Of Habits, Hardships and Gifts by Konnie Enos

If you know me at all, you know that I plan ahead for any gift-giving events. I carefully budget each month so that I know I’ll have enough money for Christmas and still cover all birthdays then I start shopping for said gifts early.

Royce’s birthday is May 1^st and it’s not unusual for me to get both his birthday present and his Christmas gifts for the year by the end of February. Then I can focus on the next birthday I need gifts for. In this case, it’s ours. I generally manage to figure out what I’m getting Bonnie by the end of May and usually ship it to her in mid-June.

After that, I focus on my three daughters. First Kristina whose birthday is in August, then I quickly do Melinda and Clarissa. However, since I have to ship things to Clarissa, that also means I’m getting birthday and Christmas gifts for both my grandbabies and my son-in-law at the same time. I usually barely manage to ship that out just before hers, and my youngest grandbabies birthday in October.

By then I’ve done all necessary gift shopping for the year for everyone except Tony, Jerry, and our pets. But it’s already November and I hate shopping of any kind between Thanksgiving and Christmas (though admittedly online shopping now makes this less of a bother).

Though it isn’t unusual for me to be completely done with my gift shopping for the year by mid-November, and this covers birthdays that are in January and March of the next year (Jerry and oldest grandbaby).

This last year I wasn’t as proactive as I usually am and didn’t get Christmas gifts for Royce until I was also getting gifts for Jerry and Tony. I’d put off a great deal of my Christmas shopping because, for one reason or another, we’d had to use the money I was setting aside for gifts on other important things. I postponed all my gift buying as late as possible and got far fewer gifts for lack of money. I even made a few simply because I had yarn but not enough money.

This year, I started the year thinking more caution was called for because I’m not sure that some new catastrophe won’t befall our finances again. I’m thinking our heating issue also affects our air conditioning system and it’s going to be non-functional too. Meaning my gift money may well go toward either repairing our system or finding a temporary solution for the air conditioning as well, and we know fans won’t completely deal with it. So we’re thinking we might need a couple of portable air conditioners.

I’ve also had other things on my mind. Like prices going up for everything and we have a fixed income. Yes, we did just get a sizeable COLA but it’s based on past increases and since the costs are still rising, it certainly isn’t even keeping up with things. So while I’ve been setting the money aside for gifts, I’ve been wondering if I’m even going to be able to get Christmas gifts again this year.

However, I don’t spend that much on birthday gifts so I was reminding myself to figure out a gift for Royce. I just never got it done.

Last week, yeah late March, I realized it was already April and I had not even browsed for a gift to get Royce yet. I needed some ideas so I finally had a conversation with him about it. Even then I still postponed shopping for a few more days.

When I finally did get on Amazon, I figured I could also get stuff for Bonnie’s yearly gift box so hopefully, I could get it to her well in advance of our birthday. And it took me a while to figure out what I was getting.

After placing the order, I promptly forgot about it in favor of focusing on everything else on my to-do list. Because I’d so completely put it out of my mind, I was surprised when an Amazon package arrived for me on Monday.

Royce dropped it on my bed beside me and I asked him what it was. I then asked him to open it for me but he was already walking out the door and refused to turn back around to open it. It’s a good thing because that’s about when I realized his birthday present was probably in that box.

I got opened about when Royce decided he would help me with opening it and returned. I had to tell him what I assumed was in there and that he needed to leave again.

Yes, his gift was in the box.

Now I have some wrapping to do.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.