PSA

Dear People With Dogs,

If you allow your dog to poop on my lawn in the summer, you suck. If you allow your dog to poop on my lawn during leaf-falling time, so the poop is hidden under leaves and gets raked up with the leaves when we rake them, and gets all mashed into my shoe, so I have to leave the shoes on the back porch, and then I forget about them and can't find them, and then I remember and sit cleaning frozen mashed-up dog poop out the the ridgy ridges of my shoes with a stick in my shirtsleeves at 7:30 am in 40 degree weather, you SUCK.

Cheers!
me

On gifts and giving

This is an issue with a lot of baggage for me - maybe for others of you as well? - because it touches on so many deeply-held values and hot-button issues: intimacy, thoughtfulness, money, taste, love...

I love to get gifts - that are the sort of gifts I want to get. I think I am pretty easy to buy for - I have well-defined tastes, and have a lot of brand loyalties, and make Amazon wish lists aplenty - but there are only a few people who do a really good job at buying gifts for me. And when I receive gifts that aren't really about me, but are clearly about the obligation to buy something for this occasion, or are about what the giver thinks I should want but clearly doesn't get who I am at all, I would really rather not get a gift. I realize this makes me wicked, but there you have it. Gift cards are a good solution that people like my in-laws have resorted to, but the impersonal-ness and the feeling of having given up at finding the right thing make we wince a bit (when I get them, and when I give them.)

I love to give certain gifts, too, and for me the best gifts to give are those that please both me and the giftee - that are something interesting, useful, tasteful that I respect myself for giving, but that I know the giftee will enjoy, even if she might not have thought to buy the thing for herself. I hate having to give gifts as an obligation, or having to give gifts to someone whom I don't know well enough to know their taste (this is why I've stopped doing Secret Santas, because I always flail.) I struggle with several people whom I gift annually - mr. flea, who doesn't read fast, doesn't care about clothes, and really prefers things in the multiple-hundred-dollar gadget range (no iphone for us!); his sister, who is not a "stuff" kind of person and is hard to pamper; my mother, who buys anything she wants that I can afford for herself, leaving no opportunities for gifts under $500.

I like expensive things, because I have expensive tastes, but I also have no problem with receiving a used paperback that cost $2 as a gift, or a $4.50 tub of baba ganouj from my favorite place, or $12 worth of flower bulbs. I like to get and to give things that have a use and aren't just life-clutter - kitchen items, consumables, things to read and to listen to, clothes, experiences. I like things that are durable, practical, but also luxurious.

I am not very well-advanced in my Christmas shopping yet. I think I am going to get the Dillo a pair of sparkly shoes from Target, because he is always trying to put on Casper's, and why the hell shouldn't a 16 month old boy have glitter shoes? If anyone objects to his transgression of gender lines, he'll be too young to care. For Casper I am pondering a gardening kit (small but functional rake, trowel, and gloves from an actual gardening store, plus bulbs to force and seeds for spring); wooden doll house (but these are quite expensive in the quality I'd want); giving her a Sasha Doll baby that I have in waiting for her and buying a doll trunk for it (but maybe she is still too young for Sashas.) mr. flea, dunno. Mother, Slings and Arrows DVDs, but aside from that, dunno. Mother's husband, as usual am at a total loss. Sister is easy and already taken care of.

On another note, my shoes are starting to smell of dog shit. ARGH! How can I deal with this at work? Go find a puddle and stand in it until they come clean? Also, I forgot deodorant this morning. Yes, it's this kind of a day.