A box of Japanese dried cuttlefish snacks. Years ago when I was a starving student desperation forced me into eating these wretched things (I inherited a box from a photo-shoot) and I can still remember the horrible gas they gave me (like the smell of a burning rubber tire).
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This year I was asked to join the ex’s family X-Mas. One of his aunt’s gave me a dime store pill box, half assed wrapped in used wrapping paper (still had part of the used tag on it). A pill box? It wasn’t as if she didn’t know I was going to be there- the family member told everyone I would be attending.
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Another ex’s mom once gave the most HIDEOUS sweater. 100% acrylic (I break out in hives from acrylic). Fuzzy baby blue (blue makes my skin look green) with metallic silver thread shot through it. Ruffly turtleneck, princess puffy shoulders, ruffly wristbands. I am NOT a ruffly, princess-y type person by a LOOONNNGGG shot. Oh, and a size small (I was a size large)
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Washclothes. FIFTY washclothes. Granted, we go through them a lot (between LilMiss and I, we use 3-4/day). But FIFTY? I just did my interal “I-Love-My-Mother” mantra, which often comes in handy, smiled, and thanked her. Oh, and they were of the WalMart 12 for $2.00 variety, so now a year later there’s 10 left. The rest fell apart.
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A rake. At the time I was living in a second floor apartment.
My brother gave me one this Christmas–he knows I have weaknesses for both dragons and pretty trinkets. It looks particularly nice on the illuminated base, but I may fiddle with it and replace the LEDs with lasers. The dragon is etched into it with lasers–the individual beams don’t have enough power to etch the crystal, but where they intersect they leave a trace.
My Dad gave me a model ornithopter based on Da Vinci’s drawings. Not terribly odd, but nice.
I did well in giving odd gifts this year, though. I gave my brother an orrery, my niece a cobalt-blue velvet cloak, and her boyfriend an injection-molded latex rapier. Better still, however, was my gift to my nephew–he is now the proud owner of a trebuchet. Not a little tabletop toy, either–it’s five feet high and has thus far been made to fire potatoes with reasonable accuracy at a range of over 100 feet. (It’s the Warwolf model from www.trebuchet.com, if anyone is curious.)
My future mother-in-law gave me a box set of tapes called “Light His Fire”. She also got one for my boyfriend. Well, “Light Her Fire”. She showed it to us early. He took his and put it in the car. FMIL insisted on wrapping mine so I could open it in front of everyone.
I found out she had given her daughter-in-law a book giving sex advice.
My boyfriend’s brother and sister-in-law gave us the funniest presents I’ve gotten in a while. He got a shirt that said “Moustache Rides, 25 cents” and a Mr. Potatohead moustache. I got a roll of quarters.
My biggest “Huh?!” gift this year was from one of my aunts. She got us a set of kitchen knives. Good idea, you might think, Dr.J cooks a lot, and people who cook need knives. You’d be right, except for the fact that we both lived on our own for years before getting married and already had knives. In fact, I had the exact same $8.99 at Big Lots set of knives in my old apartment. They’re down in the basement right now, as a matter of fact, while we use the fairly nice knives he had.
Another aunt gave me yet another decorative table lamp. She gets me one every year or two, and I pretty much never actually put them out because they’re, well, ugly. (Except for the aquarium lamp. That was cool, and it’s still in our living room.) This year’s model is one of those brass touch-lamps with the glass panels in the shade. I got one with unicorns a few years ago from my parents (birthday and Valentine’s day) that I kind of like, but this one has a picture of a covered bridge and horse-drawn wagon. I guess the horse made her think of me, or something.