Giftaphobia
Ed Note: This post contains high levels of self-pity. Read at your own risk.
I think next Christmas I'm going to do myself a little favor and give myself the gift of Paxil, because my fear of giving the wrong gifts or unappreciated gifts has reached a new level.
I think next Christmas I'm going to do myself a little favor and give myself the gift of Paxil, because my fear of giving the wrong gifts or unappreciated gifts has reached a new level.
Never again will I do my Christmas shopping as early as I did this year. This simply gave me too much time left before Christmas to obsess over whether or not I made good gift choices. So far this week alone I've returned half of the items that I bought after being seized with giftaphobia, the fear of giving bad gifts. I made some exchanges, but I'm still feeling a little questionable about a couple of items.
My panic reached fever pitch this afternoon. My family is gathering to exchange gifts tomorrow. In lieu of buying gifts, a few years ago we all decided to give each other home-made gifts. Sounds nice eh? It is. Until you start running out of ideas. In desperation this year I decided to just make truffles and put them in tins for each family member. I felt a little iffy about this one, but decided to forge ahead, since I didn't have any better ideas. I'd gotten the recipe from my Mum. I should have realized this was a bad idea.
I made a batch a few weeks ago (trial run) and told her how good they were. She decided to try some herself and reported that my Dad really liked them. (You see where this is going?) I've now made 100 truffles that are sitting in my fridge right now, waiting to be boxed up. To my dismay, when I visited my folks this morning, she admitted she made a few more batches of the same recipe to serve tomorrow.
Ok, ok, I realize this is silly and petty. But I am kind of crestfallen, because now I feel like my gifts aren't going to be very special at all. I feel kind of silly. Part of me is feeling resentful for being upstaged. And now there's precious little time left to do something different. Worse, I don't want to go into the holiday feeling all glum and annoyed, but I can't deny that I am. *Sigh* Not feeling very good about this at all.
That does it. Next year, everyone's getting stupid creatures! I've had it!
My panic reached fever pitch this afternoon. My family is gathering to exchange gifts tomorrow. In lieu of buying gifts, a few years ago we all decided to give each other home-made gifts. Sounds nice eh? It is. Until you start running out of ideas. In desperation this year I decided to just make truffles and put them in tins for each family member. I felt a little iffy about this one, but decided to forge ahead, since I didn't have any better ideas. I'd gotten the recipe from my Mum. I should have realized this was a bad idea.
I made a batch a few weeks ago (trial run) and told her how good they were. She decided to try some herself and reported that my Dad really liked them. (You see where this is going?) I've now made 100 truffles that are sitting in my fridge right now, waiting to be boxed up. To my dismay, when I visited my folks this morning, she admitted she made a few more batches of the same recipe to serve tomorrow.
Ok, ok, I realize this is silly and petty. But I am kind of crestfallen, because now I feel like my gifts aren't going to be very special at all. I feel kind of silly. Part of me is feeling resentful for being upstaged. And now there's precious little time left to do something different. Worse, I don't want to go into the holiday feeling all glum and annoyed, but I can't deny that I am. *Sigh* Not feeling very good about this at all.
That does it. Next year, everyone's getting stupid creatures! I've had it!
posted by Feeble Knees at
1:24 PM
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