Friday, June 15, 2007

Give Good Gift

I give good gift. I am *excellent* at gift giving. I mean, I am on the Oprah level (tho not in her price range). This has been drummed into me by my mother (AH HA! Mother posts! All bloggers on some level want to blog about their mothers! This is now the PolkaDot Theory, long may it live).

The stress that I have when presents aren't bought in time, or arrive on time, is immense. I do love finding the right gift for people and having them open it. But the period of time before hand is too stressful for me!

Case in point. Father's Day is on Sunday (oh yes it is!). I have selected an excellent gift for my stepfather, a fan of clocks and books. I order it 2 and a half weeks ago. I realize a week later I never got email confirmation. I look at the credit card statement online. Nope, no charge. So I email said company, who says that I never clicked on the Finish Checkout button (erm, I'm not a n00b. I know how to do an online order, even if it is in your stupid Flash website). So I go again and do it again. It goes through, but the total price in the email is different from the price displayed on the screen. I reply to said email, saying so. Said email bounces back to me, because the email address that the reply-to is set for is "orders@", instead of "order@". No, I'm not kidding. So I fix this, and send on again. I am told that the gift wrap pushed my charge up over the limit, and I was charged $2 more for shipping. That's fine, but it's a different total. Oh, and can I have a tracking number please?

Today, I get an email with tracking number. And a restatement that it was the gift wrap that changed the total. But it's not what was displayed on the damn screen! Oh, and the tracking number? It's invalid. I get to a point where I go nuts and think, I'm not getting nice gifts for people anymore, I give up.

Then someone's birthday rolls around, and guess what? I get stressed cause I don't have a gift!!!

Yes, it's my mother's fault. I'm sure Freud would have a field day with this one.

2 comments:

  1. One way of interpreting your intention of giving a “Good Gift” as a result of your mother’s influence as reaching or looking for her approval… and another is that you are looking for approval of those who are at the receiving end of your “Good Gift” .. that’s not me that’s Freud ;)

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  2. Is it? I've never actually read Freud or know that much about him. But yes, all of the above does apply, as my mother is a very difficult person to get approval from...she's intensely pessimistic, and I have had to work hard to be optimistic. That's only happened in the last year, really.

    Must go read some Freud tho. I do wonder what he would say about blogging...

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