Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Mugs, Books, and Underwear

While I was on the eliptical machine at the gym earlier today, I remembered that I hadn't blogged in a few days. I've been totally slacking in blogland this month. First, let me say, that I was happy that I could get a machine at the gym because come next week when all the New Year's resolutions come in, it'll be hard to find a machine at the time of day I go to the gym, but I'm still not likely to get up EARLY and go at 5:30am or wait and go after 8 at night so instead I'll just complain and get stuck with some of the less desirable machines.

To be perfectly honest, I'm being a bit hypocritical, I too make the NY resolutions to do better in terms of healthy eating and exercising. I have the exercising down okay, I mean I'm not going to be running any marathons any time soon--or ever, but I do exercise four or five times a week. Unfortunately, I mostly do cardio so I need to do some weights. It's that healthy eating business I can't seem to do well. I tell you people, if you want to lose weight, buy a house that needs a lot of work, but start working on it before you do any grocery shopping. You'll work right through all your meals and be too tired to make much of anything. It's certainly not a healthy way to lose weight, but it's how I (unintentionally) did it this summer. Unfortunately, then the holiday season came 'round and well, let's just say I've found those lost pounds. Anyway, speaking of the holidays, that brings me to today's blog topic: holiday or otherwise gifts.

Now I fear when you read this post, you'll think I'm a horrible human being who never deserves to get another Christmas present again. Please don't think that. I'm sure at some point in your life, you have received a gift you didn't quite know what to do with (and yes, I realize I just ended a sentence with a preposition and you're not supposed to do that). Overall, I have been blessed to receive great gifts in life, sometimes, even when I probably didn't deserve them. You could give me a piece of gum and I'd be excited that you thought of me. I get excited when people send me Christmas and birthday cards. (If you don't believe me ask the MC, he's witnessed some of this excitement and gets annoyed by how long I leave my cards up. The same could be said for my mother in the past when I'd leave my cards up forever when I lived at home.) Anyway, given my profession, I've gotten some stereotypical gifts over the year.

Let's start with the mug. Now, I don't mind getting a mug because I'm a klutz and always break things so it's good to have back ups and usually, I get really cute ones. However, I don't drink coffee or tea so I tend to use my cute mugs for milk. A former roommate told me I am the only person she knows who drinks milk out of a mug. Fear not, if you ever come visit, I will serve you your drink in a glass, but if I'm eating alone, which I often am, it's completely normal to see me drinking my milk out of a mug at dinner or my apple juice in one at breakfast. I also don't mind the stereotypical ornaments. This year I was very excited to get an ornament with my name on it--it doesn't take much to excite me, I know.

But let's think back to some strange other things I've received in the past: what do you do with a piece of jewlery you know you'll never wear? Well, perhaps I could save it for a Halloween costume. The thought was really nice and I know the person who gave it to me was very excited to give it to me and I really did appreciate the thought. But do I wear it even though it's not my style (or the style of anyone I know)? Do I lie and say I'm saving it for a special occassion? (I've heard of people doing this, I didn't come up with this lie on my own!). What about a book, you're not interested in? Actually, truth be told, I got that at a Yankee Swap a few weeks ago so it's not like I'd really be hurting anyone's feelings if I didn't read it, but should I donate it to someone? Read it even though I'm not interested? Or try to return it? Regift? I've offered it to a few people who I thought might like it and they all said no.

Years ago if I received clothing that wasn't my style, I could sometimes switch it with my mother (back when we were the same size, but then she had to go and stay skinny; once or twice we got sweaters from a relative and I liked hers better and she liked mine so she switched with me) or I'd just wear it around the house on a lazy day when I wasn't going anywhere so I could at least say I wore it and not feel as guilty about not liking it because the thought was nice. Here's one more: underwear. Yes, I said underwear. One year in front of a bunch of friends someone gave me underwear and not just regular underwear, but sexy underwear. Now you might not know it from my blog, but I can be shy sometimes, especially about sexy underwear. It was a little embarrassing to open it in front of everyone, I turned about as red as an apple, but I got over it, but the thing was two of the pairs were too small. That would have been a legit excuse to return something right, it didn't fit, but no, I was too embarrassed to go into a store and say hi, I'd like to return this sexy underwear because I'm too fat to fit into it. So instead it just sits in a drawer.

A friend of mine once got an ugly clock for a gift, it sat in the backseat of her car for weeks, not sure what she did with it. Another friend of mine got a Chia (sp?) pet and he really wasn't into those. I think if you looked hard enough you could probably find it hidden in his room somewhere.

Have you goten any strange gifts that you didn't know what to do with? What did you do?

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