How do you choose a gift?

Traduction française à venir

Trying to get back on track here… So I am unearthing a post I started before Christmas and never posted because.

Sometimes I fly over a topic very fast, to fast, even though it might be a vast, very vast topic to explore.

Ahem. This is one of those. Because, really I don't have much time. It is Friday night, you see (actually, it is really a Monday now that I am posting and editing this, but I don't have any more time than on a Friday…) We are going out tonight, the Boss and I, and there are 4 hungry and tired children to look after before we head out into the cold (car not back from garage, so I guess the two of us can drink tonight, but don't know how we are coming home.) I am straying… or procrastinating ?

Right. There is this book on this topic, the 5 languages of love (don't want to start controversy of all sorts, so no link, but it's very easy to find on the web…) which has kind of explained things to me, but made them more complicated. Gifts, touch, words, acts, quality time, mhmmm, I will have all of the above thank you very much.

But about the gifts : I like the gifts I receive to be exactly what I like/want/asked for. Otherwise, I have this horrible feeling that the person just needed to give me a gift but did not put effort into it.

I am trying to change that, I promise. I try to always thank the person for the thought, the gesture of giving, the kind move. But afterwards, I can be a bit petty, looking at the gift, and thinking "Where am I going to put this thing? what am I going to do with it?"

Sometimes the gift grows on me. That's the nice bit. I have this 'decorative' stone hippopotamus (I mean, really. A hippo) given by my mother-in-law one Christmas, sitting above our chimney. Well, my mother-in-law died in May, and there is no way I will ever get rid of this hippo. 





But when you are trying to truthfully thank somebody, you can't really say "Well, thanks. I really hope this Eiffel Tower mug is going to grow on me, because right now I don't really feel like drinking my coffee in it."

Which leads me to THE question : How can I possibly choose a gift for someone when I am myself so precise about what I like and don't like? When I want people to be 100% happy about what I get them? (Is that too presumptuous?) How do you do it?