Christmas Gift Snafu

Consumer Reports magazine has a section at the back called "Selling It" that pokes fun at the warnings or advertising used for products. I should definitely send in this one.
About a month before Christmas, I bought a travel mug as a gift and wrapped it up, looking forward to the day it was unwrapped and admired.

The handsome brown mug has a no-skid bottom and an aluminum insert so the hot beverage doesn't taste like plastic.
Then we opened the mug and saw the instructions.

I'm not sure how helpful this mug will be for drinking coffee or tea when it can't be filled with hot liquids.

Hope and Charity

I have to say I've been a little discouraged lately about giving. You may recall that one side of the family decided to give gifts to a needy family rather than exchanging gifts with each other.
For some reason, even though this wasn't my idea, I became the point person to find a family and organize the gift buying for them. The family, with three kids, does not have heat in their apartment. So after the toys were purchased, I suggested we all donate the rest of the money we would spend on each other toward their gas bill to get heat.
Let me just say that none of us spent as much on the family as we would have on each other, but the person who spent the most is probably the one who earns the least. I was feeling discouraged about the goodness of wealthy people. Maybe people who have more, give less.
Then, just this week, I asked the basketball team families if they would be interested in helping a local family who has fallen on hard times. The family with four kids have been living on mac n cheese for 3 months and have only one inexpensive gift for the entire family on Christmas morning. It's a puppy, so the parents hope to maintain some Christmas surprise and excitement. I felt so bad though, and also felt like many of us could slide into this kind of trouble if one spouse lost a job.
So I sent an email to the basketball families and told them that a local family needed their help, without actually naming the family. Many of the basketball families immediately responded that they would donate gift cards for Christmas gifts and stocking stuffers.
Then on Saturday while I was at a swim meet, Grace called me to say a man she didn't know stopped by and dropped off a 100 dollar bill for the family in need. I couldn't believe it. I thought people would donate $25 gift cards to the local grocery stores, not 100 dollar bills. I stared at the 100 dollar bill and imagined how thrilled my friend will be to buy some gifts for her kids.
Then on Sunday, I drove to my brother's house to visit my parents. When I got home, I found a little stocking with a gift card in it. The gift card to Walmart was for $300. $300!!! Someone donated a $300 gift card to the family.
So these basketball families have given me hope that even people with money are generous and want to help those who are in need.

Christmas Past

Christmas is over, right? But wait, there's more. (Picture me saying this in a gameshow announcer type voice.)
My brother from Texas drove to Kentucky yesterday with his two kids and is coming to Ohio today, so I'll herd my children into the car once again and go to my brother's house in Dayton to celebrate with them. But, like the procrastinator I am, I didn't get their presents yet so I'll be running out to do that before we leave. I also need to get a birthday present for my 93-year-old grandmother in Kentucky. I'm so over buying presents, but since I enjoy getting them, I suppose I shouldn't complain.
I was inundated with gifts this year, and I always feel a little guilty about that. With Earl's birthday falling two days before Christmas, he always gets short changed. I make the excuse that I have to shop for all the kids and Earl, even though Earl would help buy presents for the kids if I asked him to.
Then on Christmas Eve, as we were getting ready to leave for my brother's house, Tucker came up to me and whispered, "Mom, I didn't get anything for Dad."
"Yes, you did," I replied. I bought a book for him to give his father.
Then he walked across the room to Earl and whispered something to him.
"What?" Earl asked.
I started laughing because it was obvious he was asking the same question about buying a gift for me -- on Christmas Eve.
Two of my children, though, took care of gifts on their own this year, which was a big relief.

Grace did her own shopping at college. Earl and I got tshirts with her college name on them, mine in a lovely chocolate brown. She got the boys tshirts with outdoor pictures and funny sayings on them. Spencer's shows people hiking and says, "Bring a compass. It's awkward when you have to eat your friends." Tucker's shows a guy jumping off a ledge and says, "Determination: that feeling you get right before you do something incredibly stupid."
The present from Spencer took me by surprise. He made it himself. A blonde wood jewelry box with a lift out tray covered in green velvet. I felt so touched. He made it in "machines" class at high school, kept it a secret and wrapped it himself.

I, of course uncomfortable in a sentimental moment, made a joke about how it could be used as a hamster coffin if we ever had a hamster (oh, come on! It's got that shape to it). Truthfully, though, I love it and can picture myself using it and remembering this Christmas when he was a lanky teenager sprawled on the rug amidst boxes and wrapping paper.
Christmas was an extravaganza as usual, but most of what the kids received were clothes, things they needed any way since they had out grown or worn out jeans and tshirts. I even got the boys winter coats since they wear hoodies as their coats, layering them on top of each other.
When we were finished, the floor was littered with the debris of Christmas and like pushing away from a feast, we felt sated, and just a little bit gluttonous.

Hope your Christmas was good too.

Letter From a Son

"Dear loving mother," began the typed letter that lay on top of my keyboard when I returned home from work at 10:30 Tuesday night. The letter was from the son who went to bed the night before after spewing vitriole about his brother and me and his horrible life. The son who pulled the old door closed tight rather than leaving it open to hear the sounds of life throughout the house like he usually did.
Perhaps he wrote to apologize. Please, don't be naive. There's only one reason for a letter that begins like this: he wrote to ask for something.
"I am yearning for the newest experience in the world of first person shooter video games..." he wrote. I suppose a boy who yells and slams the door should be encouraged to play shooter video games.
He pointed out that his grades had improved and he had gone to swim practices and he had started mentoring -- all steps for the better this year. And I had to agree, if it hadn't been for the outburst the day before. The outburst really didn't have anything to do with me or his brother. It had to do with the new Xbox game coming out at midnight and he would not be in line to get it.
His "improved behavior" this fall, he admitted, was a ploy to receive the video game.
"This may be because of hopes to get the game as an early Christmas present, as so when I get the game, I will not be referred to as a 'noob' by all my friends and other online players," he wrote.
He then included the cost and a list of stores where we could easily find the game.
"I feel this would be a righteous investment on your part to see the smiling face of your ever so loving child as you hand him this glorious gift of Call of Duty Black Ops..."
Ah, yes. The lure of Xbox live which offers the ability to talk to your friends as if they are sitting in the same room with you when, in fact, they are in their own homes playing Black Ops. A boy never has to leave the basement to be surrounded by his buddies.

These were simpler days when Tucker was content to dress as a tiger while Spencer played at Johnny Tremaine and Grace posed as Hermione from Harry Potter.

I intend to get the game for Tucker, violence and all, as a Christmas present. I just don't see the need to rush out on release night to snatch it up. All of his friends have it, he claimed, today at lunch when I picked up him and four friends.
I drove them back to our house for lunch meat and cheese on sub buns, apple slices, Sun Chips, homemade brownies, M&Ms and Orange Crush. They each made their own sandwich and sat around the table.
"Owen, do you have it?" I asked. He shook his head.
"Sam?" He doesn't even have an Xbox. Two of the boys have the new game. Both said they bought it with money they had saved.
They tell of one boy at school who got the game when it was released at midnight and then played the game until 5 in the morning. He is grounded.
"I truly hope you rethink your decision twice over before you decide what you may," Tucker wrote in the letter to me. I suppose he thought my decision would be no, so if I rethought twice then a double negative would make a positive.
I showed the letter to Earl this morning.
"Send him a letter that says the committe will make a decision by Dec. 23," he said.
And he drove the boys back to school before 5th period started while I put away the sandwich fixings and the uneaten apple slices.
Tucker's friends go out for lunch everyday, he says. He takes his brown bag and goes along with them.
Eating out everyday and buying pre-Christmas presents just seems excessive. My kids already are so privileged. They've never been hungry because we don't have enough food. They have cell phones and fast internet connection. They have a television in the basement just for video games. They have plenty. Tucker can take one for the team this time.
Then Tucker goes home with his friend Josh to play Black Ops on the split screen. "This game is amazing," he says. Josh has two copies -- one for the upstair Xbox and one for the downstairs Xbox.
The bar for privileged keeps rising, but I don't have to keep jumping.