The Glowing Edge

Tag: gift-giving

  • The Amount of Fun You Can Fit In A Sock

    The Amount of Fun You Can Fit In A Sock

    Beanies fit nicely into a sock. Stockings are the best part of Christmas for this very reason.

    We’ve always been light on the gift-giving: each child receives two to four gifts under the tree, plus a stocking. The husband and I don’t exchange gifts at all (why on earth would we need to?). For some unknown reason I suddenly decided, while we were all having dinner together before the holiday, that our boys are ready to transition entirely to stockings.

    Our family has all we need and more. The gift-giving craziness is just not something we engage heavily in, although a little of it was fun when they were small. But the youngest is now 10, and they are ready to grow up a bit.

    So between bites of ham, my mouth decided to announce it before my brain had actually had a chance to consider it first. The amazing part is that everyone seemed pretty fine with the idea. Guess they like the stockings best too. Of course, I have pretty awesome kids.

    Here’s what the Ice (age 12) received in his stocking this year. Each one was a bit different (the Maker’s had a pocket knife and sharpener, the First had a pink LA Boxing beanie, etc.), but this gives you a pretty good idea of how much fun fits into a sock.

    • Justin’s Natural Almond Butter (squeeze pack)
    • Axe brand “Shock” shower gel
    • Jelly Belly 20 flavor box
    • Wrigleys “Elixir” gum, 3-pack
    • No Fear “Bloodshot” energy drink
    • Personalized business cards and holder (Cool idea, Gram!)
    • Crossword puzzle book
    • Tantrix puzzle
    • Colored erasers and paper clips
    • Glo Beez toy
    • Mentos
    • Magnetic bookmark
    • Hershey Kisses
    • Mini Twix Bars (I required a tithe of these)
    • Axe shampoo/conditioner and deodorant
    • Giant light-up color-changing bouncy ball
    • Turkey jerkey
    • Black LA Boxing beanie

  • My Shoes Sparklez!

    So November was my birthday month, all Lisa, all month, it was awesome and I highly recommend it. Especially if you can score summa these.

    My friend (also named Lisa, it’s kismet) had listened to me exclaim whenever I saw the elementary school girls at church with those awesome red glitter Dorothy shoes, or anything else remotely sparkly, which of course they didn’t make when I was a kid, and which I never see in Target or Shoe Show in my size. So! She got on the ol’ interweb and got me my very own disco ball shoes and as soon as I ripped open the box I kicked off my boring but beloved Sauconys and determined to never let the sparklies leave my feet. Except that they were bunching up the sheets, so…

    Still. Hat tip and heel click goin’ out to Lisa Shelden, the Rockin-est!

  • no suspenders needed

    The chain the boys did not need for their DIY nunchucku was quickly appropriated by the Maker, who showed it off to me this morning in this fashionable and utilitarian application. He also carefully explained each tool in the new blue pocketknife (a much-cherished Christmas gift from his oldest brother — an exact replica of the one he lost last year), the uses of the 3-foot tape measure, and the features of his tiny die-cast tractor on a keychain (thank you, Papa Clyde).

    It’s no wonder he needs a chain to hold all that stuff up.

  • The 2007 Pre-Teen Boy Gift Trifecta

    The gift thing is kind of low-key in our house compared to most people I know. However, the gifts our boys do receive get preferentially ranked by them in ways I would never predict.

    3. Digital Entertainment: Pokemon and Pirates
    Well, this one I can predict; what surprised me was that it turned up at number three rather than higher. However, movies and GameBoy games are always loved, partly because stuff like that is severely restricted in our house (one hour of “screen time” per boy per day; no computer or movies on school nights). We don’t have XBox or Wii or PlayStation, but the boys have a cast-off GameBoy that someone gave them several years ago, and it gets passed around with great reverence. It also spends long weeks turned off and in The Husband’s custody because of the arguing it inspires. However, Gram sent a new Pokemon Game AND the Pirates of the Caribbean #3, and her name is being breathed with prayers of thanksgiving.

    2. Weapons: DIY Nunchucks
    We have a “no guns” household, which means our boys are desperate for alternative weapons. Thus, they adore swords, knives, throwing stars, catapults, longbows, and anything else that can sneak past my definition of firearms; I figure if they are going to practice killing, they are going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: by hand and up close. Anyway, I went to the hardware store and bought a handful of inch-thick dowel rods, a packet of eyebolts, a length of swing chain, and three colors of electrician’s tape and put it in a box. On the lid of the box I drew a picture of a pair of nunchucks (handles “padded” with electrician’s tape), and they were beside themselves with joy. Let the maiming begin.

    1. Food: Beef Jerky and Snow Cones
    I gave them each THEIR OWN PERSONAL package of beef jerky, the ultimate in manly-man food. Goes great with nunchucku. More expensive than nunchucku. I also got them a snow cone machine (goes great with beef jerky and nunchucku, see picture), mostly out of nostalgia for the old Snoopy Sno-Cone maker that I never had. Now maybe they will actually refill the ice cube trays rather than perpetually leaving them out for someone else to do. Now if I could only think of a similar incentive for the toilet seat issue.

  • memorable men

    My father was the oldest of five brothers. The youngest, Eddie, was my own age. Every year we made the eight-hour trip from the city up into the mountains of Kentucky to visit, and I was once again immersed in the wonderful and utterly foreign culture that was the life of a rural family with five boys.

    The boys were established professionals – far better than my little sister and I – at teasing and fighting with each other. I can remember Eddie flying in a rage at John, who was older by five or six years, and John holding him comfortably at arms length and laughing, while Eddie tried in vain to land a punch. “You call that a fist?” John taunted, “Looks like a little wad of baloney on a string!”

    Rarely, the boys teased me. Only once do I remember a little sing-song rhyme that Mike, the next-to-the-oldest (but the gentlest by far) made up: “I saw Lee-saw, sittin’ on a see-saw,” he sang relentlessly. For reasons no longer fathomable, I pretended to resent this rhyme, and my furious reaction only made them all smile broadly and continue the chant. I think I enjoyed my show of pique; somehow it made me one of their tribe.

    Once I took the bus with Eddie and John to Bald Knob school. On the bus there were whispers and sidewise looks once we three boarded. “What are they saying?” I asked John anxiously. “They’re calling you a city slicker,” he solemnly whispered back, seeming in no way to take part. I slid closer to him on the seat, feeling protected.

    In the large, warm kitchen of the big farmhouse was a sizeable round wooden table, and six old-fashioned “ice cream chairs” (so called because of their popularity in ice cream parlors). The chairs were painted metal with heavy, heart-shaped, coiled-wire backs. For many years there was also a high wooden chair. At some point it must have had a tray for feeding a baby, but I don’t ever recall seeing the tray. Eddie always sat in the high wooden chair unless I was visiting, in which case I commandeered the coveted perch. How like a princess I felt in that chair, commanding the first of the hot biscuits and all the choicest morsels from the table!

    One time we were down to breakfast and I asked my grandpa – whom I patently adored and shamelessly cultivated – if I could get him anything. He surveyed the loaded table, and finally allowed that a piece of toast with his biscuits, eggs, ham, gravy, and fried apples would be the most wonderful thing in the world. I immediately put some in the oven for him, and promptly forgot about it. When the smoke and stench brought me suddenly to my senses, I shrieked and ran to snatch the newly-blackened square of charcoal from the oven. I was crushed, and great tears welled in my eyes. In defeat, I carried the toast carefully in oven mitts to the garbage. Grandpa rushed to stop me. “Oh no, Honey,” he protested, “don’t throw that away. That’s just how I like it.” And with the generous assistance of the homemade preserves, he proceeded to eat every bite, and murmur at my toast’s perfection.

    My little cousin Mark had a birthday party at the farm when he was about four years old. I remember all of us gathered on the broad front porch with Mark sitting happily on Grandpa’s lap and marveling over his brand-new fishing pole. Grandpa explained how it worked, and encouraged Mark to try a few casts off the porch, aiming for a spot just past the big bushes in the yard. Little Mark made several casts, as Grandpa talked to him about how it would feel to catch something. Suddenly the line found resistance, a little tug or two, and Mark nearly lost his mind with excitement. “Gently, gently,” Grandpa coached as he helped Mark reel in his catch. It was a brand new pocketknife. I never learned which of my uncles had spent the party crouched in the bushes, waiting.

  • pink martini!


    What a phenomenal find. China Forbes and her eleven swellegant friends (sixteen if you count the “touring” members, and believe me, they count) are pure sonic joy. Jazz, latin, lounge, swing, and vocal pop in every language; they are musicians, singers, songwriters, and I’ll bet they can dance too. ITunes categorizes them under “World,” “Latino,” and “Vocal” (Vocal?? How exactly is that helpful?), but this is the kind of sultry, swingy music I want to see “Live with a Man, Honey”. Glamorous, orchestral, cabaret-and-Hollywood-musical-inspired, samba; nothing quite emcompasses their work; I’m riveted.

    The Husband heard the title track – destined to be a club favorite – from their newest disc Hey Eugene on NPR this morning, and without passing Go went immediately and downloaded the entire album for me. “Tea for Two” – performed with jazz luminary Jimmy Scott – is a pleasure you’ll want to enjoy with a healthy tot of whiskey in your teacup. “Ojala” serves up some smoky French hotness, and “City of Night” is perfect as you are on your way home from work, planning your all-nighter. “Dosvedanya Mio Bombino” flirts with kitch but made me want to learn Italian (and Russian, I think) so I could sing it to all those sad-eyed, no-good, roaming Euro-boys. If I were to meet some. And so on.

    I was soooo sad when the Squirrel Nut Zippers went kaput (they’ve been trying to re-form, but given their history it’s gonna be a tough one), but now I feel aaaall better.

  • See if you can figure out how clean I am and how many boys I have

    In my shower there are three bars of Ivory soap carved into little boats.

  • bemine mixtape, part 4


    I can’t quit listening to Cake! “Love You Madly” is awesome, and the Husband will dig the horns, being a former horn player himself and having an appreciation for them. The whole song just makes me want to turn on the oven, get out mixing bowls and flour and sugar, and tap big wooden spoons rhythmically on the countertop. I can so dig it. My favorite lyric is “When I kiss your lips / I want to sink down to the bottom / Of the sea.” I hope he likes it, too, cause it’s most definitely IN. The motorcycle at the end reminds me of Meatloaf. Maybe I’ll close with it.

    “Magic in the Air” by Badly Drawn Boy, is at the top of my nice-piano-feel and great lyrics list. How about that opener: “We laughed so much that we cried all night / And you left your shoes in the tree with me / I’ll wear them to your house tonight / Magic in the air tonight” Man, that SO makes me wanna tell the story of the night he came over to my parent’s house for dinner on my 17th birthday… Yep, that just might be the opener for the list, even though he doesn’t already know the song.

    I could follow it with Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird.” I don’t think he’ll know the song, but he will know the group and that plus the piano may rope him right in. The lyrics are standard love song, but I like it.

    Actually, since I’m thinking chronologically through our relationship now, I better go with James Morrison’s “You Give Me Something.” It’s the new-relationship-taking-the-next-step song. Melodic with a tempered voice I could listen to a lot. I’ve already spent WAY too much time on the website, watching this guy work his magic. I likes! Yeah.

    Ok, now we can do a young guy/gal experiencing a few bruises. So let’s get Elliot Smith in there, or Art Garfunkel. Even though Smith has a pretty sad story, I think I’ll go with “Say Yes.” Hey, Kurt Kobain’s dead but I still like some of his music, too.

    It’s too much to go from “Say Yes” to “All I Know,” so I’ll need to separate them. Robinella could easily be the cure with her flight of fancy “I Fall in Love as Much as I Can.”

    I’ll put the Star’s On Peak Hill in toward the top. They remind me a little of the Shins, and that is a somewhat familiar sound for him. It’s a bit angsty, but still has the small-town-boy feeling.

    Ok, gotta deal with Art Garfunkel’s “All I Know.” It’s quickly identifiable by the Husband, but the lyrics are bittersweet so it needs a down-list position.

    Ryan Adams‘s “Oh My Sweet Carolina” is in there just for feeling. It has that ramblin-man-just-tryin’-ta-find-home thing going on. It’s quiet, folky, and contemplative. Does it go in the Luv mix here? Sure. I would put Billy Joel’s “Your My Home” in and it would fit better, but the Husband has that song and knows it and could sing it in his sleep, and… Hm. Maybe I should just put that one in. Keep considering this.

    Jackson Browne’s “Love Needs a Heart” is out. It’s just not Valentine’s Day material. I’ll save it for a breakup list.

    OK. Here’s a revised list. Now I just gotta listen to it through a few times then I will know.

    Magic in the Air, Badly Drawn Boy
    You Give me Something, James Morrison
    Songbird, Fleetwood Mac
    On Peak Hill, Stars
    Say Yes, Elliot Smith
    I Fall In Love As Much As I Can, Robinella
    Make It With You, Bread
    Oh My Sweet Carolina, Ryan Adams
    All I Know, Art Garfunkel
    More Than Love, Los Lonely Boys
    Love You Madly, Cake

  • bemine mixtape, part 3

    And Queen’s “Love of My Life” is out. I’m saving it for a list I’m gonna call supercamp. Besides, it starts with a break-up.

  • bemine mixtape, part 2

    The Husband just read my blog and will now helpfully assist me in the making of his surprise mixtape. Ok, who told him I had a blog?

    As soon as he saw I was considering (I was only considering) Mariah Carey’s cover of “I’ll Be There,” he let me in on a little-known but scientifically proven fact: A person’s favorite version of any given song will be the one they first heard. For example, if you heard the Beach Boys version of “California Girls” first, that’s the one you love and you have no use for the David Lee Roth version. He says this is “not set in stone” but he was very animated. Gesturing, even. Don’t trespass on his Michael Jackson, okay? Just don’t. He didn’t say any cuss words, but he thought them.