As a Consumer, She is Complete

Anyone else having trouble coming up with gifts for people this year? It started last month with my Grandma's birthday. I looked all around her house, considered her hobbies and daily activities, her needs and desires... and found that she has everything in the world. Every thing she could possibly desire is in her possession already. Which is an odd situation, I should think. Not too many can say the same. But I believe it's more or less true in this instance.

She's got a computer that does all she could want of it, with a really nice flat screen my cousin gave her one Christmas, and a printer that gets the job done. Her TVs are just as she wants them. Her kitchen clock-radio is the only she has use for. She's often in the yard, when the weather permits, doing light gardening and heavy cleanup, but she has every utility and device that could assist her in these pursuits already. Her truck is pristine and she's loath to drive more than two miles at a time anyway. She plays bingo every Thursday - or so she tells us - but what am I going to get her a bingo marker? Clothes, furniture, kitchen appliances, toiletries, dishware, phones, electronics... She either has it or hasn't a need for it. As a consumer, she is complete. (There's an album title for you.)

So what do you do?

Meanwhile there's my mom who, as a new-ish home owner, has need and want of a number of things that spring to mind, but they're all just a few dollars outside my anticipated spending zone. I'm considering teaming up, to make the purchase of one of them, but the only other person buying for my mom this year is Grandma, and with two other daughters, each one baring her up another twenty-seven grandchildren, I doubt Grandma's fractional contribution would bring me any closer to my spending comfort zone. Maybe I'll just bite the bullet and spend the big bucks. It would do my miserly comportment some good.

Then there's sister Emily. What do you give to the child who would be queen? I feel that my gift should somehow express my disapproval of her generation's 'New Moon,' Justin Beiber, Miley Cyrus mentality. But what gift could possibly contain all that? Maybe a Dead Kennedys - Mr. Bungle box set. (He said with almost no knowledge of either band's music. And then abruptly ended.)