Suzy Says

My one and only niece, the one and only Cat, turns 20 next week. My one and only nephew, the one and only Ben (he should thank me for talking his mother out of calling him Nicholas) turns 18 in August. Since I’m one of those annoying people who buys presents as they see them, whether the occasion is two weeks or ten months away, I already have their presents.

Ever since Cat was a baby, she has shared my love of jewelry. When she was little, she used to sit on my lap and play with my jewelry, saying “Sparkly”. Now I have the fun of buying it and giving it to her. When she turned 18, I gave her a white gold belly ring with a teeny diamond in it. This year, it’s a red coral bracelet, which my sister is going to bring home with her, so I don’t have to mail it.

I do have to mail Ben’s gift, though. It’s waiting patiently for me to take it to the post office. He is going on a trip to Belgium in August with his friend Alex, and I thought this gym bag would be the perfect thing for him to take with him. Now, Ben was 8 or so when his parents moved from Canada to England, and Canada is still, to him, The Promised Land. He keeps up with all Canadian news and sports, so he should be thrilled to tote around a bag from the Hockey Hall of Fame. Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco, but Ben left his in Waterloo, Ontario.

Although buying the perfect present and/or card for any occasion is one of my very few talents (the only actually useful talent I have is cooking), I am terrible at wrapping them. Plus, I hate it. Wouldn’t you think I’d be a really good, artistic present wrapper? But sadly, no. It must be a combination of general impatience and implied geometry that makes it impossible for me (also probably why I’m such a terrible pool player). You should see the brown paper horror that is going to arrive on Ben’s doorstep a month hence (I’m sending it surface mail, the snailiest of snail mail). It is the parcel version of Frankenstein’s monster. I got John to wrap the actual present, though, so it’s very neat and nice looking. I got the store to wrap Cat’s for me. That’s my usual solution to present-wrapping: get the store to wrap it up, whether it’s on-line or in person. It’s always worth it to me because I’m:

1. Terminally lazy;
B. Terrible at wrapping.

Also my solution to pretty much anything I don’t want to do is to pay someone else to do it (see #1).

So I figure, I’m happy, and the person getting the gift is happy, too. Last Christmas I didn’t have to wrap a thing, and I’m not planning to this year, either. Though I already have most of the presents, of course.