Monday, July 30, 2012

Bad Day 19--Fly Away Home

Child 3 wanted to make something for me to remind me of Husband, so she made me some jewelry. This is a child who knows her mother. The jewelry is a necklace and earrings with ladybugs on them that she made out of shrinky-dinks at summer camp. For those of you who have never experienced shrinky-dinks, they are this weird, magical plastic that you draw on a regular sized picture and they shrink and thicken right before your eyes. Well, actually in an oven, and then you have this tiny little picture that you drew encased in plastic. It is the coolest thing ever, and it can save lives. Just ask Child 3 and she will give you a long, involved story about a girl and a shrinky-dink in her pocket and a bullet that it stopped. I'm not sure if the lady bug necklace will save my life, but I will wear it proudly and it will remind me of Husband because he has always called the children "the ladybugs." I collect ladybugs, and I love jewelry, so it's a happy thing all around, and it shows that Child 3 did NOT inherit Husband's gift giving paralysis.

Husband calls it "present anxiety". It's been this way since we've been married. I am not hard to please, nor am I very hard to buy for. True, I'm allergic to perfume and now chocolate, but there are a host of other things you can buy me that will make me happy. Candles, for instance, or lotion, or cooking utensils, or cookbooks, or gourmet foods, or tickets to musicals. Or jewelry. But Husband has a hard time thinking of any of these things, so he waits until the very last minute and then buys the first thing he lays eyes on which is pink or has flowers. No, actually, he has gotten better because I have gotten more specific. Years ago, I told him that for my 30th birthday, I wanted to do something I'd never done before which was to go to New York to see a Broadway play. So he took me skiing. True, I had never been skiing before and it was fun, but it wasn't Broadway.



After that, I decided he needed more help, so I started circling things in catalogs and showing them to him. Now that we have internet shopping (yes, I'm that old that I remember when you couldn't buy things on the internet, and even when nobody had internet at home) I just send him links. And I make sure he knows exactly which color and size to get. My sister asked me once if that was cheating, and I said no it's getting what you want. And I don't think Husband minds because he told me he doesn't and sometimes, he even prefers to just go shopping together. See, it's a win for him because he still gets all the credit for the gift even though I am the one who picked it out. Not a bad trade, off, if I do say so myself.

Today, everyone flying in and out of Newark airport is having a worse day than me. I know, you are thinking, that is a no-brainer. Everyone who has to fly through Newark is always having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day and what is new about that? Here is what is new: Newark is paying a ton of money for a virtual customer service agent.  This fancy-schmancy virtual woman is supposed to be able to answer all of your customer service questions. Yeah, right. Because the only thing that makes people happier than having their flights canceled and being re-routed through Minneapolis to get to Orlando from Newark and arrive days later than originally planned is talking to a machine!  So good luck with that, Newark, and thank you for reminding me to never fly through there again.

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