Holiday shopping for my sweetie is mostly a hit/miss scenario. While I can be pretty specific and disproportionately demonstrative in what I want to unwrap on the big day, answers from her to “whatcha want for Christmas?” can range from sheepishly “I dunno…” to adorably petulant “Iwantthehouserenovationdone!”
Mostly, it’s the former. And that leaves me wandering aisles of various retail establishments shrugging my shoulders and mumbling “But IÂ gotta get her something!”
So it was that on December 25 among her other gifts she unwrapped a blow dryer she probably didn’t need (but liked), a space heater she wouldn’t have bought on her own (but it’s come in handy since), and a Queen-sized Egyptian cotton electric blanket that she couldn’t have cared less about (hey, from a meteorlogical perspective, December was a pretty cold month so don’t snark on those last two choices).
But seriously, when she shed the blanket off its colorful paper, I’m pretty sure she looked at it frankly, said something like “Oh, an electric blanket,” and then set it off to the side where it sat until I moved it into our linen closet, where it sat some more until a couple days ago when I pulled it out and asked her if she ever thought there might come a day when she’d need/use it.
“We’re getting central heating,” she countered which is most definitely true and would defeat the need for an electric blanket. But that complex install isn’t happening next week, or next month. In fact it might be a whole several of months until we can push a button and warm the house in a civilized manner. So I asked her if it might be something employed in the meantime and she thought about it and said she didn’t think so.
And I was totally cool with that. It’s not like I’m all boohoo hurt she didn’t like it. Hell no. My line of questioning wasn’t derived from a need for validation as it was from a desire to return the thing since with tax it ran $160-plus, and I’m way too good a Scot to spend that kind of money on something that’s just going to take up space in a closet.
Besides, that money could be better placed in our HDTV fund.
So back in there the thing went I figured until the day came when I’d drive to work and could run it back to the Culver City Bed Bath and Beyond store.
This morning it dawned on me that day might be awhile in coming — and BB&B is in the process of going out of business. So I brought it back out into the light and contemplated finding a way to stuff it into my backpack and bike it over on my regular commute to work.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I thought and started to put it away. But it was at that moment that I remembered at the beginning of December I had far more gleefully loaded up the same backpack to busting with 20 pounds of clothing and electronics and carried it all the way via public rail and bike to a Newport Beach business trip and back (with that wrong-train outbound sidetrip to Pomona, don’t forget).
But all of a sudden carrying a bulky wittle blankie to Culver City was too much? What a quickly-we-forget wuss!
Epilogue: The thing barely fit in my backpack, and the return was completed at 9:15 a.m.
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