Fruits of the season.

I loathe wrapping presents, and yet I am very particular about how the presents should look. This is a brilliant combination that prevents me from outsourcing any part of the task even as I whinge and mutter and say "Goddammit" and drop things on my toe. I have a whole system of mixing simple wrapping papers in lovely colors with crumpled blank newsprint saved from things I have been mailed, and satin ribbons with cotton twine, and interesting labels with hang tags cut out of odd scraps. Then every element of a given package appears on at least one other package, so that the high and low intermingle harmoniously, AND I AM COMPLETELY INSANE.

Fortunately that's all taken care of now. Well, I'm still insane, I doubt that's going to change any time soon, but the present wrapping is done with, anyway. 

OH MY HEAVENS

Breaking news: Steve had gone next door to give our extremely nice landlords some cookies and ask if they would look in on the cat while we were out of town. He has just returned with a remarkable object.

It it shaped and sized like a smallish desk lamp, but is, in fact, a very large candle, seventeen whole ounces of candle in a glass container. It is Spiced Vanilla Bean flavor. I can smell it vividly through the hexagonal plastic packaging. There is a shade, as well, which is what makes the whole so particularly lamp shaped. The shade, also glass, is flocked. The flocking is a tasteful beige, in a damask-inspired viney motif.

We are going to have to bring this thing to my mother's, so that we can dispose of it there, where the gentle, kindly landlords cannot see. Do you think it was a gentle, kindly, cunning tactic to stop us ever giving them Christmas cookies again?

Comments

[Lindy (a/k/a Mum)]

Nooooooooo. Scented candles make me sneeze ceaselessly, until I lose consciousness. I cannot even walk quickly through a store where they are sold.

[Lindy (a/k/a Mum)]

Perhaps I exaggerate slightly.

[Elsa]

Ack! Smelly smells smell like something smelly.

A well-meaning loved one gives me an assortment of scented candles and fragrant soaps every holiday. It's so sweet, so well-meaning, and so very, very unobservant.