Tags

, , , ,


I love to give gifts but I hate the whole shopping for gifts. How do you know if someone will really like something? My journeys to the stores end up with me looking at a lot of things and stressing out over my options. I’m a geek, my social skills generally run more to rolling dice, using text smilies, and banging people around with staffs and swords. Somewhere along the way, I missed the class on great gift giving and several other probably useful mundane skills.

It’s that time again though. My wedding anniversary is coming up quickly which is followed by several birthdays and the dreaded holiday season. I haven’t a clue what I’m doing for any of it.

What has happened in the years past is I go to the store, wander aimlessly in the sea of bright colours and shoppers and randomly pick things up and throw them in my cart. My success rate runs high with the kids who seem to think boxes are great toys so I’m not sure why I worry so much with them. My success rate runs fairly low with the adults in my life however.

Last year I needed an idea for my wedding anniversary. Just what do you give your husband of soon to be 10 years that you haven’t already given him? I’m thinking I should be golden; ten years of looking at my face should be gift enough, not to mention the two beautiful children I bore for him. Of course though, this is silly, so I need to run out and find that stellar gift.

We’ve never used that anniversary gift giving guide. All I really know about it is that 50 years marks your Golden Anniversary. We’re a far way from 50 however. A quick Google search brought up the whole list. To my surprise there’s a new “Modern” list as well as the traditional. Last year’s options stunk on both lists.

According to the gift giving guide, I should either give my husband something made of tin or aluminum or I should give him diamond jewelry. My only thought process was, “A roll of tin foil? I don’t think so!” I could not come up with any kind of a decent gift idea from either of these. As I’m not a huge jewelry person let alone a diamond person, I defiantly didn’t like that idea either.

So what did I do? I re-dubbed the tenth anniversary as “The year of the convention.” I warned you I was a geek! The weekend of our tenth anniversary we went to DragonCon. Over the course of the last year we’ve gone to several others. I’m a con-goer from way back, but DragonCon was a first for my husband. He loved it!

And now it is that time again. So what does my trusty guide offer for an idea? Well that modern one once more says jewelry. “Fashion jewelry” to be exact. Say good-bye to that list. Twice in a row it has done nothing for me! Wish I’d had it for my ninth anniversary though, that gift was leather. Oh what I could do with leather. I’m picturing druidic garb here. Hmmmm.

The Traditional gift scored with me. This is our Steel Anniversary! Steel? Now that’s a gift I can get behind. I of course noticed this last year and have spent the last 12 months making sure my husband knows exactly what I expect. Now I just have to decide what to give him.

For the first time I actually know what to buy. What do all those boring people in the world give? To me, “steel” means only ONE thing. My only problem now is weeding through the choices. So many good things and I need to find the one perfect for him. Of course finding good steel is exceedingly expensive and difficult so the first thing I decided was I would get him more “fun” steel for display rather than actual use. I consoled myself with the fact that as far as I know, I’m not married to the Highlander so he doesn’t have the real need for practical use of his steel.

In the end I couldn’t decide. I ordered three items for him. I of course could not wait until our anniversary in a couple of weeks to show them so I went ahead and gave them to him this week. My attempt and hours of shopping paid off, he loved them! For once being a geek paid off!
What did I want? I made myself very clear. Though a friend recently reminded me that chain mail would count as steel as well. I’m picturing purple chain mail. Hey I’ll make a new character in World of Warcraft to get purple chain since it’s probably too late to get me any. His gifts have been arriving in pretty brown wrapping, and I’ve loved every one. I’m very happy with his gifts to me, though my specific request has yet to be met.

And just what did I ask for? My request though has stayed constant this year. Very long, very point, very sharp, and double edged. The bigger the better. When it comes right down to it? Size really DOES matter.