good presence

It is kind of a joke in the family that I give the worst presents. All three of the youngest seours in the family have their birthdays very near each other and every year I have a hell of a time getting good presents together on time, let alone the fact that Hanukkah and Christmas (of which we celebrate both, but that is another post, don't you think, Kate?) follow those dates very soon after and then my mother's birthday is just after the new year and well....it may sound like I'm making excuses. Which I am.

Anyhow, this year my friend showed me this amazing item, pictured here. Squirt gun? No, banana guard. Wow. The website promises to protect your banana from transport trauma and deliver a fresh and unbruised banana to wherever you want to go. So, I thought that I would just buy one for everyone before I left to go home to Maine for the first Christmas in a very long time. What a perfect gift! They even have glow-in-the-freakin'-dark! Who cares why you would ever need a glow-in-the-dark banana guard... So I counted up that I would need eight to sufficiently guard each of my family member's lunchtime banana, as our family has recenlty grown now that I am engaged to be married. And when I entered in the number 8 for my order it told me it would cost over $50 for such a purchase. I thought there are a lot of better ways I can spend $50 (which, honestly is why I am such a crappy present person, because I always battle with the expense of useless stuff that I'm not sure people really want...not that a banana guard is useless), so I wondered if I should just get a few banana guards. And I wondered who in our family should get one. Bruce, probably. He likes this kind of pragmatic technology. Hannah would probably laugh really hard, which is usually what I think about when I buy her things because she has the most pretty laugh in the world. Julianna would at first give an exasperated look to me, like I was wasting her time. But then she, too would laugh really hard and she has a laugh that makes everyone laugh harder. Kate would immediately love it, because we usually really like the same kind of things, it seems. Anyway...I went through my mind imaginging each of the family members and realized I couldn't just get one. And, thus got none and am not spoiling any surprise by posting a photo of this awesome invention.

But that is how holiday giving goes for me. I don't get excited sending presents, because I love anticipating how people will react to gifts, particularly when they are handmade, which most of mine end of being and I always want to be there to see their reaction. I am so happy that I will be with all of my family this year and even though I haven't had much time to make or buy any presents, I am really excited to have this anticipation in my mind through these cold, dark days in Oregon. Kate, Julianna and their mother, Ellen will recite beautiful Jewish prayers. Dad will be really hyper and only settle down long enough to read "The Night Before Christmas." Hannah and Bruce will make inappropriate, hilarious jokes. My mom will give us perfect gifts, because she always knows what we like. Tarp will be with me, which is rare now that he lives in California to attend graduate school. And he doesn't know this, but Kate and I are going to teach him to ice skate. It is going to be great!