Ramblings

A few thoughts.

Christmas shopping is never easy.

Shopping for kids who are old enough to actually understand and have an opinion is even harder.

Shopping for boy/girl twins is also exceedingly challenging - do you get stuff for both? For one or the other? Are you being too 'traditional gender role' with the gifts?

Shopping for Hannah is the hardest of all.

And the real issue here is that it seems like 90% of what's out there is JUNK JUNK JUNK!!! God bless online customer reviews or we'd waste a lot of money. I seriously think it is every American's duty to write online reviews of every product they buy. I have been remiss in this and plan to spend a couple weeks after Christmas reviewing everything we get. But back to the point: We'll see something that looks like a great idea, a cool gift, and then innocently check those reviews and discover that it's without fail, practically broken out of the box. SO frustrating! Why can't companies make quality products? Of course, some do...and then those things are priced through the roof. And it's especially frustrating to see that megacorporations are the worst of all. I mean, in case you haven't figured it out, almost everything made by...ummm...better talk in code here..."El Raton" let's say...is a piece of total garbage. But they can do it, because they'll lure in hapless gift-givers who haven't learned yet. Makes me sick.

Anyway, back to us. My freetime is now spent completely, every day, thinking about finishing our shopping. I love the holidays, I love giving to the kids, I love the discovery...but it's a lot more work than it used to be. A little nostalgia is being felt for sure...but, I don't spend too much time pining for the old days. Time only moves one way.

In professional news, I applied and was selected to help re-write the Ohio Arts Standards. Pretty exciting...well, not really, it will probably actually be some seriously dry work. But I'm seriously glad to have the opportunity to be involved in something at this level. Hopefully I'll have something meaningful to contribute.

That's all for now. Enjoy the season everyone!