I Finally Slept, But....

...it was apparently too late for my brain to avoid sustaining permanent damage.

I have a request to make of the person who has my name in the exchange: Please, forget anything I might have suggested for the care package, as I have another need which is significantly more pressing: please send me a brain. The one I have has, apparently, departed for parts unknown and I am left with the vast, echoing emptiness where once it was (am I the only one here who is suddenly thinking about the movie "Young Frankenstein" and the brain that Igor brings that he states came from someone called "Abby Normal"? I am? Okay, never mind.). Here is just one example:

When I sorted through and assigned people to one another for the exchange, I wanted very much to make it as fun for people as possible. As a result, I spent some amount of time making sure that everyone had someone far enough away from them that there existed the possibility of getting items not normally available to them. That sort of thing. Then, because I want you all to enjoy it enough that we might do it again some time (once again proving that I am much like an excitable 4-year-old when it comes to giving and getting presents), I actually went to all the blogs to read the questionnaires and print them out—so if anyone couldn’t get to the one they wanted, I had it ready. Efficient, clever? Yeah, hang onto that thought.

Last week I was on my way home and decided to stop at the LYS and shop a bit for my exchange pal. I didn’t have the list with me (read, I am a total and complete idiot with far too much confidence in what passes for my memory) but I remembered it well enough so I went in and shopped. I had a blast. I had so much fun, in fact, that I also stopped at another store on the way home to pick up edible goodies. I was set. I had only a couple more items to get to complete the package. I considered buying myself a gold star. Surely, I deserved it.

Flash forward to this morning. My husband (a scientist by trade, but a knifemaker by hobby) is having a huge party in his two shops today (that is, the place is overrun with men in flannel, there is enough chewing tobacco on the property to build a brown beach, the whole place smells like hot metal and we have so darned much barbecue and beans and cornbread that we may well be having a traditional Thanksgiving pork sandwich later this month) so I decided today would be the perfect day to finish that shopping while simultaneously getting a much needed break from the insanely high testosterone concentration at Chez Knitingale. I would dash out, pick up the last two items, come home, package it up for mailing. I was gleeful, picturing the face of my intended recipient. At the last minute, I thought to look once more at the list, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything she might want. Which was when I realized:

I HAD BEEN SHOPPING FROM THE WRONG LIST.

Truly. I had purchased all manner of things destined to make someone very happy—but it was the wrong someone. Now, I believe gifts should be chosen specifically for the person and I knew right away that I would be doing some returning and so on. But we’re all knitters….and most of us like chocolate….so maybe? Just maybe an item or two might work for the correct person? Nah. Not even close. If I had set out to choose two exchange folk who were more opposite in their tastes I couldn’t have done a better job. Every last item was absolutely wrong. Of course. Pretty sure I heard the knitting gods chuckling away merrily to themselves. (Oh, sure--I'll remember without having the list with me....it's hubris, man. Everyone knows the gods hate hubris.) The upside is that I got to go hang out at the LYS this morning and start over….and how bad is it, really, to go shopping for yarn? I also found that the edible goodies I’d bought were not to the taste of the correct person, but they’re things I love so if my butt expands to the size of Montana….well, perhaps we can blame it on the time change. Surely I would have noticed this glaring error if I had not been sleep-deprived? (No, and stop calling me Shirley…..).

Oh, I also (possessed by I know not what unholy impulse) picked up the Martha Stewart holiday magazine, thinking perhaps that she would have a recipe or two to add to my holiday baking. And then, I discovered that it had a section on knitted gifts. Lovely, I thought. Until I turned to it and read this: “If you are a grandmother, chances are you already know the joy of giving a handknit gift.” A grandmother.

I’m not sure who I’m more offended for—the thousands of young women who knit all the time and produce stunning works of art, or the thousands of vital and active grandmothers who do not knit but still manage to give gifts of love.

Martha Stewart can kiss my ass. I suspect she’d have to carefully make a floral arrangement for the occasion, cunningly wrought from flowers that she dried from her garden, and perhaps create a scrapbook page with photos to record the occasion, and probably chop down a tree in her yard to make the paper to make the scrapbook page….and so on. But I’ll wait. She can SO kiss my ass.