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Best Laid Plans
Dec. 13th, 2004 09:01 pmI love my sweetie. I love buying presents. I especially love finding good presents for my sweetie. And this being our first holiday season as husband and wife, I was bound and determined to find the absolute most perfect gift in the world for him.
I had the most wonderful idea, too. We'll be visiting his family in Long Island for part of the holiday season, and it's just a hop, skip, and a jump from there to New York City. It's been a long time since we've seen a show together - tickets to a Broadway show seemed like the perfect surprise.
My first choice was sold out. So was my second. I finally found one that sounded great - until I realized that even the lousy seats were well over $100 apiece. Stupid Broadway, stupid expensive seats, stupid plan being shot to heck by stupid finances.
Oh, well. Luckily, I am a wise and foresightful woman, and I had a backup plan. So, as part of this afternoon's lightning attack on the mall, I wandered into the store in question, where I had seen the item I wanted less than two weeks ago. Foolish me, I had figured that two weeks out from Christmas the stores would still be fairly well stocked. Not quite so, apparently. The item in question (carefully hidden by vague wording, in case it suddenly re-manifests in time for future holidays) was out of stock. Of course, I could special-order it from the store.... or at least, I could if the store wasn't going out of business in three weeks. No more special orders. So no second-choice item.
Not a problem. I'm such an incredibly plan-a-riffic soul that I had a backup plan for my backup plan. I marched down to the next store on my list, head held high, and demanded my backup backup item. The store clerk explained to me, while I tried not to cry, that the item was not available. It was available last year, and will be available next year, but right here and now it is in a temporary state of nonexistence due to licensing and ownership squabbles.
This is absurd. Apparently God doesn't want me to give my sweetie a holiday present. Luckily, I have managed to thwart the anti-gift aura by wandering aimlessly through the remaining stores without any sort of plan, sneaking up on unwary gifts and pouncing on them before the Inconvenience Fairies could sweep them out of my reach, and a gift has been achieved. But still, that strikes me as a heck of a lot of effort on behalf of Fate to interfere with one simple present....
I had the most wonderful idea, too. We'll be visiting his family in Long Island for part of the holiday season, and it's just a hop, skip, and a jump from there to New York City. It's been a long time since we've seen a show together - tickets to a Broadway show seemed like the perfect surprise.
My first choice was sold out. So was my second. I finally found one that sounded great - until I realized that even the lousy seats were well over $100 apiece. Stupid Broadway, stupid expensive seats, stupid plan being shot to heck by stupid finances.
Oh, well. Luckily, I am a wise and foresightful woman, and I had a backup plan. So, as part of this afternoon's lightning attack on the mall, I wandered into the store in question, where I had seen the item I wanted less than two weeks ago. Foolish me, I had figured that two weeks out from Christmas the stores would still be fairly well stocked. Not quite so, apparently. The item in question (carefully hidden by vague wording, in case it suddenly re-manifests in time for future holidays) was out of stock. Of course, I could special-order it from the store.... or at least, I could if the store wasn't going out of business in three weeks. No more special orders. So no second-choice item.
Not a problem. I'm such an incredibly plan-a-riffic soul that I had a backup plan for my backup plan. I marched down to the next store on my list, head held high, and demanded my backup backup item. The store clerk explained to me, while I tried not to cry, that the item was not available. It was available last year, and will be available next year, but right here and now it is in a temporary state of nonexistence due to licensing and ownership squabbles.
This is absurd. Apparently God doesn't want me to give my sweetie a holiday present. Luckily, I have managed to thwart the anti-gift aura by wandering aimlessly through the remaining stores without any sort of plan, sneaking up on unwary gifts and pouncing on them before the Inconvenience Fairies could sweep them out of my reach, and a gift has been achieved. But still, that strikes me as a heck of a lot of effort on behalf of Fate to interfere with one simple present....
