<p>EPTR reminded me of another gift situation with my FIL. He had a big 70th birthday party one year. A big party, very extravagant, got loads of gifts.</p>
<p>One gift was very beautiful clock from a cousin and his wife. They are both physicians living in NJ. Very well off. The clock was silver, encased in glass, and you could see all its inner workings.</p>
<p>And while admiring this beautiful clock up close, we saw it had been engraved! But to the gift giver physician cousin, not my FIL! Too funny. </p>
<p>People really really need to rethink the whole regifting idea if they aren’t good with details.</p>
<p>My brother gave a gift at a “no gifts” BDay party. The host awkwardly and insistently returned it publicly, saying it the invitation said & meant no gifts. </p>
<p>I have been to “no gifts” baby BDay parties, where everyone was frantically writing checks & putting it into envelopes as there was a reception table where they were accepting gifts. It was very awkward.</p>
<p>Remember ID bracelets? I still haveone in the attic that I didn’t igve a BF I broke up with right before Christmas.</p>
<p>I’ve told this story on another thread. One year when my inlaws were visiting, H bought his mother and I matching cream colored knit track suits. TELL YOUR SONS NOW TO NEVER BUY THEIR MOM AND THEIR WIFE THE SAME THING!!! Anyway, I don’t wear knit track suits and those cream pants made my butt look big, so I took mine back. MIL kept hers and BOY I can’t tell you what it did for her derierre!</p>
<p>That was probalby the last gift she kept. H tends to send them edible gifts now and they always find fault and tell us to call and get our money back. I think they are trying to save us money but they’ve done it so often that it’s funny.</p>
<p>No discussion of gift is complete without this scene from the pilot of Everybody Loves Raymond:</p>
<p>Bookworm, I was like 22 or 23 at the time. I remember saying to him that if I had wanted my ears pierced then I would have had them pierced long ago and that earrings from him weren’t going to change that. He was just not a good boyfriend at all and knew nothing about me. He didn’t even know that my ears were not pierced. That may seem silly of me to get mad at but come on, after 5 years you’ve probably seen my ears a few hundred times. I tried for years (even before the earring fiasco) to break up with him and he always wiggled his way out of it. I know you can’t judge someone by the gits they give but one year he got me a tool box that I had seen at the store for 4 dollars. One year he got me a ring that couldn’t have cost more then 2 dollars and it was at least 4 sizes too big, etc. He just would buy the most generic gift that he could find with no thought at all as to will she like this, will she use this, does she have holes in hear ears to accommodate these earrings? He’d take me to resteraunts that I didn’t like to eat food I didn’t like. We’d go to the movies to see movies that I didn’t like, etc. We’d play board games and he would cheat every single time because he couldn’t stand to lose a game, literally. I remember several times his mother walked out on us playing games with her because he was cheating over and over and would act all offended when we brought it up to him. The entire thing was about him… what he liked and what he liked to do. Never once did a single thing “for me”. Relationships are a give and take… not a take take take. Finally I had enough and cut off all ties completely. It’s been 4 or 5 years now and he STILL occasionally calls and leaves voice mails saying that we should get back together because we are just absolutely “perfect” for each other.</p>
<p>Missypie, you made my day with the ELR story. I’m sitting here waiting for muffins to come out of the oven, folded over the island laughing out loud when D walks by. Makes me read it to her. She remembers the episode and starts laughing with me. Now my mom walks by. We read it again. Gets funnier each time. Thanks for the laugh, and Merry Christmas!</p>
<p>I was in my 50s when got involved with a “taker/verbally abusive man”. After 3 years, and lots of legal help, it ended last night!!! I lost a lot of money, but it a closed chapter. Champagne brunch with girlfriends later today, then more cheers from family this weekend.</p>
<p>I should have realized that gifts can be a red flag. I buy him the leather jacket he wants, he gives a book. He buys me sexy tops that I won’t wear, etc.</p>
<p>I know many men that are just not good at gift giving. I shop with my g/f to buy her gift from husband. Thirty years married and it still bothers her, but he is one of nicest people I know. I tell her he is the most generous husband I know (he sets no limits).</p>
<p>Current b/f takes care of my computer needs, and gives gift certificates. I couldn’t be more satisfied. Heck, I’m happy he washes dishes and says he loves my cooking!!!
Having one bad experience made me appreciate the caring men and g/fs all the more.
If my son’s flight comes in OK tonight, and he brings me a mug or anything from his grad school, it will truly be a very merry day.</p>
<p>One time I went to visit an old school friend for a few days. She was married and I had never met her husband.</p>
<p>As a gift, I took them a special jar of honey. It was special because at the time I kept bees and the honey was from my hives and I had extracted it and bottled it myself. It was delicious wildflower honey.</p>
<p>While I was there, the husband (who knew this jar of honey wasn’t just any old honey) decided to make some sort of sandwich involving honey and peanut butter. </p>
<p>He put the peanut butter on the bread first. Then, without cleaning the knife (it had big globs of peanut butter all over it), he plunged that knife deep into my jar of honey.</p>
<p>This isn’t awkward but my BF for Christmas this year gave me an electric griddle, a big spatula, and a box of pancake mix with an IOU breakfast in bed. He always laughs at me when I make pancakes cause i make them one at a time in my pan and by the time I’m done the last one the first one is getting cold… he always says how I should have a pancake griddle. Well, now I do!</p>
<p>missypie, I just read that ETR scene to a kitchen full of family members and we all have tears running down our faces from laughing so hard. It was particularly funny because my mother loved that show. She knew Peter Boyle from the time she was a kid and my grandmother (her mom) knew his dad. Many of the roles he played in his long and distinguished acting career did not cast him in a good light. He was very unlike many of those negative characters in real life and was a very nice man, very intelligent, generous and kind.</p>
<p>starbright, this thread has been such fun. Thank you for starting it!</p>
<p>Years ago my husband and I picked out a lovely silver frame for my MIL. She opened it and said she only liked wood frames. I told her I would return it. I did and selected a wood frame I thought might work and put a picture of our son, her first grandchild, in it. Next Christmas she regifted it back to me with a picture of my BIL holding my son. On the back were instructions to the person enlarging the photo “Crop out girl on right” I was the girl on the right.</p>
<p>^^^infrmdmom, I just choked reading that and I wasn’t even eating! I think you get the (booby) prize for the best (worst) story. “Crop out girl on right”? Hilarious. My sympathies.</p>
<p>^ Good lord, infrmdmom, your MIL makes my FIL seem actually reasonable and loving! I’m so sorry to read this. I hope getting to write about it is therapeutic! </p>
<p>Thanks Alwaysamom. I was inspired by another post, but I’ve quite enjoyed all these stories. After reading- and crying with laughter - about the I Love Raymond “fruit of the month” scene- I found the youtube clip and played it aloud over dinner last night on my iphone. Our whole family had a good laugh.</p>
<p>I can’t count this as a complaint, he is so sweet… How do you tell your DH that yes, you love the diamond earrings that you opened this morning. Not quite as much as the much larger ones he gave you 6 years ago ( hey, prices must be up…) But certainly as much as the ones he gave you 15 years ago. Short of getting three holes in each ear, what to do?
Didn’t he notice the earrings I wore to his company party 3weeks ago? Well, no. He’s too much on the guy track for that…</p>
<p>No, it did not come across as snotty at all. It was cute. </p>
<p>I understand the “guy shopping” thing. A few years ago I really wanted one of those senseo 1 cup coffee makers for christmas. I told my husband I wanted one. I had a coupon for it and gave it to him. I even printed a picture off of it and gave it to him. And he was taking our daughter to the dentist in the city so I gave her the picture to. (years of experience of getting something “like” the thing I asked for). I was sure I was going to get my senseo, after all I had gone far beyond hinting. They went to bed bath and beyond and he got a completely different coffee maker despite my daughter saying over and over again that that was not what Mom wanted. It was a more expensive coffee maker which makes a 10 cup carafe of coffee. Thing is we already had a very good 10 cup coffee maker maker, I really wanted a one cup one. Hearts in the right place, but. Nowadays I mostly just buy what I want ( which is not much as I get older) and give it to him to wrap and put under the tree.</p>
<p>Last year I spent a week trying to make my in laws house look like something livable instead of an episode of “Hoarders.”</p>
<p>My awkward gift giving moment happened to me several times during that trip, as I excavated several layers of gifts we had given both of them for birthdays and Christmas gifts.</p>
<p>Unopened. Still in packages. Or even with the items still in boxes with our gift tags attached. I was kind of excited to realize that these delightful down blanket throws were there, because I was going to hijack one for my hotel room for the remainder of my visit. I asked my FIL if I could borrow one for the hotel bed, he didn’t know why I wanted to take his “stuff”. (Yeah, because they were being used on a daily basis, right? Not.)</p>
<p>I bought those blankets at least 7 or 8 years ago and they were still in the package. </p>
<p>Then later on, when I mentioned something about the 10 vases I found in the corner by the tv (they came attached to flowers I sent my MIL for mother’s day), my FIL told me to not bother sending flowers, because his wife didn’t really care about them and it’s just one more thing to collect dust.</p>
<p>So I stopped sending them. Then I heard in a backchannel way from my Sister in law, that my FIL was mad at us for not sending MIL flowers.</p>