i did have one more thing i needed to take care of this weekend: secret santa giftees. and, as usual, we found a few other things along the way. saxy finally has a pluto ornament. granted, it has mickey with it too, but he's happy with it, so we won't have to keep looking every year now. and we found the perfect kitten ornament for froggy -- it's getting into the treat jar, and she gets into things all the time, so it fits her perfectly. i also found a mini coffee cup with a teddy bear in it. i collect coffee cups and it was the last one in the store. bad me. but it was a dollar store so it was wonderfully cheap.
anyway, so i've taken care of all but the last day on the secret santa thing for work. for the last day, my plan is to bake some cookies. i have the gift bags all bought, tissue to wrap stuff in. other than that, i plan some sort of little poem to go with each gift. probably cheesy stuff that's not very good because of time constraints, but it'll be something.
i actually hesitated to participate in secret santas. i just figured that there were so many new faces at the school, and i am merely there until the end of the first week of january, it just seemed kinda . . . pointless. but hub said i should. i'm not even sure why he said i should -- perhaps he thought this way i get a little spoiled by someone even if he can't afford any gifts for me this year? i dunno. at any rate, i went ahead and signed up.
and i'm completely ready except for those cookies -- which i have to check and make sure she can eat. one thing that wasn't on the sign up slips was food allergies, which i think should have been on there since it did ask for favorite foods. i none of the gifts are over $15, and even those that are close aren't that close. one of them, an ornament, is even personalized with the year and "merry christmas". i did try to put some thought into the gifts, even though i don;t this lady. now i just have to figure out where her mailbox is at the school. ;)
and shopping wasn't as bad as i expected it to be, actually. driving home was, but the mall wasn't horrendously crowded, really. there were more people than would be there normally, the place was open later, but only a few places seemed to be crazy busy. fortunately, i didn't need to go to any of those places. ;)
the drivers, however, were one the psychotic side. :P
the first secret santa gift, a box of sparkling angel tea lights with a dish to hold them in when they burn, is ready to go in its gift bag. tomorrow i think i'll give her the small book of poems. wednesday will be the journal book for her own poems. for thursday it will be the personalized angel ornament. then the cookies for friday. everything is being wrapped in gift bags with red and green tissue paper. i considered wrapping everything tonight and then just taking the stuff in as i grab it, but i want to the 2 more expensive gifts on either end of the gift giving rather than together in the middle somewhere.
i know, silly me. but i do try to be thoughtful in these kinds of things. course, i'm also not often a secret santa, especially in places where i haven't been there long and/or won't be there long. who knows, though, maybe i'll make a new friend out of this. in the meantime, i do like giving presents. just ask my husband! ;)
other than all, that, my grading is done, my test is started. i pretty much have the evening to kick it back and take it easy. we even picked up some sweets we picked up from the river street sweets candy shoppe. it's early enough for a movie, so i think i'll be curling up with the hubby and actually watch the movie -- without doing other things at the same time even! with work tomorrow, the downtime will do me good.
oh! and must work on some of that cheesy secret santa poetry.
word of the moment: picaresque
belonging to or characteristic of a type of prose fiction that features the adventures of a roguish hero and usually has a simple plot divided into separate episodes; relating to or characteristic of rogues or scoundrels; picaresque fiction - prose fiction featuring the adventures of a roguish hero