Winning the Lame Award

Singing along to: Iron & Wine, Resurrection Fern

My mom is exceedingly hard to shop for. She never wants anything, and when she does it's almost always something useful: slippers. A new robe. A gift card to Kohl's so she can buy work clothes. Et cetera. Plus, she doesn't really listen to music, and while she is an avid reader, she doesn't re-read, so there's no point in buying her books. Nor does she re-watch movies that often. (She loved the movie A Beautiful Mind so we bought it for her for Christmas one year. I am fairly certain she has not removed the shrink wrap yet.) She's not a gardener, she doesn't cook recreationally, she doesn't scrapbook--nothing that would lend itself to easy gifting.

I used to (okay, still do) (gently, lovingly) mock her about this quality. Until just now when I realized:

Mirror, mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all.

It was easy to ignore when I was younger, because eight-year-olds always have a list of things they want. (Mine began and ended with "a horse." Or failing that, a lot of Breyer horses.) But as I've gotten older, it's gotten harder and harder to come up with the birthday or Christmas list that she and my relatives ask for.

In fact, my list this year, which took me days of thinking really hard* about, is completely lame. I admitted as much when I emailed it to her. She in turn said that she was hoping for something a little more "fun" and "frivolous." You know, because I'm a twenty-one-year old girl, should it be this hard?

But it is this hard, which is why my birthday list included a tea kettle (not even an electric one, just a regular old stove kettle, which I only haven't bought myself because they are inexplicably expensive) and wellie warmers (also kind of expensive, but what do you expect from L.L. Bean?). I'm not going to lie: I hope I get those wellie warmers, because do you see how cute they are? And how cozy? And you know how much I love my rain boots. So the wellie warmers are exciting. Other exciting items on the list: a cookbook and new headphones.

I'm currently writing my acceptance speech for the Oscar of Lameness; you're all invited to the award ceremony.

*For once these are not sarcastic italics.