Xmas Presents

This year, Christmas for me was not a cornucopia of presents.  For one, my sister Kathy didn’t come home so there was nothing underneath from her or my parents.  For another, I neither asked for much nor made much of a deal about Mike getting me anything.  Therefore, I feel free to write about the great presents I did get, without having to feel the shame of participating in unabashed consumerism – or at least, of owning up to it.

So this is what I got.

Mika got me these gorgeous owl earrings and at the San Francisco Zoo no less! She got Camila some gorgeous elephant earrings as well.

She also got me a homemade card with the words of the Backstreet Boy’s song The Perfect Fan

The San Leandro main library has a tiny gift shop run by volunteers.  They always manage to have cute, unique and reasonable price items.  I don’t go there too often anymore (e-books be damned!), but during a recent visit I spotted a few items items I did like. I pointed them out to Mike and he got me a couple:

A very cute gold & black necklace.  I think it was supposed to come with earrings, but it didn’t 🙁

A messy chain necklace with matching earrings. Yeah, I’m probably too old for it, but who cares?  🙂

Mike also got me a new pair of leather gloves, as I lost my last one.

I like listening to history lectures on YouTube before I go to sleep, and somehow I came upon some lectures by Timothy Snyder, a historian of 20th century Eastern Europe.  Snyder is incredible – both as a scholar and as a lecturer -, and I quickly listened to anything by him I could find on YouTube.  From there I graduated to his magnum opus Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin  I had it out of the library for over a month, but it’s a long and emotionally challenging book (I’m haunted by the images of roving bands of cannibals hunting little children during the holodomor, and then things get worse) so I couldn’t finish it. I asked Mike to get it for me so I could read it at my own pace.

Camila, meanwhile, made me a beautiful collage.

I didn’t think that I hadn’t really given myself a present until too late (though I did get some clothing, cooking equipment and tea on sale), so I’ve decided to splurge by getting a couple of subscription boxes.  I already ordered a Petit Vour box, just for the thrill of getting a surprise at a low price ($15 a month), but after doing more research on subscription boxes, what I really want is a GlobeIn Artisan Box.  GlobeIn is a marketplace for artisans worldwide, you can go on their website and buy a clay onion container, from an artisan in Russia, a hand-knitted horse poncho from Mexico or a handmade small yurt from a yurt-maker in Kyrgyztan trying to jump star his business.   But you can also get a mystery box for $35 a month including shipping, and that’s what I really want.  I may very well order it for myself, but I’ll wait to see if the come up with any more “first month free” offers.