Gift Giving Grief
posted in Friends, Family, Et Al. |I love getting gifts. Especially nice, useful, thoughtful gifts. I just hate it when I don’t realize that we’re at the nice, thoughtful gift-giving level of friendship (which for me usually occurs after the ten year mark, mostly because I’m lazy and not particularly thoughtful). I try, I really do. I mean, I buy souvenirs when I can, often send postcards while away, and generally remember birthdays, give or take a few months, but buying so many gifts in such a short period of time is soooo hard! (whine, whine, whine)
In any case, today the other first year in my group, someone who’s fast becoming one of my best friends in LA, gave me a beautifully engraved business card holder/clock. It was thoughtful on so many levels: (a) I have nothing decorative in my office whatsoever right now and she thought it would be a nice place to start, (b) I like my name on things, it’s sad but true, and (c) it’s the first, and likely only, thing I have that says “Esq.” Unfortunately, it also left me scrambling to buy a gift that shouts “THOUGHTFUL” and not “I BOUGHT THIS AT THE LAST MINUTE, AND IT WAS THE ONLY THING LEFT IN THE STORE.” Although, perhaps I shouldn’t bother. I think I may have given it away when I gasped and said, “Wait, we’re getting each other gifts?!”
On a brighter note, I had a great time at a friend’s potluck last night in Long Beach, despite somehow getting lost (keep in mind I’ve been to her house several times now since I’ve gotten to LA) on my way back and ending up at the LAX airport trying to figure out how to get home. Oh well, at least I can take comfort in the fact that I provided some holiday cheer for friends when I called them up, repeatedly, asking for directions on how to get back to my apartment, only to hang up and call again when I realized I’d forgotten half of what they had said. At least I’m assuming it was an overabundance of holiday cheer that lead to the non-stop laughing on their end.