Christmas Shopping

We ended up going back to Ikea today. No, we weren't obsessed (although I had to admit it was a good workout; between Ikea and Borders I racked up 8400 steps on the pedometer). As I lay dozing in bed this morning, an idea formed. And when James woke up, I asked him, "Remember the [interesting object] we bought at Ikea yesterday? Do you think [person we buy a Christmas gift for] would like it?"

He thought a minute. "Yes!"

So between trips to Borders (30 percent off coupons ended today), we went back to Ikea and ended up buying several [interesting objects] for various people. James also bought me a stuffed dog that looks remarkably like Louie the yellow Lab in the comic strip "Overboard."

And now...gulp!...the big news! After fifteen years of marriage I seem to have worn James down. Not only did he buy a Christmas CD (Jethro Tull) last week, bringing his grand total of Christmas CDs up to five, but today he actually urged me to buy a pair of five-candle candoliers. They're actually quite nice: small and solid, with white "candles" and a red base.

He also wanted to look at some lights we had seen: white stars hung vertically in strands, six or eight strands to a unit. The new house will have a living room open to the foyer and they might be useful to keep Pigwidgeon the daredevil out of forbidden territory. Unfortunately all they had left in the strands were red lights. There were at least four other people looking for the same lights.

Between two trips to Borders and the trip to Ikea, we have pretty much finished our Christmas shopping. I even found something for myself, a copy of The Best of James Herriot on the remainder table. These are abridged (it's a Reader's Digest publication) selections from each of the five Herriot books (most of the selections from the pre-war stories). I have all the Herriot books, but the draw on this is that there are not only color inserts of photos of the real Herriot areas, but the stories are annotated explaining and showing bygone things like the medical instruments that vets in the 1930s used, and what the farm implements, housekeeping tools, and various farm animals looked like. I love annotated books; I love to learn new things.