8 April 1999: Presents

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Yesterday at lunch I shopped for something for Ulla's second baby. I found other stuff instead.

My first stop was Jungle Jack's, a toy store in the Tabor Center where I found Wilbretta the pig for MLV. (I called it Wilbretta instead of Wilbur because I figure DMV and MLV need all the female companionship they can get.) Wilbretta was a dear little pink pig upholstered in terrycloth, good for gnawing and gumming and other important baby activities. Unfortunately, this time I found nothing appropriate for a newborn, but I did find Babe.

Babe is a little Gund, very plush, with the little topknot of Bigwig hair and a leather collar and four wee trotters and a spiraling tail. I saw him and knew I had to get him for CLH, so I did. He's on my monitor right now, and in 40 minutes I'm going to mail him off to Boston. He was all by himself so I cannot get another for myself. And I shouldn't. Commercialism, consumerism, etc. I've been wanting a gargoyle for my computer, though, and wouldn't a Babe be better than a gargoyle?

On the way back I stopped at Ross, more to look at spring dresses for myself than for baby clothes or toys. I didn't like anything and moped toward the exit, where I passed a display of shortbread tins that made me nearly whoop with glee. I only nearly whooped. I did give a little hop skip and gasp.

Several days ago I picked up a catalog from the breakroom table to browse through as I filled my water jug. It's March, so I wasn't thinking of CLH's annual Christmas catalog, but the stupidity of the products soon reminded me of it. I found more salt and pepper shakers. Last Christmas's catalog featured shakers shaped like flamingos, penguins, the Three Stooges--the Three Stooges? Aren't there three of those, and two of salt and pepper? I peered all over the little photograph and could not tell where the lump of ceramic was actually two lumps of ceramic and thus an efficient means of distributing a) salt or b) stale ground black pepper over your food. Another item in her catalog that I found in a Hard Rock Café catalog--where the hell do I get all of these catalogs?--was a guitar shaped toilet seat. I ask you. The current catalog had two sets of shakers: a John Deere tractor and cart and a six-pack of Budweiser. Hi, I'd like to pay you to advertise your products for you? At least you can tell the tractor from the cart to distinguish salt from pepper, but a sixpack, divided into two equal halves? Perhaps one has more holes than the other. Still, they're stupid and therefore excellent catalog fodder.

So anyway I realized this catalog would be a prime source of similar stupid shit and took it back to my desk to dissect. Flipping pages, I stopped, dropped, and rolled. Here was something I had to have.

Lisa? You want to buy something from The Lighter Side catalog? You know you'll have to forfeit your Elitist License to Mock the General Public?

Yes. I did. I carried the clipping around in my DayRunner for a couple of weeks and yesterday I broke down and made the call. I ordered a customizable Monopoly board and I am going to monopolize it for CLH. It's not trademarked and is called a "property trading game." The background of the board is not the pale blend of bluey-green we know, and I don't know if it has the right Community Chest or Chance cards. I guess because of copyright, it can't name any of the Atlantic City places even just to prompt you. Another reason its emptiness gave me pause was that no one was really sure what's in the fourth corner of a Monopoly board.

Oh be honest, did you know straight off? Most people blurt "Go!" right off, quickly followed by "and Jail, and then is it--Free Parking? and--and-- " and then they stop because they're grown-up losers (as was I) and have forgotten. It's Go to Jail. I finally realized this after a few days of trying to remember, and yesterday the shortbread tin reassured me.

It's a Monopoly shortbread tin. RDC said, "That's just a weird design for a tin," whereupon I showed him that the cookies are pressed into Monopoly deeds, money, and so forth.

Now that I have an image of the board, I can make a better replica, a solution cheaper than buying the game. If the fake board doesn't have a Luxury Tax square, I'd never have remembered it without my trusty tin. Now I can make a square called "Living in Aspen Luxury Tax" or something. I can make Park Place the Hotel Jerome or Ajax or Little Nell or something suitably Aspenesque, and Boardwalk be Fisherman's Wharf and I can draw a little sea lion or something for San Francisco.

Plus CLH can keep all the pieces in the tin. Oh yes, I'm making it all for her, if Aspen and San Francisco weren't hints enough. I'll give it to her for my birthday, hobbit wise--at the latest--if I can keep the secret that long (she doesn't have web access).

Of course I can't keep the secret that long. I talked to her last night. She wanted to know about the promotion and all, but I wanted to tell her about the presents. "What presents?"
"Just your presents, is all. You'll have to wait and see."
"But what are you buying them for? It's not my birthday." She was being distressingly grown-up.
"I don't know, they're the I saw it and I wanted to give it to you and I didn't want to wait for Christmas kind of present. That's what they're for."

Damn.

So I shopped at lunch, came home and went for my first bike ride of the year, and shopped again in the evening. Mission: sandals for me, welcoming present for Ulla's baby, new sneakers and exercise clothing for me. I found a pair of sandals I thought I might not hate at DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse) and proceeded into the mall. There was no Lady Footlocker, which I shouldn't patronize anyway because the name is sexist. (Footlocker, Lady Footlocker; doctor, lady doctor; the Tennessee Vols, the Tennessee Lady Vols. At least UConn calls its teams Huskies, male or female.) The Finish Line didn't have bras my size and I wasn't in the mood to investigate a boring item like sneakers.

I suppose I'm not a good shopper. I found few toys for newborns, but there must be lots in that place because it has at least two shops for maternity clothes. I know newborns only can really see the contrast of black and white, but that's all boring--for me, and of course I am the important one here.

In Gymboree I found a sleeper suit that I hope Ulla will like. I would rather have gotten a stuffed animal, but I fell in love with none. The sleeper is not gender specific (an important point) and fun (another important point) and cotton (which I hope is right); it has sketchy little frogs and lizards and turtles and insects in marching lines all around it. I like it, anyway.

I have to resolve the creepy-crawly feeling breeders give me with my affection for my nieces and nephews. I haven't begun to dislike my friends just because they're reproducing, so why do random strangers give me the shivers? I guess I have faith in my friends' parenting ability but am too misanthropic to have that faith automatically in strangers. Like the clerk:

The clerk, herself obviously a breeder, asked if this was a gift, and I said yes but it wouldn't need a box because it's going to Europe. "Oh. Then I guess you don't need a gift receipt either."
"Not unless there are Gymborees in Denmark."
"I think there's [sic] Gymborees in England and in France, but I don't think there's [sic] any in [blanking on whatever unknown country I'd just named]--Europe."

Sigh. She looked like she might hatch in about a month, barely enough time for intensive tutoring in grammar and geography.

Anyway. I looked here and there for other sandals and eventually found them in Dillard's; the others will go back to DSW. Rockports. I would rather have another pair of my L.L. Bean ones, but of course they're no longer available. Shoes. I hate them.

After my lunch shopping I felt guilty for spending on such unnecessary things as Babe and the tin and the game, even though they're gifts for someone as necessary as my sister. When I got home, I stopped feeling guilty, and my evening shopping was wholly guilt free, at least as far as our budget goes.

We have joined the mobile phone podpeople.

Convenience, maybe, but a convenience worth the addition to the phone bill? Dunno yet. We've got calling cards and can place calls billed to us from any phone; do we need a phone everywhere we go? I remember reading in Time in ninth grade or before how eventually everyone would just have a phone number and could be called anywhere. I had no idea how that would work. I do now, but now we've got two numbers when I would have happily waited for the one apiece of a few years hence. When I overheat the mortally wounded Terrapin in its last weeks of life or fall off a cliff in RMNP, then we'll talk about whether it's a worthwhile expense.

Apparently Blake hates the sound of its ring. The ringer on the cordless occasionally chooses another sound for itself; any of the others and sometimes even our preferred ring startle Blake. Just what we need: another reason for Blake to fly into a window. I want the ringer off in the house and off in the car--off almost all the time.

Am I being a Luddite? My father didn't get an answering machine until 1995 and even that late, ten years after my cutting-edge sister got one, he would get pissy at us for not returning his calls, when indeed we had returned his call (which we knew about because we had machines, damn it) but had called him when he wasn't home. Someone I knew in college hated machines and simply wouldn't leave a message. He lived about 50 miles away from school and was going to sleep in a dorm room one night to save himself the trek before an examination. He wouldn't leave a message, so I had a series of hang-ups on my machine instead of anything telling us where to meet him or when to let him in. He worked himself into a lather at us for not being in my room at his beck (let alone his call), which wasn't conducive to his night-before studying; but he hadn't warned us about this irrational hatred, which he considered simple fastidiousness. Fuckwit. So I'll try to squash the Luddism, but I'm concerned more about cost vs. need than about the intrusion into our lives. The phone in the house that rings with calls from my parents at 7:00 on weekend mornings intrudes more objectionably than a phone that will default not to ring and has caller ID.

I mentioned my first ride of the year, the first despite how warm it was in March. I'm a loser (supra). I went, but not without a repeat of last week's drama. Last week RDC wanted to ride and couldn't find his bike shorts. He looked everywhere, he thought; they're not something we have to hide to keep Blake calm. My pile of shorts, his pile of shorts (where my bike shorts and his bike pants were), under the jeans, in my gym bag. Everywhere. When I got home, it took me two seconds to figure they were in this other pile of my shorts in a box I haven't unpacked yet because we haven't put up the shelves yet. Aha, and there they were. So yesterday I needed my bike shorts, and I looked through my packed and unpacked shorts spots and didn't find them, whereupon RDC plucked them from his own shorts pile, whither I, a loser, had returned them when I put the closet pack together. He was very pleased to have found something I couldn't.

Yesterday I pumped the tires to bursting and lubricated the gears here and there. In 24 hours the tires were still taut, reshaped and unleaky, so I took the bike out out. Wind. Lots of wind. Plus I rode the canal trail upstream, not that upstream makes much difference in Denver. It was the wind. I was slaving away, feeling like I was getting nowhere. Eventually I reached the junction of two trails, of canal and creek, and sat and watched the water for a while. The canal has only had water in it since this weekend, but the creek has water year-round (the creek bed is natural, the continuous water flow is not).

I sat with my back against a tree, drinking from my water bottle and watching the creek, the birds, bikers, the clouds scudding along. I was Charles Wallace, and when the right moment came I smiled, got up, and headed for home (which I reached in about a third the time of the outward leg). I have to remember that there are spots I can get to easily that have flowing water and some trees. I am not a city person.

 

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