Every year, Greg always comes through with a great Christmas gift for me.
And every year, I come up short trying to find something for him.
I spend my time in the think-tank trying to come up with amazing and inspiring gifts for the kids. I browse, I shop, I wrap, I eat cookies and I am thoroughly exhausted and retaining a lot of water by Christmas Eve. By the time shopping for Greg comes around, I think back to a time in the year he mentioned wanting some sort of tool or gadget and inevitably, my memory fails and tossed into the re-gift pile is a ratchet set that had no business on his sophisticated shelving system made from recycled IKEA wooden furniture.
It’s hard to feel sorry for the Dad’s. They typically buy themselves whatever they want or need throughout the year so the wish-list is never very long and for the last time, I am not a mind reader.
Isn’t Christmas supposed to be about the wives kids?
This year, after badgering Greg for ideas, he finally told me to get him another pair of dress shoes. A solid idea, we have just enough left over IKEA fabricated wood to build yet another shelf for the many pairs of dress shoes that have never been worn because he still wears the ones he wore on our wedding day, eleven years ago.
I bought some shoes and worried the entire drive home they were the wrong size. He is a size eleven and I bought a twelve so technically, my worries were substantiated.
They didn’t have an eleven in stock, the sales girl and I agreed this particular brand of shoe probably fit on the small side. Of course they did, what other option did a desperate shopper and a commissioned sales person have?
I sat on the shoes for a couple of days and finally presented them to Greg for a try on. Merry Christmas a couple of weeks early, let’s see if these puppies fit. They didn’t. Go figure.
I’m not saying I didn’t want to be the one to return the shoes for the right size but again, thinking of the children, wouldn’t it make more sense to send him back to make the return and try them on in the store before making the same mistake twice?
The happy Christmas shopper returned with his new shoes but wasn’t permitted to wear them to any Christmas events because he had to wait for the grand unveiling Christmas morning. Unfortunately, Christmas luncheons and staff parties are really the only time of year he has any reason to wear dress shoes so this gift was becoming unnecessarily cruel.
A note came home from school the next day requesting that parents send a shoe box to school with their child to carry home the gingerbread houses they were working on.
I knew just where to find one. As I unwrapped the size elevens, removed them from the box and stuffed them back into the shopping bag, I wasn’t feeling very good about Daddy’s Christmas but was surprisingly excited about gnawing on a gingerbread house come three o’clock.
The box was returned, filled with crusted over, white icing and yet, I debated about placing the best gift ever back into it because it would certainly make wrapping easier if I didn’t have to come up with some sort of origami swan presentation to encase the shoes.
Five years ago, I bought Greg a Big Daddy Insta-Net. It’s a backyard net meant for driving golf balls into. Greg likes golf, he likes backyards and I thought he would enjoy the 7’x7’ net that sets up instantly for quick and easy use. I know this because it says so right on the box which is sitting next to me and has been for five, long years.
Redemption is a funny thing. Racking my brain for something to surprise Greg with, something I know he will absolutely use and appreciate, I came across this commercial for a product that he will be thanking me for, for years to come.
Cyber-clean.
Merry Christmas sweetheart. Shall I make room on the shoe shelf?
