My sense of humor is a little off at times. I find some odd things, especially quirky practical jokes, amusing. My extended family has gotten to be quite large. My mom is one of four sisters. Each sister has kids, and those kids have kids. A few years back, it got impossible to buy for everyone. So for the last few years, the Sisters have bought only for the great nieces and nephews and the adults can choose to participate in some form of dirty Santa/white elephant. Now, I'm a little bit oppositionally defiant in some respects. I have a small objection to purchasing a $15-$20 generic gift to give it away to get a $15-$20 gift that I may or may not like. I've tried not participating, but that doesn't really go over with the Sisters. They have ways of making you play. So last year my ODD came out and I wrapped up a set of wiener dog salt and pepper shakers. The package was beautiful and they ended up going to the perfect recipient who just look bamboozled when he opened them. What made it even more beautiful is that no one knew from whom they came. I do have to give a shout out to another "perfect" gift from last year. My cousin-in-law went to the dollar store and did a gift bag with 15 dollar store items, each individually wrapped. Genius!
So what to do this year . . . I started out behaving. I picked up a nice set of flashlights at Target, and even included batteries. But I still needed something else. Then it hit me. Each year my nieces have played the obligation card and made me buy this ridiculous fundraising calendar from their private Catholic High School. The freakin' thing is $25! You're supposed to be able to win money with it but I've always been a big loser. What a perfect Christmas gift! It's even over the limit we're supposed to spend. To make it better, I've gone through and written every family member's birthday and anniversary in it--in a color-coded fashion. My mom's branch is all in orange, another sister has green, and so on. Now I will say I'm feeling a little uneasy about this simply because the cousin-in-law got chastised last year by his mother-in-law for his joke. With that in mind, I hit Walgreens and bought a pack of birthday cards and stamps to add to this to make it semi-real. Now, I 've just got to wrap it well to make it desirable and hope the right type of person gets it.
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