I did my Christmas shopping early this
year so I wouldn’t end up frantically rushing around at the last minute
and buying things like a sequined halter-top for my 83-year-old friend because
it was the only thing in her size left on the rack.
Unfortunately, even though
I set a personal record for buying gifts early, my Christmas shopping wasn’t
flawless…not by any means.
For example, I ordered a
size M shirt with a small pattern on it for a friend, and when it arrived, it
looked nothing like the photo. The pattern was so huge, it could be seen from
the opposite end of the house, and the button-down collar turned out to be
non-existent. Instead, the shirt had a V-neck down to the navel. All I could
picture was my friend wearing it with his chest hairs exposed and several gold
chains around his neck, like the styles back in the 1970s.
I contacted the company
and told them the shirt looked nothing like their advertisement, and was
informed they don’t accept returns or give refunds – a "minor" detail I should have
read before I placed the order.
So I’m now the proud owner
of a $30 dust rag.
It seems as if every
Christmas season I’m disappointed with something I ordered that looked much better
online. One item that immediately comes to mind is the hand-tooled, monogrammed
copper wastebasket I ordered a few years ago after seeing it in a catalog that
featured handcrafts from Cape Cod. It was the perfect gift, I’d thought, for
our friend Gregory, who’d recently remodeled his office and accented it with a
lot of brown leather furniture and accessories.
So I ordered it, with the
monogram “G” on it, which also happened to be the initial of his last name.
The wastebasket arrived
two weeks later in an old cardboard box that wasn’t even sealed. The flaps were
folded in an over-and-under way that kept them closed, but nothing was sealed.
That should have been an
immediate red flag to me. Anyone who’s ever mailed a package knows it should be
sealed with at least half a roll of shipping tape to give the contents even a fighting chance of surviving.
When I pulled the
wastebasket out of the box, let's just say I didn't "oooh!" with
delight. But it wasn't because the wastebasket had been damaged in transit...it was because it looked as if the guy who’d made it had downed a few pitchers of
martinis before doing the hand-tooling work.
I held it up to show my
husband. “What does this monogram look like to you?” I asked.
He studied it for a
moment. “A lopsided number six.”
The copper on the
wastebasket also had been polished…in about 30 different directions. So many
different swirls, lines, zigzags and spirals were covering it, it looked as if
it had been savagely attacked by an army of Brillo pads.
“What are all those dents
along the bottom of it?” my husband asked.
I frowned. “They’re
not dents. I think they are supposed to be some kind of decorative border.”
“Oh,” he said, returning
my frown.
That did it.
“I can’t give Gregory a
gift that looks all scratched up and dented, and especially not with a crooked
number six on it instead of a ‘G’!” I whined.
“He’s only going to toss
trash into it,” my husband said, shrugging. “It’ll probably look crummy in no
time anyway.”
“Then why don’t I just
fill it with trash before I send to him and give him the full effect right
away!” I snapped.
Needless to say, I was too embarrassed to give the wastebasket as a gift to anyone, not even to my dogs (who probably would have peed on it), It now sits down in the basement where I'm pretty sure it has become a ritzy copper home for the spiders – hopefully, Garden spiders (sorry, I couldn’t resist!).
This year while ordering
Christmas gifts, I decided to splurge on a gift for myself – a “magic screen”
that supposedly reflects any photographic image you place in front of it onto a sheet of paper so you
can trace the image and turn it into a "professional looking"
cartoon. I thought it would be an asset for illustrating my books.
This is one of my best
efforts so far, which I traced from a greeting card.
I have the sneaking suspicion the magic screen was what the guy who made the wastebasket used when he did the monogramming.
# # #
I want to wish a very
merry Christmas, happy holiday season and happy New Year to all of my
readers! Thank you for your continued support and for being a part
of my online “family." Sending love to all!
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