Gift List 2018

Now that #45's tax bill is about to pass, I'm thinking of what I'll do when all that money comes flooding in.  Taking Stephen Colbert's advice, I went shopping on Goop.com, Gwyneth Paltrow's web site for the uber rich so I can make my Christmas list for next year.

I started small, with games. For $34 I can buy a deck of "dirty talk cards," presented in a pristine giftable box, the fourteen cards inside have sexy sayings—printed on a luxe paper with hand-painted gold edges—as a special collab between Paper Chase Press, Afterall, and goop. It’s an incredibly fun way to spice up date-night—your significant other won’t be disappointed.

If you don't want to play cards, maybe for $70 you can get a "Love is Art Couple's paint kit." The key to this body-painting kit—by which we mean painting a canvas using your and your partner’s bodies—is stripping down first. Includes organic, non-toxic gold and black paint, a specially treated cotton canvas (3.5’ x 4.5’), a plastic drop cloth (10’ x 17’) to protect your surface from paint splashes, two pairs of disposable slippers (so no tracking paint footprints off the canvas), and a soft mesh body scrubber for cleanup.  Sadly, this item is sold out, but maybe by next year they will have restocked.  I can just see Walt and me painting each other while the dogs leap about trying to figure out what's going on.

Not into painting?  How about a $500 dart board?  This beautifully-crafted dartboard is as much fun to play with as it is a gorgeous object. Made of silk-screened cork in five colors, the board itself is stunning (with a keyhole on the back for easy hanging), but the darts themselves look fantastic, too. It’s an original, modern update on the ancient game of skill—a keep-it-forever classic.

Colbert was particularly excited about the $66 jade egg. 

Used by women to increase sexual energy and pleasure, this nephrite jade stone helps connect the second chakra (the heart) and yoni for optimal self-love and well being. Please be sure to follow the instructions included with your egg.  Made exclusively for goop.

• Nephrite jade
• Length: 1.57", Width: 1.18"
• Eggs are pre drilled for string add-on; we recommend using unwaxed dental floss

Having worked in an ob/gyn office for many years, I am quite familiar with the yoni.  You may want to look it up.  (The egg also comes in Rose quartz, which is cheaper, only $55)

For only $84 you can buy a water bottle with an imbedded obelisk-like amethyst crystal to infuse water with positive energy. A soothing crystal, amethyst is thought to help transform negative energy, enhance existing psychic abilities, and calm the mind.  Sounds nicer than my $1.25 plastic job.

Of course you can't live without these $460 sun glasses.  Given how often people misplace their glasses, maybe you should get a back-up pair just in case.  These pair nicely with the $230 ear buds to keep your music with you at all times (or for $300 you can buy wireless ear buds, which have the added advantage of being much easier to lose.)


I really was not taken with this $2,750 sequin-shaped cocktail ring.  I think it's ugly, but others obviously disagree with me if they are paying nearly $3,000 for this monstrosity.  The description states that the ring can be worn with either a cocktail dress and heels, or a tee-shirt and jeans.  I'm glad to know it is multi-purpose.

But while I don't like this ring, I can't live without the $145 "nut milk maker," a product I've never seen before.

And all these years of burning incense cones, or a stick of incense that you prop up on something, it's a comfort to know that for only $345 you can buy this incense burner.

This gorgeous gift set comes with three hand-cut semi-precious stones (clear quartz, rose quartz, and black onyx) that hold your incense stick sideways so it can burn at both ends. It even comes with a clever copper-tone brass tray to collect falling ash (read: no clean-up required). The packaging is so pretty that no additional wrapping is required.

I have a year to plan my gift giving 2018, but I'd better order early because almost everything that looked good to me is already sold out.  

I can hardly wait for my tax refund to arrive...
 

The Dreaded Christmas Letter

My old boyfriend's (Brother Bill) Christmas card arrived a bit late--December 2, instead of the 1st.  His is always the very first Christmas card we get.  He is apparently having health problems that he didn't go into this year and I was sorry to hear that.

I take Bill's annual card as a challenge.  It is my personal challenge to get our Christmas letter written and e-mailed to him before I get his card.  This year I completely forgot about it and it took his card to remind me.

But I got my letter written (it is linked in the left column if you want to read it).  The venom over Christmas letters seems to have lessened a bit but each year you know there are going to be some who "hate...hate...hate" them. 

I can never figure out why someone would be upset at getting something that someone has spent time creating to share with friends and would prefer to get a card with a pre-printed name and no message whatsoever.  But to each his own.

I have been sending out Christmas letters ever since we got married (52 of them!)  In the beginning the preparation was much more elaborate because I took my paste up to a real printer and had them printed to mail out.  They always included a family picture or more

This was our family picture in 1969, Paul's first Christmas.

 

The printed cards started to get spendy, when you considered not only the price of the printer but also the rising cost of postage.  It was costing me nearly $200 just to send greetings that most people would glance at and then throw away.  I started xeroxing the letter to save money but the photos always looked liked...well, xeroxed photos.

Email was a godsend because I could reach a good number of our friends and email greetings without having to whittle the list down to an affordable postage list.  And then when Funny the World came along and I realized that I could design a web page and just send out the link to the site, I had found Nirvana.  I could do what I loved to do, I could design a prettier card and still reach all our friends, and now even acquaintances that I would like to greet during the holiday season

I probably go overboard on who is on our list, but I really love sharing the card. 

I heard a story this morning of someone who had regifted something that turned into kind of a nightmare.  I don't have any regifting stories of my own, but I do remember the Christmas that Walt's mother gave my mother the gift she had given her the previous year. I loved that we always had a blended family, from the first year of our marriage.  Walt's mother came to my parents' house for Christmas and forever more, until distance or health made that an impossibility, wherever we were having Christmas the two families always spent it together.  Now, of course, that there are other in-law families to consider it's different.  It helped that Walt's brother and sister didn't marry until late!

But the regifting story got me to thinking about memorable Christmas gifts I have received.  Not memorable in the "Oh Wow you got me a ....." story, but the strange gifting incidents.  Like the Christmas that I begged and begged my mother to let me open just one gift.  I was in grammar school and it was a gift a classmate had given me.  I don't know why this is such an indelible memory, but I even remember where I was sitting when I opened the gift and how disappointed I was because it was a piggy bank. I don't even know why I was disappointed but I guess I expected something more exciting.

Then there was the year I got the camera.  Something I dearly wanted.  In those days, department stores delivered your purchases for you and when this box came, my mother said it had my gift(s) in it.  She said there were something like five gifts in it and decided to just wrap the box it had been sent in.  I was thrilled to get a camera, but the multi gifts she was talking about were the various parts of the camera--the flash attachment, the bulbs, the batteries and don't remember what else.  That little Brownie box camera changed me into a photographer, but I always felt cheated that I didn't have four other gifts in the box.

Then there was the year that I got a big box from the family for whom I babysat.  The father was a big joker and from the time when I went with them on their vacation to Lake Tahoe, he gave me a hard time about not eating my vegetables.  I was so excited to open their gift, and then so terribly, terribly hurt that it was just full of limp vegetables.  I wasn't going to let them know that I wasn't a good sport, though, and called to thank them fort he vegetables.  "Did it take you a long time to find the present?" the father asked.  Turned out he had hidden a book of movie tickets in the tissue paper under the vegetables.  I might never have found them if I hadn't decided to be a good sport and thank him for the vegetables.

There was the year of the Mary Hartline doll, which I've spoken of before.  I wasn't into baby dolls any more and so desperately wanted one of those big fancy dolls that look like a young woman from Tara or somewhere.  I watched a show called Big Circus at that time and the hostess was Mary Hartline and I guess my mother thought that any non-baby doll would make me happy.  I knew when I saw her under the tree that I would never get the kind of doll I really wanted .. and I never did.

The final gift memory I have is from when I was in high school.  My mother was so excited about the gift she had given me and she teased me about it for weeks.  Then I was somewhere babysitting and watching television and the girl on the TV was wearing a faux fur bolo jacket kind of like this one:

I knew instantly that this was the gift I was getting...and it was (only in grey).  I never liked it but I never let my mother know and acted excited, but I think I only wore it twice.

I guess this makes me sound like an ungrateful kid.  I received a lot of wonderful gifts throughout my childhood and adulthood, but these stand out as some of the most "memorable" gifts I have ever opened.

Marvel the Mustang

Marvel the Mustang burst on the toy scene during the Christmas season of1969.  It was the "must-have" toy that year.  Jeri was 3 years old and fell in love with Marvel and got excited whenever she saw a commercial.  I grew to hate that damn song.

     Marvel the Mustang
     He's almost for real
     Just saddle him up
     With spurs on your heels
     No winding, no batteries
     "What horse DO?"
     Marvel the Mustang
     Do we love you!

No, that is not Jeri in the photo, but Marvel the Mustang became my guilt each year because every year they trotted out the old commercial and Jeri got all excited about it again for about three years.  She was sure that Santa would bring her Marvel the Mustang. But Santa looked at the price and realized that his elves could not make it cheaply and that her interest in it would not justify such a big expense, so he never did bring her a Marvel the Mustang.

Imagine my surprise when I watched The Today Show recently and saw some of this year's "must have toys" and discovered this zebra.  It's Marvel the Mustang with stripes!

I have to admit that it assuaged my guilt just a bit when I discovered that Marvel the Zebra (not his real name) costs $250.  That explains why there never was a Marvel the Mustang for Jeri.

I wonder if everyone has a Marvel the Mustang in their past.  Mine was a fancy doll.  I've been searching Google Images for the kind of doll I wanted and have not been able to find the exact doll.  This was the closest I could come:

 

These have baby faces.  I wanted the doll with an adult looking face, big hats and dresses like you would see swirling around on the dance floor in a period drama.

I'm sure my parents never bought me such a doll because they cost so much and they figured I would either mess it up or grow tired of it and not make the cost worth it.  But my mother must have been thrilled when she found a Mary Hartline doll.

Mary Hartline was the co-host on a show called Super Circus that we watched every week.  I suppose my mother figured that here was a doll that was not a baby doll, and was dressed like an adult, had long hair and I would love it.

But I hated it.  I thought she was ugly. When I saw Mary Hartline under the tree, I knew that I would never get the beautiful doll I wanted. I pretended to love it, but I never did.

I did have the fancy dolls I wanted.  They were from a line called "Storybook Dolls" and were dressed beautifully, but they were small and my father built little show cases for them, little wooden boxes with glass fronts, and they lined the walls of our bedroom and we were never permitted to touch the dolls.

 

What i was hoping for was a play size Storybook Doll.

We learn early in life to deal with disappointments and we learn that people get things for you, or do things for you because they love you and have no idea that they have disappointed you. You learn early in life how to be gracious and thankful for the gesture, and swallow your disappointment.  But I still think about those dolls I wanted if I see pictures or a display.  

 

I went to a grief counselor after Gilbert died in 1986.  She suggested that I be good to myself and buy something I'd always wanted.  I knew instantly that I would buy myself the doll I'd always wanted and actually went shopping for one.  That's when I realized that I was 43 years old and had no idea of what I would do with such a doll and, if I was honest with myself, did not really want one any more.  I had put away the things of a child and was now an adult.