When I talked to Daughter last night, the prediction was 5 to 8 inches of snow tonight. It's now 18 to 25 inches. Which, given past experiences, means 30.
I have to go out and restock the refrigerator this morning, so I'll stop by my snow plow guy's house (I just got the bill for the autumn's last lawn mowing, 2 mowings, $90, so I need to pay that) and put him on alert.
TV also said possibility of power failures, so that got me thinking about moving some firewood onto the porch, just in case, and filling the oil lamps. That reminded me that the little glass oil candles actually give better light than the oil lamps. Weird, but true.
That made warm feelings for Jay. The first glass oil candle was a gift from Jay before we were married.
That reminded me of something that was on TV a few days ago, about how some men are abysmal gift-givers, and some of the awful gifts received.
Ex#1 never gave me a single gift, ever. When we got engaged, the ring got lost in the mail (really, they located it in the Shamokin PO months later), so even that one gift was late, and I returned it when I left three years later.
The first Christmas after ex #2 and I were married, he presented me the week before Christmas with a long narrow box that had a metallic rattle. I had earlier admired a long narrow wall-hung grandmother clock, so I excitedly asked if that's what it was. He just smiled. I was very excited. We were spending the holidays at his parents' farmhouse in New Jersey, so he said we should take it with us and I should open it there.
Christmas Eve (they open gifts Christmas Eve, yuck) I excitedly tore the paper open, and found an electric space heater.
"Our" room at his parents' house was in the attic, and was very cold. The heater was so that I wouldn't be cold when we visited his parents. And, I was to leave the heater there so that other visitors could use it, and it would be there next time we came.
He couldn't understand why I was not estatic.
When we went to NJ for the next Easter, the heater was gone. His mother had given it to someone "who needed it more. We never use those attic rooms....".
Over the next 13 years, for Christmases, anniversaries, birthdays, etc. - I got from him a plastic spatula, one skein of red polyester yarn, a jar of banana flavored peanut butter, a plain screwdriver, stuff he picked up at the hardware or grocery store on his way home from work that day. Not wrapped. He'd walk in the door, hand me a spatula, and say "Happy Birthday."
The man had no imagination, no romance, and never ever ever picked up on hints, even "This necklace right here is exactly what I want for Christmas. You can pick it up next Tuesday."
Instead, Christmas day, he'd go out to the car and bring in the (unwrapped) box of Keebler cookies he'd picked up the day before.
Jay was so different from what I was used to. His first gift to me was a cd player, back when they were new (and expensive). He knew I loved music, and knew that I was resisting the new technology, because I wasn't going to be able to get my favorite old lp albums on cd. (As usual, I was hoping that if I ignored it hard enough, it would go away.) He secretly made a list of my favorite lps, and along with the cd player came several of my favorite classical albums, on cd. I know he hated shopping, but he had to have shopped hard for those particular titles (no internet back then).
(I have occasionally wondered if Daughter influenced that gift.... Not that it mattered - if she did, it was still sweet of him to consult her.)
His second gift was the crystal teardrop oil candle.
When we went to France, several months after we returned, for my birthday, he presented me with a gold necklace I had admired in Paris. He had smuggled it home in his camera case.
For the next few years, I had to be careful when we were out together, because if I said "Oh, isn't that pretty" about anything, I was likely to see it again a few months later. If I slipped, I'd have to grap his lapel, look him in the eye, and recover with "but I don't need it! Ok?"
I don't know if it was a personality thing with ex#1 and ex#2. I don't know if they'd be any different with another woman. I do know there was a definite difference in our relationship.
With ex#! I was an afterthought, something he had bought and put in storage, and he'd get around to using it/me sometime. Mostly I didn't exist.
Ex#2 had serious emotional difficulties. He would not confront problems, would not deal with issues. He was afraid of my emotions, so he ignored them. Thinking of a gift spun him into a tither, so he just didn't do it.
With Jay, my happiness was important to him, and it made him happy to make me happy. It even made him happy to think about making me happy.
The last few years, I may have taken some of that away from him. Sorry, Sweetheart. We were refurnishing the house and changing our lifestyle (things we had always wished we had done or had, we decided to do and have) so when I found something expensive that we didn't really need, I'd say, well, let's get it, and we can call it my birthday present.
That's how we got the Victorian settee in the bedroom. I made it a point to admire it occasionally, and tell him "I'm so glad we got that. I really love the lines of it. (Kiss)." But he didn't have the fun of shopping for it for me. Poor BabyBoy.
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