seasonal Dawn Power Wash:

I am a huge sucker for anything (1) Limited Edition and (2) seasonal pine. This particular example did make me feel like a housewife in a commercial, but there it is. I spritzed my counters with it, and I spritzed the cooking pan with it, and I felt something akin to Christmas joy. It is not that anything can make housecleaning fun—but there was that feeling that the Christmas season can take ordinary things and make them a little sparkly and special. …No, I know how this sounds.

Today I also bought a gift for my pelvic-floor therapist, which is a weird new gifting category this year. I am not saying I felt I MUST buy her something: I think it would be 100% okay to give her a gift card, or literally nothing. But this is one of the low-pressure-just-fun parts of Christmas I enjoy, which is one of the reasons I picked this as today’s task: as a way to stall on the higher-pressure tasks. There is an ongoing joke in therapy about blueberries, and I will tell you about it another time, but anyway I bought her some blueberry earrings that if I am lucky will be here by Christmas:

(image from etsy.com)

They are coming from BULGARIA. And when I put them in my Etsy cart along with several other options to consider, a few hours later I got an email offering me free shipping, which took like $10 off. I will give the physical therapist the earrings PLUS a gift card, because I really think the absolute best gift for most people who provide a service (housecleaners, teachers, mail carriers, hair stylists) is MONEY, and in this case the earrings are less about her gift and more about me having fun with her gift. AND: in this case, this is a $5 joke, and I spent $20 because those were The Best Blueberry Earrings and I am currently in the exceedingly fortunate position of being able to spend $20 on a $5 joke in the hopes that the item is not ONLY a joke.

I am also trying to do a few NON-Christmas Tasks each day. Putting in a load of laundry. Wiping down the counters with the Christmas Joy. Figuring out a chewable vitamin for my child with Crohn’s disease who finally mentioned that vitamins are being skipped because swallowing big pills is causing gagging/barfing. Returning the Old Navy stretch pants and the Amazon stretch jeans that were both disasters. Setting up a small regular monthly contribution to NPR: I aimed for approximately the amount I used to spend to subscribe to The Washington Post.

I have not taken any action on the holiday outfit I need for Paul’s office party in a few days; that is just going to have to be accomplished on the fly. Especially after I missed the deadline for ordering the sequin pants, I was extremely reassured by commenter Heather, who said, with what immediately hit my brain with the clarion ring of Truth: “For parties, waist-up clothing is more important than waist-down. If you are wearing a white blouse with fun pants…most people just see a white blouse.” Now, maybe sequin pants would have been an exception. But this makes me feel free to wear normal dark jeans with my sleeveless sequin top and fancy cardigan, and I’ll add a matte-gold-flowers quiet-statement necklace and some dangly earrings and a big cocktail ring, and I will be fancy enough for a brewery.

Meanwhile I have to ride the exercise bike for at least 30 minutes. And I have to do my pelvic-floor therapy exercises. And I have to clean the bathroom. And I have to go to work. And I have to make dinner. And I have to run errands and do the grocery shopping. And each day that goes by is another day I might have missed a shipping deadline. I am doubling up on things: I have to ride the exercise bike for 30 minutes to prepare for knee surgery; but fortunately I got a recumbent bicycle so I can use that same time to catch up on my phone games. I know my phone games are unimportant in the universal scheme of things, but they are important to me, and I would feel sad and dismal to lose my streaks and so forth.

 

I was writing this last night when Paul texted from upstairs, where he had gone to lie down, to say that he had a fever. Twenty minutes later he stood in front of me, telling me a story about the instructions for the covid test, a story that ENDED with the news that his test was positive. STANDING IN FRONT OF ME TELLING A LONG STORY ABOUT THE INSTRUCTIONS. SHOO, SHOO, SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I went briskly to our room and removed the things that I’ll need. William also tested positive; he said he would have thought he just had a mild cold. Henry and I are so far negative. I will not go to work, and will test again today. We will miss the holiday party I failed to buy the sequined pants for. I hope this addendum won’t redirect the entire conversation to covid: I was hoping to hear more about other people maybe having trouble Christmassing, too, and about how you’re coping and what you’ve managed to do so far.

Exercise Bike Update!!

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When last we discussed it (and I am not linking to it, because it is in a post about election night plans and I don’t think any of us want or need that right now), I had chosen this Exerpeutic Recumbent exercise bike: the same brand as the one we’d had and liked, but recumbent in case that was better, and a good price. The only downside was that the estimated delivery was a MONTH later. But it was the bike I wanted, and I still had well over two months before my knee surgery.

After a month had gone by and the bike still hadn’t even shipped let alone arrived, Amazon canceled the order without explanation. This was a blow: it was okay to wait when we were waiting for The Right Bike, but now we’d wasted a month of waiting, a month when I could have been using the bike pre-knee-surgery. William and I tried not to plummet into despair. (He uses the exercise bike regularly and was quite affected by the breaking of the earlier bike and then the delay.)

I asked William if he would be willing to research a new bike, and he said he was. His research mostly involved asking around in his various online exercise communities, and he came back with the information that there were two camps: first camp says you cannot get a good exercise bike for under $500 (that was my cut-off) and in fact not for under $1500; second camp says Sunny bikes are inexpensive and terrific. We allied ourselves with the second camp, and ordered a Sunny bike. (William suggested the Standard, but I thought I might want some of the app availability of the Smart model.)

(image from sunnyhealthfitness.com)

The bike arrived a week and a half later (there were holidays in there) with free shipping, and it’s exactly what I was looking for. We’ve only had it a few days, so I can’t report on its durability, but it is QUIET and it is COMFORTABLE, and the recumbent style makes it MUCH EASIER to read and/or play on my phone while using it, which makes me MUCH MORE LIKELY to actually use it.

My only complaint involved the ordering process: I found it very difficult to tell the differences among the various bike options—and some options were only available if you clicked on a bike and then selected a different level of expense (Elite, Standard, Smart, etc.). William and I sat at the computer for perhaps half an hour, saying “Wait, is that the one we clicked on before, or a different one?” And they’re all basically named the same thing. Even knowing which one we ordered, I had to go back into my order history and literally click on it so that I could give you an accurate link and a picture. The main differences between one bike and another seemed to be (1) whether the back of the seat was mesh or solid, (2) number of app features, and (3) arm-exercising options.

There is a Cyber Monday sale (it is of course extended, as all Cyber Monday sales are, so it is still happening through Wednesday and possibly for the rest of our natural lives): 20% off with code CM20. If I’ve done that math correctly, it brings the $270 bike down to $216. I THINK if you click this link to the site and then buy something I get “points” for referring you, but don’t worry if it doesn’t work, and ESPECIALLY if it doesn’t work with the sale (GET THE SALE): the points are discounts off future orders, and I am not likely to be purchasing many more pieces of exercise equipment. But if you DO click the points link, and then you want to find the same bike I bought, the product number of the bike is SF-RB4616SMART. (And if you are reading this after the 20% off sale has ended, I THINK the link is supposed to give you 15% off—but let me know if it doesn’t, because there’s an option for me to send an email to a friend giving them 15% off.)

Gift Ideas for a 13-Year-Old

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My nephew is 13, and does not have a wish list, and says he likes to be surprised. I, in turn, would like to be The Cool Aunt Who Knows Just What To Buy Him—like my OWN cool aunt, who used to thrill me each year by buying me the same thing she bought for my cousin, her daughter who was four years older than me: a bottle of perfume marketed to teenagers when I was 9; a very thin gold bracelet when I was 10; a hot turquoise button-down shirt with a poppable collar and a thin belt when I was 12. And I SHOULD be able to transfer to this gift-giving model!! I have a child who is four years older than my nephew!! It should be PERFECT!! But my aunt is stylish and glamorous and doesn’t overthink things, so maybe we should all play to our own strengths.

My nephew likes to know a lot of facts, and he composes electronic music and also plays bass in an orchestra, and he is the youngest cousin of seven and DOES NOT want to be thought of as the youngest. I think if I were choosing One Most Important Thing about gifts for him, it’s that they should err on the side of OLDER.

Let me show you some of the ideas I have so far, and maybe you have a 13ish-year-old on your list and can share some of YOUR ideas, and together we’ll make a little catalog of ideas.

A band t-shirt for Marceline’s band, in Adventure Time:

(image from Amazon.com)

If none of those words make sense to you, don’t worry, you are not having a stroke. Adventure Time is a whimsical surreal cartoon for teens/adults, and Marceline is a character in that show, and she is a cool vampire who is in a band. So this is a pretend concert/band t-shirt for that fictional band.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Maybe a mini-fridge for his room? We got one of these for Henry a year or so ago, and it has worked well. It’s the really eensy kind that only holds like six cans. (Definitely I would check with parents before buying this sort of thing.)

 

(image from Amazon.com)

Storey’s Curious Compendium of Practical and Obscure Skills: 214 Things You Can Actually Learn How to Do. Maybe this is too textbooky/educational? But it really has so many interesting things in it. It INVITES you to pick it up and page through it. I’m sort of leaning toward this plus another thing—like maybe this plus a t-shirt.

 

t-shirt with yelling cat face and the words meow meow meow written above it, and also below it on a small banner

(image from topatoco.com)

Meow Meow Meow shirt. But we have at least two of this shirt in our household, and I’m not sure where those shirts are in the handmedowns process. It would be a real bummer to get, as a gift, the new version of shirt literally already in your drawer—or worse, one you rejected from the handmedowns bag!! But I mention it in case YOU have a 13ish-year-old to buy for. (I strongly prefer this version over the other version, which says “Pay attention to me” instead of “Meow Meow Meow.”) Similarly, I recommend this Dogs: They’re Good shirt.

 

I wonder if he would like a subscription to The Onion. It’s a physical newspaper once a month, and it’s funny. But it might be aimed too old: I got it as a gift for Paul, and HE’LL get the jokes about senators, but maybe a 13-year-old would be puzzled. Or maybe a 13-year-old would appreciate having their news literacy overestimated?? Henry suggested getting him the book Our Dumb Century instead:

(image from Amazon.com)

But that was published in 1999, and I feel like it might end up having too many That Was a Different Time kind of moments. Even humor from, say, 2014 sometimes hits different now. What larks we used to have, making fun of both sides!

 

(image from Amazon.com)

LAST year, when he was merely 12, he wanted a Strange Planet daily calendar. I could do that again. But sometimes when you see something every day for a year you’re kind of DONE with that thing. I had a Pusheen day-to-day calendar this year, and I liked it a lot and was glad I’d bought it, but for next year I’m getting The Art of Flowers.

 

plaid flannel shirt, mostly brown and white with a thin accent line of golden yellow

(image from oldnavy.gap.com)

This feels almost too boring to consider, but maybe my aunt would have felt the same way about the thrilling turquoise button-down: I could get him the same flannel shirt and/or pants that Henry recently chose for himself.

 

(image from etsy.com)

A couple years ago we got Henry a black ring with his initial on it, and he wears it constantly along with another ring made out of a Japanese coin on his opposite ring finger, and it looks pretty cool (his mother thinks). I think this is too Henry-specific an idea for my nephew, but perhaps for your similarly-aged child.

 

(image from Amazon.com)

When we have a family get-together each year, I bring one of these big sticker mosaics, and my nephew likes them. But…maybe it’s more event-specific, like, this is GREAT as a group activity but not something to do by oneself. And also, each year that goes by I wonder if THIS will be the year he doesn’t like big sticker mosaics anymore.

 

I am very much hoping you will have more ideas.

Holiday Office Party Outfit

31 Replies

I need an outfit to wear to Paul’s office holiday party, which is to be held, delightfully, at a BREWERY. You may be wondering why I don’t just wear the outfit I bought the last time we discussed this, and it’s because I don’t think the pants (black velvet with some glitter) will fit. I guess I could try them. But my guess is that they will not accommodate my perimenopausal tum in a way that feels warm and loving.

Would it be BONKERS to buy sequined flare pants?:

(image from oldnavy.gap.com)

And if so, is it the GOOD kind of bonkers? What is the sound/sensation when you walk with sequined legs? Is it like corduroy but…clickier?

Also, what shoes would a person who does not wear high heels wear with these pants?

I kind of like the careless loose white oxford the model is wearing, but I’d need it LONGER (the butt MUST be covered), and I would unbutton some top buttons but NONE OF the bottom buttons. I checked to see if Old Navy had a white satin longish oxford, but they do not. This might be sour grapes, but I’m not sure I could pull off that loungey satin look anyway. I need something that suits my nervous, eager-to-please party attitude and uptight updo. My usual glitzy top is a champagne-sequined sleeveless shirt, worn with a flowy dressy thin open cardigan with a drapey front, but that is not going to work with sequined pants.

I could get these shiny black pants instead:

(image from oldnavy.gap.com)

Less fun than the sequins, but with the benefit of working with a dressy top I’m already happy with. And maybe better for a brewery? and a spouse’s work gathering?

Or they come in silver, which is more fun but I suspect less flattering on me (I think they hit the eye as white), and also then I REALLY don’t know what to do about a top:

(image from oldnavy.gap.com)

 

And I hope you ALWAYS consider yourself Automatically Reciprocally Asked in cases like this (the only reason I don’t specifically ask every single time is that I feel it comes across as Encouraging Blog Engagement)—but if you have a holiday office party to go to, what are YOU wearing? I would be so interested to know. I am not confident about fashion, and I like to start with other peoples’ templates.

Labeling Collages; News vs. Media; Utility Pants with AMAZING POCKETS

18 Replies

Well, obviously I should have looked for input on labeling the back of a collage print BEFORE getting the prints made, because BY FAR my favorite idea was to add the names to each photo in the collage. I have spent the last few days wondering if I should just get them done over. It’s not so much about the money (it’s a matter of $11); it’s more, can I make myself start over on this collage print, or is it just too wonderful to have already submitted it and picked up the prints? But it would ALSO be wonderful not to be looking at a pile of prints that need labeling.

Are you already feeling a little overwhelmed by holiday stuff? I am already feeling a little overwhelmed. This year, though, it is nice to have that distraction. If I am thinking about the million things that need to be done between now and the shipping deadlines, or now and the work holiday party, then I am NOT thinking about what is happening shortly after the holidays.

Speaking of which, I wish I could remember where I saw someone saying that there was a difference between “media” (the endless flow of information meant to keep viewers engaged) and “news” (actual information), but it has already changed the way I think of taking in news. Which is bad for my line-a-day journal, but good for my mental state.

For example: awhile back, I spent quite a bit of time agitating over the idea of M@tt G@etz as attorney general, and listening to NPR talking to experts about what an alarming choice he was—and then he ended up withdrawing. I am not going to be able to handle these next years if I am agitating over the things that end up NOT HAPPENING, as well as the ones that DO HAPPEN. I am not quite sure what specifically this means for my news/media intake, but it was helpful to realize that what I’d been taking in was MEDIA: hours of NPR discussing what might happen with the various nominees. Rather than NEWS, which I guess would be the confirmation of nominees? I still feel a little unclear, and yet for now I’ve stopped listening to hours of NPR asking experts to guess at all the stressful things in our future, things I can’t do anything about, at least at this point when they haven’t started happening yet. When we get to the part where I can at least be writing to my senators/representatives to ask them to do things, I can tune in a little more.

To end on a non-political note, I would like to recommend these Old Navy utility pants:

(image from OldNavy.Gap.com)

I am between two pants sizes, and I ordered the larger of those two sizes, and that was the right choice to accommodate the perimenopausal tum and be comfy; the high waist makes the tum feel supported and snuggled rather than condemned and criticized. And my dears, the POCKETS. The POCKETS. My entire phone not only fits into the pocket but fits LOW in the pocket. I would buy these pants FOR THE POCKETS ALONE. Yes, the color options are all kind of weird, and yet I wish I’d bought more of the weird colors before they ran out of my size. I chose the odd green, and I wish I had also bought the odd blue they now seem to be completely out of; I can still get the odd rust ones in my size, and I might do it even though I might need to buy shirts that would look right with it. (The cream color would not work on me: I would immediately be/look grubby.)

Also: they do not DRAG ON THE GROUND like so many pants do on me! They are the RIGHT INSEAM for me! This may mean that they will be short on you, if you normally buy pants that don’t drag on the ground; you may need the Tall.

P.S. I also recommend this boyfriend flannel shirt, if you would like some cozy clothes for panicking in. I sized up one size, and if I were ordering another one (as I might) I’d order my usual size instead (it is already oversized as part of the “boyfriend” styling)—but a size up is not wrong. I have been wearing it almost constantly, alternating with one of Paul’s flannel shirts. It is the thinner, softer flannel, not the bulkier, rougher kind. I ordered the grey plaid, if you want to be twins. I think it looks very cute with the weird green pants.

Labeling the Back of a Collage Photo Print

41 Replies

If you ever:
(1) create a COLLAGE photo print to include with holiday cards, AND
(2) you generally label the backs with who’s who,

then I wish to ask: HOW DO YOU DO IT? I wish to ask that of you even if the question is hypothetical because you do not do that and you do not do that either. (I’m going to attempt to keep my terms tidy, so that “print” or “collage” refers to the entire printed collage, and “photo” refers to one of the photos in that collage.)

Like, imagine it: it is a 4×6 print, let’s say it is horizontal, and it includes let’s say six photos of various family members. And you would like to label the back of the print, so that future generations (and also the not-very-in-touch people on your card list) know which people are in which photo.

My first inclination was to label BEHIND EACH PHOTO. That is: if Elizabeth and Edward are in a photo together at the top right of the print, then I would be writing “Elizabeth and Edward” on the top LEFT of the back. Like, if you were to cut the photo collage into separate little photos, each individual photo would still be labeled correctly.

But when I imagine taking someone else’s collage print and flipping it over, the behind-each-photo idea seems confusing: my brain wants to project my memory of the images onto the back of the card, and have the names written correspondingly. If I look at a photo at the upper right, and then I flip it over, my brain expects to see those names at the upper right, just like on the print.

I suppose I could do a sort of “L to R, top row:” situation, but that feels…exhausting.

WHAT SAY YOU. (If your very valid opinion is “Just don’t label the back, this solves everything,” I do hear you, I do, but I am going to label the backs, so “don’t” isn’t one of the options remaining to us at THIS stage of the decision tree.)