Yes, but I can hardly ask my baby brother to get me this (I’ll take one in Smoky Granite Mica, please).
I know, I know! I’m trying to be good!
Hey, twickster, thanks – I just checked my amazon.com cart and found a dozen things in there. I have no idea when I put them in there, but now I at least have a start on some things I could ask for.
Yeah, that would be a good suggestion, except that the youngest is a healthy 25. It will likely be a couple years before we have kids at the festivities (Lord willing), but this is a great suggestion when we get there.
Well, I bought a case and a half of wine for Thanksgiving, but didn’t end up bringing it. My parents’ house guests brought wine from a local winery, so we drank that instead. I am now set for alcohol for the foreseeable future.
Nah, they’re pretty good people. I didn’t used to like them at all, and we used to make mom cry with how little we used to like each other, and my parents used to fight a lot, etc., etc. It’s funny now, though. My sister is one of my closest friends, my brothers turned into real, actual human beings, my siblings-in-law fit, and my parents have fallen in love again. So I want to play their silly Christmas list game to make them happy. Seems the least I can do.
Well, you know, you could ask for something better than that $13.95 case of Two-Buck Chuck you purchased. No wonder they didn’t want to drink your wine. (On a totally unrelated note, I checked out Mission Wines; good recommendation, and the owner seems very knowledgable and and not the least snobbish when I told him I was “looking for something in the $15-$25 range, cause it’s work people and most of them won’t know the difference, anyway.”)
I’m kidding with the family alienation business, of course, but surely you can pick out something like a book or a film you normally wouldn’t buy for yourself; Casablanca was just released in a two-disc Special Edition, or here’s the whole Criterion Collection of excessively overpriced but well-mastered and special-featured-to-a-fault films.
A picturesquely furnished yacht,
A next-year’s model limousine,
sable wrap of graceful cut
A sheaf of cheques for vast amounts;
it’s not the thought that matters, but
The gift which goes with it that counts.
And thanks to Eve, I have twomore things to add to my list: My Way of Life and Chained for Life.
You couldn’t just ask for a donation to charity to be made in your name, or some boxes of powered milk for the local food bank? If you have everything you want, it might be worth a passing thought. :dubious:
Same here. That’s why I bought it for myself. I cannot bring myself to tell my mother that I am interested in such a book, not even after the er, vibrator incident.
Ask for two pairs of slippers, then. They’ll run your gift-giver about forty to fifty dollars, and go scope them out to look for colors you like. You are not permitted to buy yourself any, even though they’re lovely and soft and cozy. (Obvious how fond I am of them, huh? No one buys them for me, but they do buy me these terrific chenille socks.) Sixties, heh. That’s daytime here. (and the people who live where it actually gets cold will come and yell at us)
Wine is good, too. I would never have thought of that, not being a wine drinker.
Do you have all the kitchen gadgets you want? Go to www.surlatable.com or www.williamssonoma.com and check out all the kitchen implements you never knew were out there and so didn’t know to covet them. Now you can.
My kitchen is pretty small, and given how (in)frequently I cook, a nice kitchen gadget would just be wasted on me. Although, I have been coveting those silicone spatulas…
Harimad-sol: I think slippers will make the list and The Big Bang will not. I just don’t have it in me to be wild and subversive, especially I couldn’t pull it off with the right level of insouciance. I should just own up to my true nature and be done with it.
Ah, but you’re missing the point of gifted kitchen gadgets. They aren’t to be used–and indeed, most are pretty nonfunctional anyway–but rather to be held in reserve for impromptu regifting. “Oh, you just announced you’re four months pregnant, and the wedding is next week?” No problem; just pull out one of the four asparagus steamers (who steams asparagus, anyway?) and wrap it up in some generic holiday/birthday/anniversary/wedding present wrap, and wa-lah!
Okay, so I don’t have any friends…but I also don’t get invited to those awkward second weddings, either and hear all the bridesmaids catting it up. “Oh, I hear it’s her third…I wonder how long this will last. And look at that taffeta on her dress; it must have come from K-Mart. I bet she slept with the best man already.”
Christmas list? What? Oh yeah…I tell you what, just ask for a sextant. That’ll drive the gifter nuts. “A sextant? What in the heck does she want a sextant for? Hell, she gets seasick on the Catalina ferry. Is there something else you can do with a sextant? Maybe she wants a…never mind, just gimme the sextant.”
Hee. At Thanksgiving, my BIL offered one of the nine fondue makers he and my sister got for their wedding to my SIL, who was lamenting the fact that she didn’t get a single one at her wedding to my brother. My BIL, who is a cook’s cook, has yet to use a single one of their fondue makers and is happy to let them go to a hospitable kitchen.
Sorry. We were, to my everlasting shame, a Scrabble[sup]TM[/sup]-playing family growing up. So if I asked for a sextant, you’re right: they’d make the Catalina ferry comment, and then I’d have a sextant. Which, you must admit, will be a bit difficult to regift. Not sure anyone registers for sextants anymore…
See, in my family, they wouldn’t blink an eye, but they also wouldn’t get it for me. For my birthday, my BIL got me pepper spray (I have to walk alone to my car at night. It is apparently irrelevant that I am within sight of a security guard the whole time, I work in a safe area, and I never have to leave my building to get to my car). He wanted to get me a gun but then watched me in the kitchen and decided something non-lethal was more appropriate.
Well, that’s not fair! It kind of hard to make up a list of gifts that would drive them crazy if they’re allowed to just ignore them! Sounds like you need to assert some basic ground rules!
OK, so if they are free to selectively sweep aside one item in favor of others, you need to just put together a list of items that makes that a bit more difficult to do… or a lot more difficult to do. Like how about a list of things not inherently dangerous, but nearly impossible to find? Like a rabbit-skin belt, or live coral, or an Australian pepper grinder, or a thong made from a space-blanket, or a one-million dollar denomination Monopoly bill, or glow-in-the-dark computer cables, or an Adolph Hitler refrigerator magnet, or a Mother Theresa lunch box, or a candy bar bought in East Timor, or Watermelon-flavored salsa, or a Bonsai Redwood, or a deck of Studabaker playing cards… that sort of thing.
If you do this, however, beware the results. In much the same spirit as the one in which you find yourself, I once told my parents that all I wanted for Christmas was something to wear around the basement. They got me a rat-skin cap!
