October = Almost Christmas?
October is days away. How did that happen? That might not seem like such an odd concept if it wasn’t 100 degrees outside…but I digress. At any rate, pumpkin spice is now on menus everywhere, which means the Christmas commercials have escaped and I’m being pressured to start Christmas shopping in September, like a psychopath!
Which forces me to consider one of my least favorite activities: shopping. Although I have to admit that the internet has made it so much easier to shop. Perhaps a bit too easy, considering approximately 22% of US consumers make purchases from the toilet (according to Omnisend 2026). Personally, I think the couch is much more comfortable, but, to each his own.
The People Who “Don’t Want Anything”
It’s not that I don’t enjoy finding the perfect gift for someone I love. It’s the going-out-in-public-where-all-the-people-are that I don’t care for. It’s especially satisfying when I find something awesome for the person who always says they don’t want anything (ahem…you know who you are). Luckily, since my (very small) inner circle is primarily made up of people with witty, snarky, sarcastic, dry, or dark senses of humor, I can usually find something they won’t hate.
My husband, for example, always says he doesn’t want anything and he buys stuff he needs throughout the year. It just so happens that he doesn’t buy himself things that aren’t necessarily “needs” but would definitely make his life easier. Well, he happens to have a lot of car projects, so last Christmas I got him a few things for him to use in the garage. The biggest surprise was a rolling mechanic seat with a back support, built for meat-and-potatoes kind of men instead of salad-and-celery people. I also got him the “I’m going Nucking Futs!” T-shirt because he says it all the time and sometimes it’s fun to wear a warning label to see how many people avoid you.
On the other hand, my sister knows exactly what she wants and only wants exactly what she tells you she wants. So, if you get her anything else, there’s a 99% chance she won’t like it. But if you get her what she wants, she is upset because she isn’t surprised. It’s a lose/lose. I guess you can’t win ‘em all. As impersonal as cash may sound, I’d never consider it a bad gift. Sometimes cash (or a gift card) is the best option.
My mom is another one of those people who wants nothing. She has told me this for as long as I can remember. Thankfully, she will still most likely love anything I get her (even a hand-made card), especially if it’s unique and her type of humor. She’s both kooky and brilliant, able to come up with wild ideas that actually work. She once dressed up her extremely miniature pygmy goat in a blue-and-white checkered doll dress, straw hat, and patent-leather shoes. Yes, she was a real, live goat and her name was Petunia. We had a polaroid of it at one time, which I am sure we’ll uncover in due time.
My mom is the biggest source of my quirkiness, although I can’t say that my ideas are always as successful as hers. But when I do or say something a bit unhinged, all I have to do is say, “that’s where I get it from.” My sister and cousin even have an ongoing “my-mom-is-weirder-than-your-mom” duel, which inspired this newest T-shirt.
Meanwhile, I’m an Embarrassingly Easy Target
Quite opposite of my sister, I am shamelessly easy to buy for. Like most bookworms, I’m thrilled with a new book. Or a gift card for a book so you can get one of the novels from your TBR pile. Or a soft, nerdy T-shirt (insert hyperlink). Maybe a new journal. Food and Diet Coke are always winners, too. That’s one of my problems – I always find stuff I would like.
A Permission Slip to Start Early
With almost three months until Christmas, I’m sure I can find some toilet time (just kidding) to shop for my family, even without overnight shipping. As long as I stay out of the mindset of “I’ve got time. I’ve got time. I’ve got time. Oh, crap, it’s Christmas Eve already?!” That’s when that one-hour delivery comes in handy. By the way, hats off to all those delivery drivers and packagers who save our figurative hides year after year on the eleventh hour when we suffer from extreme procrastination and immediate decision fatigue.
A word of caution, write down where you hide the presents. One day I was dusting the bookshelves in my office and I found something in a plastic bag behind some books. It was a funny mug that I had bought two years earlier that was intended to be a Christmas gift for my husband. Good thing it wasn’t perishable. It became another one of his Christmas presents that year. Lesson learned: write down your hiding spots. Also, I need to dust more. Of course, my daughter laughed at me when I told her I had lost one of his presents for two years. Little does she know that our quirkiness is genetic and gets more potent with time. It’s like a never-ending fruit-of-the-month gift basket.
I now understand the desire for a hand-made card that costs nothing to make. I understand why my mom and husband say they don’t need anything. I also understand that the people who love us want to give us something we would enjoy, and that part of our gift to them is to let them give you something that shows they thought about you. One of the best parts about receiving a gift is knowing someone spent time trying to figure out what gift would be meaningful to you.
And the best part of giving a gift? When they finally open it and realize you picked out that specific gift just for them because you thought they just might enjoy it, and the whole reason for the gift was to put a smile on their face. Sometimes the right present is a mug. And sometimes it’s cash.
So, here’s a quick recap:
- The stores are already stocking Christmas items like psychopaths.
- If you buy presents early, write down where you hide them.
- Sometimes the best gift really is cash.
- The weirder the gift, the more it means.
Do you want to see what nerdy and neurotic look like? Does your gift list have a name on it that gives you anxiety? Quirky Squirrel isn’t just a place for bookworms. It’s a cheat sheet for people who don’t know they’d actually love some eccentric genius.
Discover more from Quirky Squirrel
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.