Educating the Wheelers

My husband and I both have birthdays in April so it’s time to start thinking birthday gifts.

I have always hated gift buying because only about half of the time do I find something I really think the person would like, and the other half the time I’m having to scratch my head and waste money on something, anything. 

My family used to have the habit of pinning a gift label on someone.  This may have happened to you.  Someone buys you something one year and, not being a total jerk, you end up saying, "Thanks for the frog towels!  I love frogs!"  Well, then word gets around to the rest of the family that you "love frogs."  You will be getting frog-themed gifts from everyone from then on.  I was tagged with frogs, my grandma with owls [and then lighthouses], my mom with pigs, etc.  I had almost ten years of frog-themed gifts.

And then came the Internet.  Sweet, sweet internet.  I made an Amazon wish list as soon as they made them available, and have actually received gifts from my family that I like and are useful  — albeit not exactly a surprise — ever since then.  Even my non-computer-using relatives just give my mom a check and she orders something in their name.  [Now if only they would make their own wish lists, I would be set … ]

In the handful of years that my husband and I have been married, we seem to have settled into our own routine.  If we find something we really, really think the other person would like, we get it for them.  If not, we ask them what they want.  Or tell them to find something that they really want that they probably wouldn’t be able to normally justify spending the money on, and order it themselves.

For instance, today I just ordered my own birthday present, and I know I’m going to love it.  I got two dvd sets from The Teaching Company — their new on the history of the Popes and the Papacy, and another series on Herodotus, the Father of History.

It’s not exactly the height of romance, but it’s a bit more satisfying.  I suppose it would be much less so if you didn’t budget and already always bought yourself whatever you wanted.  But since we have tightened up the budget more and more over time, it’s become more fun to try to decide how to spend my birthday/Christmas/etc "mad money" on myself.  [Last Christmas, I got myself the complete Backwoods Home Anthology sets, and my last birthday, I got myself a year long British Literature course that I’m still working through.]