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ILONA ANDREWS

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Switching Sides

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We have some fun questions from you. I will try to do it justice. ::girds her loins::

Will there be a blog serial this year? Waiting for “magic Friday” when Ilona posts the serial update is the best feeling!

I told you, those who attend the chat will get to read the first chapter early.

Ilona wrote in in the blog that she has issues with her hands, where it was painful for her to type. Has that been resolved or is she still having to deal with it?

Thank you for worrying about me. Unfortunately the damage is kind of permanent. I now have to be extra vigilant, because the other day I took a cast iron pan out of the oven, and the right hand just gave out. I type a lot less, and I use a keyboard with soft keys.

If that’s how you work, why do you guys always do your interview on the other side?

Harriet is referring to our seat positions being reversed during Zoom. Usually we work with me sitting on the right side and Gordon sitting at the desk to my left. For Zoom we switch seats. Harriet, it’s this way, because he keeps trying to slide out of the screenshot. He can’t slide to the left, because the elliptical is there. Periodically I have to pull him back into the frame. It’s not just the fans. He did it the other day when our agent facetimed us.

Are you still thinking about moving to Florida?

Well, honestly I would like to. I really love the water. Gordon does too. Given a choice, my husband would spend his days in the water and when he was out of it, he would sit on the porch facing the water, drink iced tea or beer, and read werewolf and bigfoot books. Also megalodon shark books.

The problem is that the pandemic brought the need for a secure base into a sharp focus. If something happens, and the kids need to come back to the house to shelter in place, we need to make sure there are plenty of rooms. Our house in Texas is like a little compound. We have a couple of acres. We have diversified so we have wood heat if we need it and propane to cook on. Our communal well is separate from the city, so when their water service failed, ours still ran. We had to boil water, but that was okay.

By the way, my cooktop died a sad death. It was over 20 years old and the parts for it couldn’t be obtained. We bought a new cooktop, but it’s natural gas. I don’t know why. We ordered the propane one. We could convert it with a kit, but all the kits are backordered till March. Instead they are bringing the new propane cooktop and will swap it. Meanwhile, I am terrified to damage this new cooktop in some way. I am cooking with all my burners on low.

Please excuse the cooktop interlude. It is clearly a source of some mild anxiety.

What I am trying to say is that the house is located in a relatively safe part of the country. We get hail and an occasional tornado. Fires occur but they are rare, not like in Pacific Northwest, which seems to be annually on fire. We are not in danger of a flood. If we are buying a house in Florida, we are risking hurricanes. While the house construction has come a long way, a hurricane can easily damage even the most sturdy house, but it’s not even the immediate damage. It’s what will follow: days without electricity and water. We drove through Lake Charles after a hurricane. There was no Lake Charles left.

Suppose we have to evacuate. Kid 1 will likely have her own household at that point, which leaves us with 2 dogs and three cats. I am hoping she will take the tarantula with her. Where are we going with that many animals? What hotel would take us? Do we travel with a litterbox? The logistics of it seem complicated.

So I don’t know. Maybe we will find a lake somewhere. Maybe we will end up buying a small house in Florida somewhere and keeping this place. I would like the sea but I would also like four seasons. Jeaniene Frost moved to Maryland and she loves it. Maybe we will go up north a bit.

That was such a Southern things to say, haha. Up north. ::clutches imaginary pearls:: Maybe all the way to Virginia. ::dies::

I don’t know. Maybe we will throw caution to the wind and move to Spain. Mediterranean is truly lovely. It does burn occasionally as well, though. Maybe we will stay put. Although it is bloody hot and we’re both getting a bit tired of it.

Now I have a question for you. What’s the strangest Christmas, holiday, or birthday gift you have ever gotten?

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Comments

    • Ha! My father did indeed give one to my mother for Xmas (Christmas’s secular cousin) last year. With her full blessing, because neither of them can bend enough to get under the furniture any more, but she’s the one that’s bothered by the idea of NOT cleaning it.

      • “Xmas” is actually not secular. The X is the Greek letter chi, which is the first letter in in Christ. So it’s kind of an abbreviation for Christmas. The New Testament was written in Greek at the time. Apologies for the soapbox. I’m half Greek and my name is Christina, so I couldn’t resist. I mean no disrespect. I’m just showing off a bit.

          • I don’t know about Tina, but this abbrevation has shown up in church records for hundreds of years! Xtian for the males, too. 🙂

        • It wasn’t me but my sister that got the funniest family gift. She wanted stemless red wine glasses.

          My dad heard stemless RED (as in the glass itself is red) wine glasses. Apparently it took him forever to find a set of stemless RED wine glasses. ????!

          • I have to say that I read the first part of your comment as red glasses too!! Oops. Haha. Your dad’s awesome to hunt them down though.

        • +1. Raised VERY Irish Catholic. My parents would both stop people in mid rant and explain. Although close to the end my mom started buying into “Christmas is the REASON for the season.” At which point I interrupted her rant with a lecture on Saturnalia and Other Midwinter Holidays.

    • I had to fight with my husband for the first couple of years, convince him I REALLY WANTED the “unromantic” kitchen appliances. He felt so bad when I asked for a breadmaker (bad wrists, can’t knead).

    • Hahaha we just got a shark robot vacuum for Christmas and I am so excited! Of course have a German Shepard and they shed constantly. I’m pretty sure their fur bunny procreate because you vacuum and immediately the next day there are more. So far the robot is keeping up. Beat gift ever ❤️

    • My husband gave me a roomba I love it. When the robot apocalypse comes, I will have friends.

    • For my birthday I bought myself a Shark upright vacuum for the battle with cat hair. The thing is…my husband has been the one to use it EVERY TIME it’s needed. (Best birthday gift EVER!!)

  2. I literally just received a Christmas ornament. It’s made of wood, and it’s…a slice of pork roll. With fangs.

    Pork Roll is a PA / NJ jawn, also called “Taylor Ham” apparently, tho I only know it as Pork Roll. It is a breakfast food, often eaten in a sandwich.

    I don’t know why it has fangs.

    I love it with all my heart, even tho I’ve been a vegetarian for nearly 2 decades.

      • When I moved to a new city for my post-college job, my father got me a blind date for my next birthday. He had a new coworker in the opposite circumstance; he’d moved to my hometown for his new job. He took me out to dinner & showed me his favorite places here. The only thing we had in common was we were both homesick for the other place. It was a long evening. My father personifies ‘he means well, but…’. The guy I had just started dating thought it was hilarious. 🙂

    • You can tell that it’s cooked pork roll because it’s been snipped at the edges and they’ve separated. If you don’t cut the slice of pork roll before cooking the edges curl up like a cup.

  3. I once heard Gordon tell his version of the first impression and not to tease everyone but it included the GI Joe cartoon series hehe.

    ???? #couplegoals

  4. It’s only strange when I explain it to other people. For our anniversary one year, my husband got me two beautiful tiaras, real silver and high-end Swarovski. In that same anniversary, I got a Mass Effect hat and Shepard jacket.

    Because he sees me.

  5. Only because I am “tiny bit” clumsy I got a sippy coffee cup from my house mates for christmas. I managed to spill coffee with it anyway.

  6. It’s not weird to me, but I get crazy looks when I tell people my husband got me a new cooking pan set for Christmas a few years ago.

    I love cooking and baking like crazy, and our old pans were dying a quick death. So he got me a nice set as a replacement; yet all I hear is “Well, why didn’t he get you blahblahblah…” Or “I’d be so mad if he did that”.

    I love the pans you crazy people, and he did a very thoughtful thing lol. So not weird to me, but apparently people are jerks sometimes ????‍♀️. And the set he got me has lasted 3 times as long as our other set (and still counting!) Lol.

    • Similar over here (waves). A large preserving pot. Best gift ever! Previously I was trying to do lots of preserves and could only do third of a batch of my Nan’s tomato sauce (ketchup) recipe at a time. Now I can do one and a half batches at a time! Weee!

    • I hear you. I often buy my husband functional things because we have a tendency to make do with ageing or less fancy stuff. I would never buy myself as nice cooking equipment as he would get me, and he would buy himself a basic soldering iron rather than the one with the fancy settings. It’s not not romantic, just a different kind of romantic.

    • Pots and pans should be up there with expensive jewelry. Fie on those who have made it seem otherwise. I have been not so subtly hinting for two years about hex clad pans and dutch ovens but do not get taken seriously

  7. Haha. My car detailed. I keep my car clean but what would I need it THAT for? Free vacuum and a 8 dollar wash is perfect. It’s something to get me from A to Z.

  8. I remember what someone got my brother. It was Christmas and the cousins were doing a Secret Santa. My brother was too lazy to put anything on his elfster list so anything he was going to get was going to be a surprise anyway. Lo and behold, we get to him and the first thing he opens is a rainbowy bowie knife…from a set of rainbowy tactical knives. He got really excited, never seen him that happy honestly…And the reaction to the rainbowy karambit was very loud and sweary, but happy sweary. He’s not athletic, he mostly plays videogames, but this is the reaction to a set of knives.

  9. My strangest Christmas gift that I’ve gotten is a garbage can. It’s one with a lid, and the rational was that when I had the doggies in my bedroom (which was converted from a shared space and so has the only door into a bathroom) that instead of having the water dish on an exercise mat and the bathroom door closed with an open garbage can in the bathroom, to get a garbage can with a lid and so the bathroom door could be open so they could get to the water dish. The mix up was, the garbage can was in the bathroom because the door was closed, not the door was closed because of the garbage can. Regardless of what kind of garbage can, the door was staying closed, and the water dish stayed on the exercise mat. But yeah, strangest gift I’ve ever gotten!

    • I did too, received that gift. To this day I am flabbergasted by it. Everyone thought that I would like it. I smiled and said thank you.

  10. Every year, although I have been happily married for almost a decade, my friends or family get me at least one book on flirting techniques.

    Mr Mod R is endlessly amused by cheesy pick up lines, in a “I cannot believe people would actually say this” kind of way. So I put the Austin Powers moves on him at least a couple of times per day and he cracks up every time. No, I don’t know who is humoring whom at this point hehe, but it’s our thing.

    People are keeping me in fresh cheesiness 😀

  11. I feel you with the hand problems Ilona… I have been going to physical therapy for mine, though good thing my work is paying for it since it’s a work injury. Typing all the time is no fun really. Im using voice to text all the time these days.

    My work did recommend this voice to text software for desktop, not sure if it’s useful for you: https://www.nuance.com/dragon/support/dragon-naturallyspeaking.html

    I didn’t end up going for it but maybe would interest you.

    • As for strangest… Got a used gift card once for a birthday. Like it’s not the regifting even, can you at least check that there’s money on it???

      • Sometimes GC’s don’t get activated properly. It’s a nuisance.

        The giver should keep the “activation receipt” or give it with the GC. If the store can’t help, then you have to call the GC company.

      • hahaha fair enough. I got a pixel recently which is supposed to have excellent voice to text, and even that doesn’t turn out exactly the way I want to a lot of times….weird punctuation and spaces tend to be a thing. I find that it helps to talk like a robot and over enunciate. And that’s just for personal conversations, I could never use it for work when things have to be professional.

    • Speaking of strange gifts. My husband ordered me a hand massager. (Cincom, hand massager CM-026H on Amazon) I have rheumatoid arthritis and my hand hurt worse in the winter. This has helped with stiffness, dropping items and to sleep. Why my hands hurt at night worse, I do not know. This massager kneads fingers,adds heat to your wrist/plam and air compression to your hand to loosen up your hands and reduce pain. It’s great! If you haven’t tried a paraffin bath, the warm heat works as well to sooth inflammation. I hope this help someone else with hurting hands.

      • I find myself highly intrigued, and also they make foot/leg massagers with heat which sound very very nice. Thank you. You’ve made my new year a trifle more expensive. 😉

  12. A jar of assorted tags, keychains, plastic coins and store membership things.

    So my boss at the time (who is an attorney) gave me this jar and said it was a “history of ‘town we live in'”

    It literally looks like someone cleaned out the junk drawer and shoved it in a jar.

    Some jar examples…

    A keychain that says “To Ma From Jan” There is no one in their family with this name.

    A button that says Hospitaliano!

    A United Way pin

    An Encon Energy Conservation pull for a ceiling fan

    A non working Bud Pumpkin flashlight

    A key to something…maybe someone’s house

    A Superflow Oils tag

    I keep it because one day I’ll figure out the secret message I was given, and it will begin a fantasy adventure.

  13. Re strangest gift: It was actually a wedding gift. A two year magazine subscription on how to have a “good” Christian marriage. I am Hindu and my husband is atheist.

  14. One year for Christmas my sister thought it would be hilarious to give me over 100 pair of striper panties, sparkly, bejeweled g-strings with break away sides. She wrapped them up in this very large box with beautiful tasteful paper and and elaborate bow. It was the most beautiful wrapping I’d ever seen. I was so excited to open it because I just knew it had to have something really fabulous inside. There were about 30 friends and family, including young kids, there when I opened it and I was just dumbfounded. My sister was laughing so hard she had tears running down her face. She keep telling me to show everyone what I got and I refused. I was so mad because it was highly inappropriate to the gathering. Also it was the only gift that she got me that year. I just put the lid back on the box got up walked outside and threw the whole thing in the garbage can. When I walked back into the house she was telling everyone what had been in the box and that since I had gotten divorced the month before she figured I could use all of the help that I could get to find a new man. A single pair might have been funny but as usual she went way overboard.

    • Sounds like something my family would do, they thought ‘gag’ gifts like that were funny, they often aren’t.

    • Every time I might feel a tiny bit sad about not having siblings…someone posts about awkward gifts from siblings and I immediately loose the lonely feeling.

      Dear golly, what the heck was she thinking?

  15. About 25 years ago, my husband bought me wine racks for Christmas. I had stopped drinking, for the most part, in college, due to an Unfortunate Experience.

    By the time he bought me the wine racks, we had been married for several years, had two kids, and I had drunk the champagne toast at weddings and New Year’s, plus a total of one glass of wine spread over two dinners a couple of years apart. So he was well aware of my lack of drinking habits.

    This marriage continued until five weeks ago today, due primarily to massive effort on my part. With him out of the house a month now, my blood pressure is down, my energy level is up, and my customary Seasonal Affective Disorder has not yet made an appearance. I should have paid a lot more attention to the signal those wine racks represented.

      • Thank you Regina! There’s been happiness along the way, though sometimes kind of hard-won. Things are just so much easier to do now without the constant resistance. Once I get the various pieces of life into their new places, it will go even smoother.

    • If you still have the racks and do any sort of yarny crafts, or know someone who does, wine racks can make a really fancy yarn holder/display thing 🙂

  16. I can’t offhand think of anything really weird that I’ve gotten, but two things I want to share.

    When I was a kid, my two oldest brothers asked for a car for Christmas. They gave a specific model they wanted and everything. So that’s what they got for Xmas. Not that they could drive them anywhere — they were Matchbox cars.

    My third brother gets lots of gag gifts. It’s his fault for being born on April 1st. My favorite was from when I was a kid. He got a big heavy box and he was really excited about it. He opened it up, dug down, and pulled out… an anvil. Yes, a real, ACME-style anvil. My dad was the controller for a company that made cast iron parts for cars, so he got the guys at the factory to make an anvil for my brother’s present. Can’t remember what his real present was, but I still remember the anvil.

    • My brother got a matchbox car (red pickup truck) one year so he would have something under the tree, my parents had paid to repair his truck as his Christmas gift. My mom repeated this for me one year when she bought me new chairs for my dining room table, we found them early in the year, and she didn’t want to have to store them, so they were delivered in July, and I got a dollhouse size chair under the tree. ????

  17. This may not be a strange gift, but to me it was strange. When I was young someone decided to get me a doll. It wasn’t anyone in my family since they knew I hated dolls. The person who gave me the doll said “she’s a girl, and girls like dolls”. Uh, no. A few days later, the doll lost all her clothes, and was no where to be found. I did that for any doll someone gave me. I think people caught on because there were no more dolls for me after that. 🙂

    • I also hated dolls. They were always cannon fodder for the plastic army men wars my brother and I staged… it didn’t matter that they were GIANT compared to the army men!

      • I wonder if that was the original inspiration for Attack on Titan? My siblings and I had doll battles too lol

  18. When Subarus first hit the states, we bought one. We loved it. However, for Christmas I got a set of metric tools so work could be done on the Subaru at home. I do many things —knit, sew my own clothes (sometimes), spin, weave fibers, weave baskets, grow and put up stuff from the garden and other useful things. I do not work on cars. I had never worked on cars with him and we had been together 6 years by that point. I was not amused, thankful, or appreciative. The next Christmas there was a present under the tree for me that was something I especially wanted. I joyfully thanked him for it. He was a bit confused at first, but finally figured it out. That error was not repeated. I did put a Roomba on my Amazon wish list a few years ago and one of my sons got it for me, much to my happy surprise. Love it. And it spins under most of the furniture just fine and scoops up all the cookie crumbs the dogs miss from munching their treats.

  19. I got one of those little face hair removal “as seen on tv” tools. I always get compliments on my skin (lucky genetics) and have minimal facial hair. Was very confused.

  20. When they were both still alive, Dad & his Sister would send each other the same box of polystyrene packing chips – with as many extra crammed in as they could, and the ‘real’ present (usually small) wrapped up somewhere in the box. By the time the last parcel arrived, the box was about 6ft long and 2ft square!

    Apparently it all dated from when Dad was based at Cyprus with the RAF and sent her a Christmas Present by air mail – but forgot to include the present and just sent the packing beads – so Auntie J sent them back the following year and so on….

    We kids used to love waiting for Dad to open it just so we could ‘help’ find the real present!

    • I did that to one of my nephews a couple of years ago. He wanted a GoPro camera so several of us went in on it. I purchased it on behalf of everyone and had it sent to me, so I wrapped the box. Then I put that box in a larger box with some packing peanuts. Then I wrapped that box. Then I put that in another box, and so on and so on. I wrapped each layer’s box. My justification was that 5 of us had gone in on the gift so we should each have our own layer.

      I was declared mean and evil for doing that. I wear that badge proudly. 😉

  21. My best Christmas gift from my husband was a gorgeous western saddle. I loved it and used it often. The weirdest gift was last year, he got me a pearl necklace and earrings. We never go out espcially last year. I think I own one dress. I am not sure what he was thinking. I wear silver jewelry and like semi precious stones or turquoise that go well with casual or western clothes.

    • Pearls go with everything! I wear mine to opening nights of community theater productions. I’m on the tech crew, in all black, and run a spot light.

  22. Strangest gift:

    Well, it was the year that my step-grandfather gave me the largest pair of women’s panties, ever. Just that: big ginormous pink panties. [He thought it was a scarf and wasn’t paying attention to the signage–it was a really pretty soft pink color–and he grabbed it in a hurry.]

    The backstory… his wife, my grandmonster, was the kind of woman who ran hot and cold as to which grandchild had fallen out of favor and was not going to get a gift at the family exchange and apparently, once she’d settled on me a few years earlier, I became the permanent choice. I should add–we got along great. No arguments/fights/spats/whatever that I know of. No Big Disappointments. She would absolutely deny the No Present Status and make all sorts of excuses, and in spite of the fact that I would tell her every year not to worry about the grown-ups (including me), just include the little kids, she would insist she was going to do presents for “all her babies”… and then skip me. It got to the point where it was humorous, seeing what reason she had come up with each year for Why There Was No Present (because she’d have a present for everyone else, including my husband and some of the excuses were worth the entire trip there.)

    Well, that year, she’d recently married her high-school sweetheart after being widowed a long time, and Leon, God Bless Him, was a really lovely lovely man. And he realized there was the No Present thing happening and ran out to get something so I’d have something to unwrap.

    So when I opened it to see the lovely pink color, I thanked him profusely. I realized what it was, but he was saying, “I think that scarf would look so beautiful with your green eyes,” and everything was fine… until he wanted me to try it on to show it off. And wouldn’t take ‘oh, no, not right now’ for an answer. I had to slide over to his side of the room and whisper what it really was, and he was hard of hearing, and then the entire group burst out laughing while the poor man was mortified and my grandmother was angry at me for embarrassing him.

    To me, though, it was a really sweet gift–he tried at the last minute and I always appreciated that.

  23. Whoa! Jeaniene Frost was the one the questions were asked for on the blog previously? about where to live in MD? cool!

    most memorable two, both involving rings
    1) my brother, age 6, got me a plastic ring, but he didn’t want to just give it to me in an empty box…and i guess didn’t realize actual fillers exist….so he packed the box with dust balls he found underneath his bed. When i opened my gift and searched through the dust balls, what i found first was a dead bug…and then a ring =)
    2) when i was a teenage, my mother gave me an envelope, inside had an ad of a diamond ring…but it was cut in half. Apparently she wanted to purchase me a ring for Christmas, but forgot her wallet at home and she didn’t want to go out again. So she found an ad that showed the type of ring she was planning on getting me, but the carat weight of the ad was too big, so she cut the ad in half to represent what the actual carat weight was going to be…..and no i never got the ring, she forgot after christmas =)

  24. I was prettig decent in the shooting games and used to shoot prizes for all the kids in the family. At university, almost 20 years ago, we went to the carnival with a group of friends and I let my best friend choose the prize. She totally surprised me by going for the ugliest one in the lot: a huge hand with a raised middle finger in sculpted brown plastic on a spring. It has been a tradition sinecure then to pass the finger on as a surprise Christmas gift, usually after intervals of several years so it still really comes as a surprise every time to see it again. This weekend it resurfaced after 7 years.

  25. Years ago I happened to mention to my husband that I needed new eye glasses as I was having problems seeing the bathroom scales. So for Christmas he bought me a weight scale that had the dial at waist height. He is an engineer so for him it was a very thoughtful gift. Took me years to teach him what a good gift looks like.

      • Maybe the waist high scale is not a gender thing but an engineer thing. I would have thought that it was a somewhat thoughtful gift, too.

        My friends have wishlists and almost all of us are more than happy with receiving things on their wishlist. One friend likes surprises so her gifts require some more thought and work but she does provide a wishlist so we have an idea of what she might want. We’re low maintenance & low stress gifters and dates are more of a guideline. Sometimes it arrives a few months after. Sometimes it arrives two months early (holiday 2020, 2021 thanks to shipping volume and supply).

        Honestly, I find this way to be awesome since we all have plenty of stuff. We’ve been trying to give experiences or consumables. I also ask for donations for different causes and appreciate that, too. I had a dream a few years ago where I was buried in stuff and it was more of a nightmare.

  26. My husband gave me a vacuum once for Christmas. Not such a strange object, I know. But, contrary to the popular tropes, he wasn’t in the dog house for buying me an appliance. In fact, quite the opposite! I love that vacuum and still have it! It’s a great vacuum!

    • Over twenty years ago I received a new vacuum from my husband for Christmas. I was totally thrilled because it was one of the new self-propelled models and so much easier to use than our clunky old vacuum. Since we had three cats, a three year old daughter, and I had on going challenges with sciatica, this was a very thoughtful gift from my husband. I was truly stunned when I received commiserating comments at work a few days later. Oh, and our three year old daughter LOVED the box the vacuum came in. She spent far more time playing in it than with her new Christmas presents!

  27. I live in FL and have only one cat. My evacuation plan definitely includes a litter box. It also includes gabapentin for anxiety (his, not mine).

    Fortunately hotels will allow one cat. Unfortunately who knows what a hotel room smells like to a cat. When I evacuated for Irma, my cat spent 3 days howling and searching around the room for some unknown presence. He would not have gotten any sleep were it not for the gabapentin. No one was more happy to come home after that than he was.

  28. When we were adults, my sister gave me a puppy for Christmas without consulting me about it. I was working a job with long, irregular hours–not ideal conditions to raise a puppy. I don’t know what made her think what I needed was a dog. I was not pleased at all and told her to take it back to the breeder. I hope that dog found a good forever home.

  29. Weirdest gift I got was a small sledgehammer, courtesy of my father.

    BUT it was something I had requested, I use it when I make stained glass cookies. Crushing Jolly Ranchers is no joke! I end up putting them in several ziploc bags, wrapping them in dish towels, taking them out to the garage floor (concrete), and beating the hell put of them. It takes awhile to get them sort of uniformly crushed into pieces that will work in the cookies.

    The sledgehammer makes this process easier, the recipe says to use a rolling pin, which, really, does that actually work for anyone?

  30. My friend got a perfectly and exquisitely wrapped brick. Just a brick. An old one. Wrapped. No explanation. He thought it was the funniest thing ever.

    And….Once I got my cousin a reindeer that pooped chocolate pellets.

    • Oh that made me tear up. I work with a great young teacher whose mother died. Her mother had that reindeer and the teacher keep it for years after her moms death before she gifted to me… I was very honored that she thought I’d get it and get her mom, also beloved teacher.. strange what meanings objects can have…

  31. When I was 18, a friend gave me a pouch of “Red Man” chewing tobacco. Note: I did not nor have I ever chewed tobacco. When I said “Oh, you really shouldn’t have! Why this?” he replied “I wanted to get you something you wouldn’t get for yourself.”

    Two decades ago my spouse gave me a toilet seat and an OSX upgrade for Christmas. Both things we needed but….I have never let him live this down. I buy my own birthday and Christmas presents now!

  32. The weirdest gift I got was at my Husband’s family Christmas party. When we were first dating I was invited to the party and didn’t know till it was time to open presents that it was secret santa. Apparently his older cousins picked me and got me some clothes, while that wouldn’t have been bad in and of its self they were clothes for a 12yr(I was 16 at the time and curvy) and definitely need more material( it was a crop top and a mini skirt). I told them thank you, and promptly stuck it in a drawer when I got home.

  33. Ducktaped jacket, ball. Brother got me a jacket but was being sneaky wrapped in a duck tape, into a ball. Unfortunately the jacket had nothing keeping the tape from sticking to it. The jacket wasn’t strong enough to not rip when the tape was removed. Was a nice jacket, unfortunately the holey look with one sleeve made it unwearable, Merry Christmas.

    Hope you all have a great one.

  34. Not strange so much as odd to me. I got this very fancy cold coffee setup that my 2 brothers bought for me. Telling me things like “we know you will enjoy this to make your morning coffee.”

    …I can’t stand coffee. Tried it once and never again. I’ve lived with these 2 people for over 20 years.

  35. every year a relative gets me [and my brother gets one too] a ‘hair & body wash’ kit, like, a set of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, sometimes it has a razor kit included. It’s never the same brand, nor any of the brands I actually use. Pretty sure they get them from the bargain bin. In the beginning it was insulting, and meant to be insulting. At this point, it’s just routine, and I roll my eyes at the pettiness of it.

    Funny thing is, they all eventually make their way to my mother’s house, where she unboxes them, and lines them up [by category] in the linen closet of the guest bathroom like a row of little soldiers waiting for that *one* guest who will call them into battle. I think maybe two of the body washes have gotten used. The forty or so other bottles are still waiting.

    • Oooh, I have family like that. They seem to have an allergy to shopping for boys – despite having ALL BOYS in their family. They gave my son babyish boy gifts – when he was 8/9. One card had a Thomas the train on it… He was like… WTF?
      We gave up, and he just says thank you, and puts it away.

    • Have you considered donating to a shelter? A lot of people experiencing homelessness would appreciate that stuff.

  36. The weirdest present I have ever gotten was a pair of socks.

    We use to go to my inlaws (father in law and step mother in law) house for Christmas eve every year and it was very noticeable that we are the outcast of the family. While my sister in laws received shoes and clothes and jewelry I got a pair of socks and that was it. I wasn’t mad they were great for skiing but still it was just strange. They also gave my kids very few gifts and things they were not into but the other grandkids got a lot so yeah my kids noticed that as well.

    This is also the same part of the family that bought my daughter a bunch of unicorn stuff for her birthday knowing that she is not a girly girl at all she loved dinosaurs at the time. Needless to say my husband and his dad got into an argument so now we don’t have to go to any holidays with them so yay us.

    • Didn’t you know? If you time those unicorns just right, all sinful impulses will be swept away by the love of sparkle….

  37. It was a valentines gift. My ex gave me a padded toilet seat that he wanted. He presented it wearing it around his neck.

    • I think this one wins. There are other gifts that are worse (like actual trash), but the presentation is what sets this one over the top. ????

  38. Have you considered Australia? I mean, everything here will kill you, but we don’t get tornados…

    • Have cyclone season up north in WA (Australia), can effect weather as far down as Perth however don’t have have the Texas infrastructure problems.

  39. I’m a ‘Can-Do-Girl’, so I always want tools for gifts. My favorites are the full set of Robo-Grips I got one Mother’s Day and the large Mag Flashlight I got several Christmas’s ago. Both are soooo useful in emergencies. I’ve had friends tell me, “That isn’t very romantic”, but when something breaks they always want to borrow my tools.

  40. My Grandma once gave my father a radio pen. He couldn’t get it to work, so he suggested she might return and get a refund as it didn’t work. She got a bit cagey.
    Eventually it transpired it was a freebie that came with an order from her favourite clothing catalogue, which she couldn’t get to work, so she’d give it to Dad. That was the only gift he got from his mother in law. We still laugh about it today!

  41. As a teenager, my mom got me a purple track suit. Because I like purple. -_-
    I do not run track, nor was I prone to jogging in the wee hours- when a tracksuit would not kill me via heatstroke in the Tucson heat.
    Also – as a new Florida resident. I say, get a place here! It’s fantastic. Though I miss seasons too. It’s been forever since I’ve known them. Haha

  42. In retrospective very funny, but for then teenage me really a drama: I was supposed to receive a beautiful pair of high heels *for dancing!), but then for christmas they were not among my presents. When I finally asked my mum (teary eyed), she’d just forgotten them. She used to hide all presents from us until she could decorate them under the tree and she’d hidden the shoes too well…..

    • My mom used to put codes on the presents so us 4 kids couldn’t tell which gift was ours. We started getting good at cracking the code (or she got tired of trying to think of clever ones). She stopped with the code when she forgot what the code was and we had to randomly open presents to see whose they were.

  43. The weirdest gift that I can think of right now is a bag of computer cables. They’re supposed to improve the network somehow…I think. It’s been explained to me several times, but I’m not tech savvy. I’m not having any trouble with the network, and although the gift giver knows his stuff, he also knows that I don’t. It would have been nice if he offered to set it up, as well. After two years, the cables are still in the gift bag.

  44. My strangest holiday gift was from my mother-in-law.
    I am currently 26. At the time of the gift, I was 22 and my daughter was barely 2 months old – it was Christmas.
    My MIL gave me anti-wrinkle cream. I STILL don’t have any wrinkles. I don’t know if she was trying to be kind and helpful by offering me some sort of anti aging serum because she thought having a child would instantly age me beyond my years, physically.
    I gave it to my sister. As someone recently pointed out, she looks older than she is and I look younger than I am. Meh.

  45. Hmm. Kona, HI has mountains, the sea, no hurricanes, no mosquitos, beautiful weather. Kinda expensive though. 1 season, and that whole volcano thing… OK, so maybe on a lake in east Tennessee. Lots of those there. 4 seasons, beautiful fall and spring colors, mountains, water… . Ok you convinced me. I’m going…

  46. The strangest, the most infuriating, the unforgettable birthday present my boyfriend got me was a puzzle of some sort where you had to move the stick the right way to take the message out of the bottle. He had to learn the hard way that I don’t like puzzles 😀

  47. For my birthday one year my mother-in-law sent me a box with a smaller empty box inside it.

    She’d bought a small jewelry box, took it out to make sure the catch wasn’t broken, and forgot to put it back into its package.

    Guess what she gave me that Christmas? LOL

  49. A little statue of a frog dressed as elvis… actually my husband got it. He doesn’t particularly like frogs or elvis, shrug….it made a great white elephant gift!

  50. I’ve been with my husband for 25 years. But our first Christmas celebrating with my family was strange. Our names are similar Andrea & Andrew and both of us go by Andy. It was hilarious when he opened my dress. He never missed a beat and thanked my parents,and said it matches his eyes.
    His family got me back by buying me that singing fish that about drove me nuts( it was possessed, and turn on randomly) Or they bought me the same cat socks 3 years in a row for Christmas.

  51. Weird Valentine’s Day gift 1: a wooden meat tenderizer and a thermos. I hadn’t asked for either ????????‍♀️
    Weird Valentine’s Day gift 2: two 2O gauge Ithaca shot guns. No, I don’t hunt or particularly care about guns. ????????‍♀️

  52. Last year, someone mailed me a bag of rocks for Christmas. They had been pilfered from a beautiful lake, and I was informed that I should put them under running water so their true beauty would show.

    It was an awesome gift. Months before, I had sent the gifter a random picture of a gorgeous lake with beautiful colored stones, and it turned out that they were exploring the countryside nearby. (We both live in very different states, I had no idea they would be there.) They decided to go camping by the lake for a few days and had a fabulous time. A unique and personal gift. I chuckle every time I imagine my partner opening the package to find a bag of weird stones.

  53. In our house growing up, we got underwear for Christmas. I always got excited for Christmas; but I don’t know why. We never got anything good.

    My mother-in-law (shortly after we got married) gave me an electric carving knife for my birthday. The next year she gave me a large soup pot for my birthday.
    Sigh…

  54. The year I was 14, my parents bought me toilet bowl cleaner.

    Other things as well, but also toilet bowl cleaner. The moral of the story is: when you are not materialistic and your family is, do NOT, under any circumstances get sarcastic about your regularly assigned chores AND your wish list near a gift-giving holiday.

  55. The strangest Christmas gift I ever got was one towel. In Dusty Rose. Not a beach towel or a bath sheet, one regular towel.

    It was from my aunt.

    From her sister, I got a dated photo album. As in dated two years earlier. Luckily, I had pictures from a trip from that year.

    Sigh

  57. Wierdest present- a very green suede coat with emerald green faux fur inside and lining the edges. I made the mistake of telling my mom i liked green, black, and blue. She didnt pick black lol I very much dislike standing out. It sits in my closet, and I tell her I still have it. Lol

  58. My now husband but then boyfriend once gave me a key ring for my birthday. It was a rubber nose that when squeezed, bright green snot would hang out of one nostril. That happened about 15 years ago and I’m still baffled!

    • I have that as an egg separator and it takes forever/barely works but it amuses me since I am 5 years old ????

  59. My husband bought me an electric pencil sharpener after we’d been married 20 years. Now 34 years later I’m still using it. It was a weird gift at that time, but has been useful over the years. Now I’m going to give him a kiss and thank him for it again.

  60. A “knit your own boyfriend” kit. It was meant to be funny. It was set aside quietly and an awkward silence descended.

  62. The weirdest was a tool kit and a ladder from my husband for our first Christmas. We had only been married about 3 months then and I had just discovered I was pregnant so I was confused maybe a bit disappointed too. Because I wasnt a DIY type of girl, which he knew and we had dated for almost 2 yrs before marriage. But he explained, his MSGT of his unit suggested it for all new spouses. Marines in his job deploy a lot and I was about to become a DIY woman whether I wanted too or not. I still have said tool kit, a few upgrades over the years and it really has been a life saver for me. I was also able to teach the kids some small self repair tricks that hubby passed on to me as well.
    When my oldest left for school in July part of his graduation gift was a tool kit, and a car kit.

    Ive had some really bad bday/Christmas gifts from my mother in law. (My bday is 5 days before Christmas). But I know she doesn’t like me and is passive aggressive so I just smile and say thank you.

    • We gave each of my daughters a tool kit for Christmas when they were 18. The eldest loved it, she’s very hands on and ended up becoming an engineer. The other two thought that it was a weird Dad thing to shove in the back of the closet, but since then (about 18 years) they have all appreciated having those tools and the ability to fix little things when they needed to. Well, at least this Dad thinks so. ????

  63. I have a serious snake phobia. When I have nightmares it’s snakes. My dreams of Florida died with the anacondas and pythons there. Have you seen any rattlesnakes in Texas?

    • Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but yes, Houde Andrews have come across rattle snakes, small ones though which wouldn’t have been too dangerous (does that make it better?).
      Scorpions are the real problem however, so many scorpions!

      • Small rattlesnakes, whether young ones or just the small varieties like Massasauga rattlesnakes, are actually at least as dangerous as the large ones. Two reasons: the poison is just as strong at birth as in an elderly rattler, and the little snake rattles are MUCH quieter, so you don’t realize they are underfoot until it is too late!
        As for the Massasauga rattlesnakes, they are quiet, and tend to hide under brush and like hot weather. A friend’s niece got bit, barely, but it was misdiagnosed as a spider bite because only one fang broke skin. A few hours later, after she was not getting better, they tried antivenin.
        This same friend got bit by a Massasauga the next summer when he was out in sandals mowing his lawn, but he knew immediately what bit him. He doesn’t wear sandals much any more, especially when doing lawn work.

  64. My husband gave me a farting hippo stuffed animal after I spent the entire month of December singing “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” I still love it.

  65. Strangest gifts:

    1) A men’s large, salmon-colored polo shirt, for my birthday. I was in my early teens at the time, and a medium-to-petite sized girl.

    2) An olive grabber (to assist in getting olives out of a jar when making cocktails), in my Christmas stocking, when I was about eight.

    The explanation? In both cases, these were intended for my grandfather, whose initials (KP) were similar to mine (KB). My grandmother would pre-wrap gifts ahead of time, and label them with small initials so she knew whose was whose…which mostly worked. ???? Fortunately we were able to get it sorted out, but I vividly remember my absolute bewilderment opening the packages in both cases.

  66. My great grandmother was famous in our family for giving “useful” gifts. All kids got a roll of nickels and a coloring book for Christmas. Adults got shampoo, Deodorant, kitchen towels, Toothpaste, etc. Every year.

    • When I was in college, I loved my care package Christmas gifts! They weren’t all I got by any means, but I was so excited to get those rolls of toilet paper and toothpaste, lol!

      I also got a box of pennies once from my stepmother…. But they were a box of wheat stalk pennies that her mom had saved (I collect wheat stalk pennies also), so it was a fabulous gift and very appreciated!

  67. So mine wasn’t a gift for a specific holiday but its still one of my favorites.

    My mom was a caretaker for an elderly woman for a while. She had two adult kids (I was almost an adult at the time). Her daughter was married to a very fun goofy guy. We liked a lot of the same things and got along real well.

    I don’t know what possessed him to do it but one day he handed me a book about famous mullets complete with pictures and everything. I laughed about it for a good 20 minutes before I took it home. Upon further reading, I discovered little notes in the margin hand written in ink.

    Apparently him and his brother would trade it off and give it to random people they met. It still sits on my bookshelf. ????

  68. If you want real North please move to Canada ???????? we have water, lakes, four seasons and maple syrup. Best of all worlds ????

    • Of course, spring, summer, and fall are only 1 month long each, but that does qualify as 4 seasons. 😉

      (I’m from northern lower Michigan, where winter sometimes lasted 8 months, so I figured Canada has to be about the same.)

      • We just had a long weekend with the Minnesota kids, near the Twin Cities. Twelve to nineteen inches of snow in 12 hours.

  69. For Christmas several years ago my mother gave me a book about “dealing” with turning 40.

    I had just turned 35.

  70. Potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, nightshade vegetables can cause hand pain/arthritis. We tried cutting them out of our diet for two weeks and our hands got better.

  71. Ok so one year when I was a kid I got my stepmother’s teddy bear as a Christmas present. I know it was hers, as she always kept it on her bed after it was made. But it was from Santa, so that was the year I found out about Santa. I don’t know if it was their way of telling me or what, I never asked why she gave it to me. But on another note here, thank you for sharing so much of your life and everyday things that go on in your family! It makes me feel so connected to a favorite author! You are the only author I know who is so open and friendly with your fans like this!! I love to see that!

  72. I married someone once. It was a mistake. But, during the 5 years we were married, he bought me one gift, for Christmas. It was a yellow wool sweater. As it happens, yellow is my least favorite color, and I’m allergic to wool. It really highlighted how little I mattered to him.

  73. I love that you say ‘gird your loins’. I never hear it in Oklahoma and when I say it my kids think I’m saying something pornographic. No weird gifts here. I hate the heat of the is region. Merry Christmas!!
    Or Happy Holidays!! Whichever you go for!!

  74. My husband’s grandmother routinely gathers crap from around her house and throws them in a gift bag for us. One year he received a $1 store Duck Dynasty hat (we despise reality tv), and I got an unwrapped kitchen sponge. He also got a children’s toy from a box of cereal. I’ve been given a moth and mouse eaten slip dress from the ’20s that would have fit me when I was 12. She is in full possession of her faculties, so it’s not dementia. She just rummages around and puts trash in a bag and we have no idea why. She’s a lovely person, too.

  75. My family works with wish lists for birthday and holiday gift giving, so almost every present I’ve ever gotten is something I expressly wished for. That includes the Star Wars and Harry Potter knitting books I got for my birthday, and that I have yet to touch because I can’t knit very well

  76. My husband’s old baby clothes from the early 80s. Not nice suits and vintage stuff-old stained play clothes and things that wouldn’t be worth keeping for this long. This was given to me for my then-18 month old daughter. The clothes were size 9-12 months. They were also folded very neatly into old Maison Blanche clothing boxes.

  77. I went back to college in my mid 30’s. Worked really hard on that degree. Got a vacuum cleaner for graduation from my then-husband. Just one of the many reasons he is the ex-husband….

  78. One year I got a “doorstop.”
    It was a brick — like, a real, rust-red brick — that had been sealed up inside that thick, stiff plastic mesh that is used for needlework. Then, they had stitched on an image of a chicken. Not a weirdo chicken with a sense of humor. But a sitting-on-the-eggs chicken.

    I was about 14 at the time.

    Recently, I took up embroidery. Some of my stuff has been nice, although I’ve exclusively done kits. Nothing too original. My friends keep asking if I’m giving any of it away. I think back to the Christmas Doorstop Chicken and say “No” and put my embroidery pieces in the drawer I have designated for their storage.

    • When you are ready to move beyond kits, coloring books have simple patterns you can fill or outline with almost any stitch and color. Hard to mess up. I have done flowers, dragonflies, rocket ships, planets, etc. for quick projects. Can be a good way to use up random thread.

  79. The family classic story is the box of rubber bands my sister got for my dad. He loved it and used to hang them on the leaves of his rubber tree. For me my mother in law used to send me clothes that either were way too big or not my style. Some times hand me downs, but always very good quality. The best was the lime green, vintage denim sequined pant suit. It fit perfectly.

  80. Omg, I was mentioned, I’m famous! ::dies::

    Regarding the zoom thing, my husband is always a black square with his name. He can’t be bothered to change out of his sweats and his work photo is 16 years old, and so he refuse to show his face.

    The weirdest gift I gave my husband was a quality soldering iron, comes with a stand and adjustable temperature. He loves it, and even though it’s not romantic per se, he gives me a sappy grin every time he uses it.

    And last Christmas I got a Nintendo switch for my Christmas gift, since I mentioned buying one for my-video-game-playing-husband for his gift, he decided to buy it for me. So I own the Switch which he now plays on when we travel.

  81. Moving gets so much harder as you get older. Plus, your kids tend to see you as storage for all their stuff. 🙁 My sis is ill and moving onto our farm, moving all her stuff has been a challenge and she’s really the opposite of a hoarder, she throws all the things away.

    Strangest but one of the most excited gift I ever got one birthday, I’d say a multi-wormer set up for the sheep. After trying to draw up 15mg of individual wormer for 15 sheep, the bottle on back multi wormer set up was a godsend. Especially now with 42 sheep.

    On moving, we did live outside of Charlottesville, VA for 6 years, too much snow. John had to drive across Afton Mountain for hospital rounds at the second clinic, When he got stuck 3 times crawling home taking 3 hours for a 45 minute trip we moved further south. I know you guys have lived in NC before but it’s a long state, maybe the eastern end would be more to your liking. We still get 4 seasons, but not as much snow or cold, slightly west of here {i95 corridor } I think you’d avoid most of the inland hurricane stuff.

  82. When my brother and I were young many moons ago. I was either 8 or 9 he was 6 or 7. He bought me some rubber Alligators and snakes that came with a bigger one and a small one. He was so excited to explain that the big ones were the mommas. I was bummed at first because I wasn’t into rubber alligators and snakes, but he wanted to play them so we did and it was a good time. I had kept the baby snake for many years as a reminder.

  83. Until this chain started, I forgot about the year my SIL gave my kids an iguana for Christmas. No tank no heater nothing but an iguana in a cardboard box. We made an emergency run to PetCo or the poor thing would have died from the cold. I probably spent $50 to get the poor thing safe. We have lots of other animals but no reptiles.

  84. I didn’t think it was that weird but my father laughed when I asked for a battery charger and jumper cables for Christmas after I first got a car when living on my own. Thirty-five or so years later, I still have both, and both have gotten a fair amount of use over the years, including giving more than one stranger’s car a jumpstart. Probably helpful to add that I live in Minnesota, and batteries that are good enough in the warm months sometimes just don’t have the juice needed when cold weather hits.

  85. Every year, my grandmother gives my sister and me a check for $50 and a package of dollar store knee highs, which I have never in my entire life worn. No reason or rhyme, just a box filler. I always regift them back to her, lol.

  86. Not strange, but rudest. My father in law bought me an apple watch for Christmas and said, that way it can help you lose weight. Mind you, I wasn’t actively trying to lose weight, so thanks.

    The look on my husband’s face was priceless. He couldn’t decide whether to run away to hide or stay and witness a murder 😉

  87. My best weird Mother’s Day gift ever:
    My husband took our 2 year old twins and the dogs to his brother’s house for the weekend, so I could paint our bedroom.

    I was a stay at home Mom, but for some reason the rest of the family was baffled and a bit offended that I didn’t want to spend Mother’s Day with my children. I painted the room, drank wine, played computer games and ate junk food. By myself. It was awesome.

    • Not me! When my kids were little several years on Mother’s Day, I would go clothes shopping for me, especially for stuff I needed to try on. When your a stay at home Mom sometimes shopping can be tricky or painting a room without little people underfoot ????

  88. I once got 5 bags of well rotted horse manure for my birthday -it was what I asked for. My roses were wonderful that year.

  89. My poor brother got a fish bag for Christmas. No, not a fishing creel; it was a white vinyl full-sized fish-shaped zippered bag with a photorealistic trout printed on the side of it, and a shoulder strap. Nobody knows why.

  90. I win this contest, hands down! My mom always bought practical stuff like underwear for gifts. She clearly grabbed it out of the clearance bin without looking closely, because one year my adolescent self got a pair of lacy red undies with a large black zipper down the crotch. She. Was. Horrified.

    On the other hand, I got a great story and no more underwear for Christmas. Win win!

  91. The strangest, is really the most obnoxious gift. I had a baby just a few weeks before Christmas, and my husband was going to be TDY (military term for gone for a month) over Christmas, so he gave me some ankle weights and a jump rope for Christmas. It was not appreciated to say the least! Funny now…sort of.

  92. One Easter, after I had left home and moved into my own home, I told my mother I was not too old for Easter eggs. I didn’t get one. Instead she gave me weed killer for my lawn – and applied it for me. Of course, being Easter, the weeds all came back to life the next year

  93. My most practical and rubbish Christmas present was from my dad. In his typical fashion, he thought practical for my car was a good idea. Not something like new wiper blades, or seat covers, or say money towards upkeep (which would always be welcome!) No, he gave me an air freshener and a shim to wipe the inside of the windows. I was around 28 at the time. And I can’t have air fresheners in my car because any strong scent sets off my headaches. He knows this because it’s the reason my mum can’t burn her candles in any room I’m in.

    (Should probably add, it wasn’t the only gift he gave me that year but still.)

    • I am very sensitive to migraine triggers like scented sprays and candles, too. I can relate to hating getting stinky gifts from people who haven’t thought it through or don’t know you very well.

      • I have no problem with REAL fragrances…..like oranges, cinnamon, amber, or my all-time favorite, Oud Wood (google it, its amazing!)
        But i hate, loathe and despise things from B, B & Begone ….the smell can drive me out of the house!

    • Fragrance intolerant as well. Knowing this, one of coworkers gave me a scented candle for Christmas -_-

      I can’t even celebrate anything with family because someone always wears/uses something scented. Holiday peace though:)

      • The artificial cinnamon spray on pine cones in net bags that pop up in grocery stores starting in late October. Immediate wheezing and headache.
        Real ground cinnamon for baking, or cinnamon sticks for hot apple cider, no problem.

        • Same here. Natural cinnamon is lovely, but those artificially scented pine cones are a menace. Here in Southern California they are everywhere-craft stores, big box home improvement stores, home stores, grocery stores. Within minutes of being exposed my eyelids are swelling and my sinuses are swelling shut. I have been known to take one look at them near an entrance, turn around, and leave. The worst is when I see them placed close to the registers and no way to avoid them.

  95. Strangest Christmas present- a 1/24 scale blacksmith shop diorama kit. One that I had to build, paint, and display.

    At the time I was going to school to be a blacksmith, so the connection was there, but I have never had any interest in building miniatures of any kind- let alone the patience to do so!

    I still have it stashed away, and perhaps when I retire it’ll be something that interests me. But I occasionally come across the box and wonder all over again why they gave it to me.

  96. My first Christmas married to my husband, he and his two brothers received kaopectate (spelling?) and batteries. From their parents!!

  97. The strangest/worst “Christmas gift” I have ever received was the year an aunt sent everyone these anti-evolutionism (pro-creationism) books, along with a bunch of anti-gay religious tracts (i.e., “homosexuality is a choice/sin,” etc.) to my family in particular.

    I thought about it, and in response I made a $100 donation to Lambda Legal in her name/honor, and thus for several years she was on one of the gayest mailing lists in the United States.

    She never sent us homophobic religious propaganda ever again.

  98. TLDR: My brother and sister-in-law broke our Christmas tradition and asked us all to buy gifts for each other, all so they could give me a photobook of my big race accomplishment because apparently, congratulation gifts aren’t a thing and they have to be reciprocated.

    My family has agreed not to buy each other gifts for like the last decade—since we are all adults. And even when grandkids came into the picture, we only bought gifts for them. Well, one year, right before Thanksgiving, I completed an Ironman distance triathlon. It was something I’d been working on for a year and was a huge accomplishment.
    Soon afterward, my brother and sister-in-law said they wanted to do presents at Christmas that year. So, suddenly, after years of no presents, we all had to figure out gifts to buy each other last minute. In the end, we found out, the reason why they asked us all to buy gifts was because they decided to buy me a photobook (with photos my sister-in-law took) of my race, and they wanted it to be a Christmas gift instead of just a congratulations gift for my race.
    And, since it was last minute and we don’t buy gifts for each other, my husband and I ended up giving them $200 cash. So basically, I ended up buying my own photobook.
    It’s not that it was a bad gift. It was just the need for everyone to suddenly buy gifts for each other because they couldn’t fathom just buying a gift without getting something in return. It was strange.

  100. For our fifth anniversary, hubby gave me an Emily Post Book of Etiquette. I didn’t know he knew she existed, but Southern born and raised? I did. I was more bemused than insulted. We’ve been married 48 years now. He never got me anything like that ever again. He’s trainable.

  101. All of these are funny! For many years my father and my grandmother (his mother-in-law) would exchange the SAME bottle of Milk of Magnesia. It first started as his dig to her for reaching a Significant Birthday. She kept it, and returned it to him when he reached his. Their birthdays were close enough to Christmas it made sense to save it for then. It went on for MANY years.

  102. Probably the plush frog tissue box holder sized to fit the small square boxes, but my great aunt also gave me a box of man sized tissues to go with it. This is the same aunt who gave me a large, plastic chip Road Runner for the wall when I got my MS in computers, then proceeded to give my sister a computer when she got her Master’s in Special Education.

  103. My mother-in-law gave my husband and me a large box of black Sharpies (markers) and a box of Slim Jims (jerky) for our wedding. She was… less than pleased about our union.

    • I had a birthday a week before my wedding. My in-laws gave me a set of luggage, I always wondered if that was a hint that they would like me to go away.

      • I guess I should have said ex-inlaws . . . the marriage didn’t last until the 2nd anniversary.
        And the luggage was total crap.

      • I had a birthday two weeks before my wedding. My MIL gave me a tiny little purse, not my style or color, with cheap lingerie inside. Still married 23 years later. I love her but our styles are completely different. We were a lot happier once she decided the kids were “too old” for clothes and Christmas and gave them checks instead.

    • One of my brothers gave another a wedding gift of a snail serving set, little porcelain snail shells with a dimpled porcelain tray to hold them. He didn’t like our soon to be in-law, and still doesn’t some fifty years later. I thought it was funny, but then I’m not fond of her either.

  104. A clothes dryer, but I was expecting our first child and we were living in the UK at the time, so I actually was thrilled to receive it.

  105. About the hand – I’m so sorry. I had carpal tunnel in my R hand. I worked a job where I needed that hand to be fully functional 24/7, and I had of course abused my hands at work and at home like any pig headed person would. It got to the point where it was hampering me at work a lot. Dr visit revealed that one of the leetle teeny bones in the hand (carpals) had lost all its cartilage, so when I had carpal tunnel release surgery, they also removed that little bone. I now have 3 very tidy scars, very moderately decreased range of motion, and…. no pain! I am 6+ years post surgery, and I’m only sorry I didn’t get it done earlier.
    Made 926 cookies for Christmas gift boxes and no pain….

  106. As we got older, my family decided to draw names and we would exchange 1 gift on Christmas. 7 years in a row, whoever got my name, got me an orange scarf.
    It was funny for the first three years, after that it just felt lazy and a bit mean, but as long as they got their laughs I was supposed to be okay with this?

    • I’d regift it:(

      My pet peeve is my sister in law who has money insists on exchanging gifts. Everyone set a limit on $20/person. Mostly we exchange gift cards. I give to her and my brother a $20 gift card each. She gives me a $20 GC from the both of them.

  107. My strangest gift was a knitted pantsuit that couldn’t be hemmed. I’m five ft. two. The pantsuit would have fit someone 5 ft. 10. I wore the scarf, the sweater, and used the purse. I donated the pants to goodwill.

  108. The cut up, partial, lining from a man’s vest and a melted spatula. From my aunt. Very nicely gift wrapped. I did not write a thank you card that year.

  109. The strangest gift I can remember is once my Dad gave my Mom a cemetery plot for their anniversary. After she got over the rage, she decided it was romantic because he was committed til “death do us part” and beyond.
    He also gave her a toilet seat once but that’s another story.

  110. Around 8 years ago for Christmas I was shocked by a huge box when “Santa” gave me a 3D printer.
    I needed a 3d printer to make… nothing.
    He’s so wonderful to think I could make it work.
    I tried and tried, then returned it. That’s when I found out how freaking expensive it was.
    He’s a ????.

  111. Strangest gift: Musical panties from my grandmother. Same tech as the singing greeting cards. I was not impressed. Took them back to university dorm with me, where they starred in some fantastic practical jokes. The last one, we festively decorated a male friend’s door with them in a starring role in the center. The friend came tromping in with his super conservative mother. Horrified, he snatched them off the door and threw them in the trash bin. Another dorm resident who had been celebrating the new year, dumped a beer in there. About 3:00 am, the panties began playing a slow, dirgelike, creepy version of “Jingle Bells” amplified by a metal garbage can, freaking out an entire floor of 18-20 year old boys. Good times.

  112. One year my mother “gave” me a trip to the vet to have my dog’s anal sacs squeezed. I had never heard of such a thing at the time and was flabbergasted and grossed out after hearing her explaination of the process. I want to mention the my dog did NOT need this done, but she had a dog at the time who apparently needed this done often and she was thinking I was being a bad dog mommy by not taking my dog in regularly for this procedure.

  113. One year my parents gave me shot glasses they got in Spain, that when clear liquid is poured in them, pictures of naked people appear in the bottom. They liked the shock value, thought is was funny and knew I would too.
    Last year my husband bought me the title of Baroness of Sealand.
    I’ve had fun using both.????

  114. My strangest gift was one I gave, not one I got.
    My dad was the hardest man to get a gift for *ever*. (In desperation, one year I gave him trees – a magnolia for Father’s Day and a paper-shell pecan for Christmas.)
    But the present that *got* him was a baby food jar full of assorted marbles. He looked puzzled, until I explained that he needed to always know where it was. That way, no one could ever say he’d lost *all* his marbles. (We were a lot alike.)
    I still have it, jar and all, on a shelf in my dining room…

  115. For the last 7 years I’ve lived abroad. Like 12 hours flying on 2 planes abroad. I always come home for Christmas.
    I would love Amazon gift cards. I sometimes don’t turn on a tv for 6 months, I just read. But all of my family considers that a full and boring gift. It has to be stuff. That has to go back with me. My parents in the last years have seemed to make it a sport to find something bigger each year that I would have to haul back in my suitcases. Which also had new shoes and new clothes as there was no decent quality where I lived. Plus there’s certain foods that had to come.

    The lego set at least broke up into loads of little baggies so kind of was ok as a filler. My absolute favorite was the year I was given a can-shaped outdoor fridge. And yes, I fit that into my luggage and stayed under weight. I am the queen of packing!!!

  116. When I was 10 I was being a total brat. This was about 2 weeks before Christmas and I kept hearing Santa would know. I woke up to switches and coal in my stocking. Freaked me out! My Mom acted freaked out too ( I later learned she did it) and I was the best kid ever after that!

  117. The strangest gift… a plastic nose for holding eyeglasses! It was the family fruitcake aka joke gift for the year.

  118. What’s the strangest Christmas, holiday, or birthday gift I have ever gotten? a pig
    Worth noting: I am from southern New York, raised in an urban environment – I have never lived on a farm or anything like that.

  119. One year my husband bought a clock for me for my birthday.

    It is wood, very large, very dark brown, and it has a picture of The Shire from the Lord of the Rings wood burnt into it.

    I don’t know why he bought this. I have read all of Tolkien’s works, but I’ve read all of LOTS of things. I’m not into burnt wood items and I’m not into The Shire. We were in New Zealand for four months and I couldn’t be bothered to go two hours to see the original “Shire” with the little houses with round doors where the movies were filmed. I don’t like dark things on my walls. We didn’t need a clock. So yeah. Strange.

    • I can see that and raise. I hinted to my new husband (we were both in our 50s, widowed, and then found each other) that I would like a bikini trimmer for Christmas. Being a guy, and somewhat clueless, he put it on the list for his son to buy for me, thinking it was just some kind of electronics. So, my adult step-son gave me the bikini trimmer for Christmas. I haven’t used it yet.

  122. I grew up in Virginia and it’s a great place to live. Lake Anna has some nice houses for sale. We’re looking for our retirement spot and my niece just got married at Lake Anna, so it made it to the Zillow list. My parents lived on Lake Monticello not far from Charlottesville. It’s a gated lake community, but it’s very economically diverse and my folks were happy there.

    Also there’s Lake Gaston which is in both VA and NC. Nice homes there as well.

    Great story about how you and Gordon met. 🙂

  123. I got a beautiful salad shooter one year from my husband. It seems the TV commercials brain-washed him that year.

  124. One year my dad, who did not buy us (my 2 sisters and I) Christmas gifts – Mom did all the shopping, got each of us a gift. He was very pleased to tell us we were getting coal for Christmas any time we were bad – I was maybe 9 or 10 at the time. And that is what he gave us, mine is a beautiful elephant carved out of a large chunk of coal.
    And one year, from my husband I received a rifle and pearls for my birthday.
    I really like all of my “unusual” gifts.

  125. Our first wedding anniversary my husband bought us the PLAC card for the library system in next county. Far superior library as they made the funding of their library a specific part of their tax code. It was such an amazing gift that we repeat it every year on our anniversary.

  126. Weirdest holiday gift is probably a tie between when my brother gave me a membership to the National Zoo (in Washington DC) (I live in Iowa and did not have the funds at the time to be traveling to any zoos, not even the ones in Chicago or Omaha). It came with a stuffed panda bear that their dog stole before they wrapped the gift. OR, a white elephant exchange where I got an artichoke branch. Same Christmas, actually. And come to think of it, both were from my brother. (To be fair, most gifts from him and his wife are WAY better than this).

  127. Strangest gift I’ve ever gotten….This may not qualify, since it was a regifted (yes, i could tell, there was a GOODWILL price tag!) wedding gift.

    Are you ready?

    It was a fish skeleton, welded out of 1/8″ steel rods, painted “rusty yellow” with hooks to hang your coat on. It was 3 feet long, and NO. It. Was. Not. On. Our Registry.

    I gave it back to Goodwill.

    Speaking of the very carefully done registry, which had useful and much-anticipated gifts ranging from $10 (wooden drawer dividers) to $45 (place setting of my china)….For some reason, most of the guests seemed to use it as a “No, don’t buy that” list

    Go figure.

  128. My husband gave me a tree trimmer for Christmas once. It was the kind with the long pole with a curved saw blade at one end and pull ropes to operate the small branch lopper. I loved it until we loaned it to a neighbor and she got it stuck so high up in one of her trees none of us felt like risking our lives to climb up and try to get it. For all I know it’s still stuck somewhere up in that tree.

  129. A semi-truck cab. We are converting a school bus to an RV, and we pulled seats, ducts, doors and an air-horn out, cut the leftover frame up, and sold that back to the scrap yard. A weird gift, but the excitement on his face when he presented this gift to me was enough to make me fall in love with him all over again ????.

  130. One Christmas about 18 years ago kid 2 (who was about 8 at the time) thought he was being a funny guy by replying, when asked what he would like Santa to give him for Christmas (mind you, he was in the know), “world peace”. Every. Single. Time. Christmas morning, kid 1, nice little pile of gifts, kid 3, nicer pile of gifts, kid 4, again, nice pile of gifts, kid 2, 1 little Ziploc quart sized package (you see where we’re going with this?). He opened it up to find a nice little note that said “I heard you wanted whirled peas for Christmas-hope you enjoy! Merry Christmas!” His whole face fell & he got this holy shit what have I done look on his face. I voted to wait & make him watch everyone open their gifts but my husband took pity & went over & opened the closet door where Santa left his gifts. Hmm. Never happened again.

  131. My husband bought the exact same pair of earrings two years in a row! Actually he does better with appliances. He bought me a combination griddle, panini, waffle pan. I thought he was crazy but I love it and use it all the time.

  132. My birthday is today, Dec. 13th. December birthdays suck. When I was in college, my mom would give me Christmas wrapping paper, tape, and bows for my birthday, so I didn’t have to buy stuff to wrap the family gifts. I might still be bitter about that. *december birthdays suck*

    • My mom’s birthday is 3 days after Christmas. My brother’s is New Years Eve. My dad and I always made sure to get them separate, good presents for each occasion because we thought it sucked that too many December birthday people would get one combined gift or one good one and one cheap one.

      • My birthday is the 16th, so 9 days before Christmas. It works out well for me now… I’m the only one who generally gets a physical gift because the family brings my presents to the Xmas gathering. Everyone else pretty much gets gift cards for their birthdays.

    • I hear you. I emphasize. And January birthdays stink, too…cus the bills from the Holidays are now due…ask me how I know. 😉

    • December birthdays ARE hard! My niece’s, my mom’s and my dad’s birthdays all line up with dates around Christmas: the 23rd, 27th and 29th. We make sure they each get separate birthday cards and gifts (wrapped in bday paper, NOT holiday wrapping paper), but I know it’s not the same. Plus, it’s harder to plan some kind of bday party because of the holidays (even before pandemic).

    • Christmas baby here. Yes, I agree completely! December birthdays are horrible. And I try to be especially good to other Dec & Jan babies. It’s tough in Dec to get together for parties and then everyone is broke in Jan.

    • For her birthday two years ago, I got my sister a mug that said “yes my birthday is in December, no you can’t combine it with Christmas.”

  133. I grew up on the water and I miss it. I was still in Texas, though. Rockport…it was a beautiful and magical way to grow up. Swimming in the ocean and laying on the sandy beach and fishing anytime I wanted as a child, because it was all practically in the backyard.
    I totally understand the draw to water.
    But your reasons for not moving to Florida are the very same I haven’t tried to move back to Rockport. It’s literally where Harvey LANDED:(

  134. For Christmas 2 years ago, my husband got me a fleecy llama suit zip up pajama number. It has yellow tassels on the ears, which are attached to the hood. In his defense, I’m always cold and he thought I’d be warm in it. But not my cup of tea!!! ????

  135. One birthday when I was turning 8 my mom decided to order me this really nice Breyer stable. The only problem was she never sent in the payment and I spent a month waiting for it to come in and I never ended up getting any birthday present that year.

  136. In college, I roomed with a friend for our last two years. A few months after we graduated and went our separate ways, I received a package from her. Inside was a can of Zoo Doo (dried elephant dung sold by the Portland Zoo as a novelty fertilizer) and… a knife and fork. O_O No note of explanation. I had thought we parted as friends, so the implied message was rather perplexing. A few days later, I received a letter from her. “No! No! I didn’t mean it that way!” The fertilizer was for my plants. And she was just used the opportunity to return some silverware of mine that had gotten mixed with her things.

    The oddest present I ever watched unwrap was a large chunk of radioactive uranium ore. In a lead-lined box. With a Geiger counter. A family friend had been responsible for cleaning out science department storage at a state college. After accounting for all radioactive items in their inventory, he found there was this one extra rock. No having an approved way to dispose of it without a paper trail, he gave it to my dad. My dad was into mining history, rockhounding, and collecting exotic minerals.

  137. Heh, it wasn’t me, it was my nephew being a smart-ass, and it was brilliant! Last year, my nephew was asked by his brother-in-law what he wanted for Christmas. Smart-ass nephew quoted a fast-food order line from the GTA games, “I’ll have two number 9s, a number 9 large, a number 6 with extra dip, a number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese, and a large soda.”

    Well, Christmas came and Nephew opened his gift, started by pulling out a number 9, then another 9, then a big number 9, a number 6 taped to an individual cheese dip container, and so on, ending with a 2-liter bottle of Coke. He laughed SO hard when he realized what it was and brother-in-law got a huge laugh, too.

    He didn’t learn his lesson, either. This year when I asked, he quoted part of a YouTube video “What if Google were a guy (part two),” and asked for a pet Russian dolphin. I got a dolphin stuffed animal, made two little Russian flags from leftover felt, which I am sewing onto the dolphin stuffie. I hope he gets a kick out of it, but nothing will match last year. =) My nephew is definitely a smart ass. =)

  138. My ex-husband once gifted me a musical stringed instrument to use when I taught. I cannot read music, nor play an instrument. His girlfriend, however, was a music teacher. Yes, this was while we were still married, and yes, I knew about her. Worst gift ever.

    • I think you should win some kind of prize for that one. To make up for the trauma. As my best friend would say “and this is why he’s your ex.”

  140. Not really a gift, but a story about one. My Dad had gone to pick up some things at the local Kmart, including a new mop om had asked him to get when he ran into someoe from work. The guy asked my Dad about the mop and my Dad said, “We’ll, it’s my anniversary and I had to get my wife something.” The guy gives him a look and said, “I always get my wife something practical too.”

    I must say, of my parents, Dad was the romantic one. My mom kept track of the money and gave my Dad a couple of checks. He came home and told her the amount and said it was her anniversary present and she was convinced it was a new cook top. No, it was an opal ring be a use she wore opals at their we’d do g 40 years before.

  141. How about finger lakes area? We have lakes, no hurricanes, winters are getting warmer. It was 60 in december. Either way i love anything yall write.

  142. When I was 13 years old, my great-grandmother told me the gift she was giving me would change my life….I unwrapped a tomato corer. I still have it 2+ decades later, but it didn’t live up to the hype.

  143. A pepto-bismol pin sweatshirt with a color accurate orange and black Garfield hook rug design sewn on the front. I don’t want to hurt feelings but it was visually disturbing and front heavy. It was not with me long. If I had kept it, I could have added a red Santa hat on Garfield and worn for sweater day.

    Glad I reread….autocorrect to pesto-bízmelo. Abysmal would have been better

    • Pepto-Abysmal sounds right to me! Also not a fan of autocorrect. Every time work installed the next version of MS Office, I had to take time to dumb down the apps.

  144. A Platy station 4 that my husband and son took over . I never got to use it even though it was bought to play HD DVD’s!

  145. Let me begin by apologizing for the length of this post. My father is terrible at gifting. Many years ago for her birthday, he gave my mother a meat slicing machine (yeah, like the ones in the delis). She hadn’t asked for it, and we still don’t really know where he even found one. Another time when he was on a business trip to eastern Europe (back in the cold war days, somewhere behind the iron curtain) my mother had heard that particular country had beautiful lead crystal and requested that he bring some home. She was expecting a small vase, or a trinket. Instead, she got a large lump of crystal – like a crystal ball, but bullet shaped. It weighed somewhere around 22 pounds/10 kilos. His heart was certainly in the right place, but his execution was flawed.

    The rumor is that women marry men like their fathers. Back when my husband of 30 years was still just my boyfriend, he gifted me a tool set for Christmas. We were opening presents at my parent’s house, and he had wrapped each screwdriver and each set of pliers as well as a case for all the items. Please, don’t misunderstand – it was a lovely set of tools, very high quality, and he was so proud of getting me such a perfect gift. I was hoping for an engagement ring. My father was thrilled to pass the torch of bad gifting along to the next generation. We have now progressed to the point where we don’t buy gifts for each other on holidays. It’s safer that way.

  146. For Christmas one year, my mom got me some needlepoint baby clothes and a halloween cat. The clothes because I did cross stitch then but had not interest in babies and didn’t have any friends with babies or any on the way. I have no idea why she thought that I’d want a Halloween cat decoration for Christmas. She gives the most bizarre presents.

  147. I don’t know if it’s exactly weird, but it made for a crazy Christmas. My high school boyfriend gave me a large beautifully wrapped gift that growled and vibrated every time it was moved or nudged. It sat under the tree for three weeks and my very young nephew was terrified / delighted with it. (Much shrieking ensued) By Christmas morning, every small child in the neighborhood had been in our house to poke at the “monster present”. (More shrieking on a regular basis) Their mothers came to poke at it. (More shrieking) This drove me kind of crazy. Everyone was messing with this thing, and every time I tried to sneak and pick it up, it growled and told on me. I do not do anticipation well, and the boyfriend knew that. I poked it, shook it and tried to “accidently” rip the wrapping. I had to wait until Christmas evening to open it. Inside was a complicated battery-operated machine he had built himself. Hidden beneath it was a jewelry case with a small pair of gold heart shaped earrings. I still wear those on occasion, even though I haven’t talked to him since the late 80’s.

  148. When I was in college, my dad had lost his job and my mom went back to school, so money was a bit tight. For birthdays, we would always get at least one bigger or special gift that my parents were excited to see our reaction to. So, I open the box, wondering what it could be…and find about a year’s worth of the expensive prescription I used. She laughs, saying “now you can tell people about the year we were so poor, you got medicine for your birthday.”

  151. Strangest Christmas gift is a toss up between porcelain dolls (which freaked me out as a child and still do) and a mirrored box. I hate mirrors. Giving me a box made of mrrors? Thank you (and who can I regift this to?)

    • I can relate to the porcelain doll phobia, lol. In the 80s & 90s, my grandmother had her own workshop, complete with kiln and sewing machines, to craft her own porcelain dolls and clothes to sell, show, etc. My cousin Jenna swears she still has nightmares about “The Doll Room” in our grandmother’s basement, where dozens of sets of glass doll eyes set in pale faces would seem to watch and follow you.

      Of course all we girls in the family received porcelain doll gifts for birthdays or holidays. I remember being oddly happy about starting to lose my vision and needing thick glasses at maybe 7 or 8 years old, because it meant that at night in my bedroom I could not see the dolls “watching me” at night anymore with their creepy eyes!

      Everything faded to a distant pleasant blur instead, and they lost their power to scare me.

  152. Strangest holiday, birthday, or Christmas gift. Not so strange but one of my sister in laws made us the ugly sweater equivalent of stockings one year. I really felt torn about them. The only thing I collect are Christmas ornaments and decorations and it’s really the only holiday I decorate for. But I don’t have kids and am a bit… okay, a lot, anal about the decor. And I have beautiful stockings my mother got me years ago that I love. So there are these big bulky (like you could have fit a decent sized dog in them) long practically NEON red and green and white stockings with like a distorted Santa faces on them and it’s one of those moments when the only words that want to come out are “Oh! You shouldn’t have. You REALLY shouldn’t have.” But of course, you can’t say that. And I do knit a little so I KNOW that time and care went into them. And I just couldn’t bring myself to put them up. And I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. They just haunted the Christmas bins until I separated with my husband and I left them with him. I have to admit there was a measure of relief there.

  155. I know you didn’t have a good experience in South Carolina, but I live on Lake Keowee and it’s wonderful. If you want to go to Virginia, I hear Lake Anna is nice.

  156. Weird Christmas present…

    As a 13 year old girlie girl, my father bought me a propane welding tourch. He couldn’t understand why I wanted a pretty sweater instead.

    PS having lived in South Florida and someone who was born and raised in the Seattle area, I would vote for PNW over Florida…just a thought…

  157. I got a camp oven. Its heavier than my 2yo. I remember asking my husband to help with meal planning, or to get to the site early enough to start a cook fire while I watched the kids. He got me a camp oven that requires its own trip to load.

  159. My Great Aunt Judy was the elderly eccentric relative that makes a family interesting. When I was 7 or 8 years old, she gave me a sleeve of Solo Cozy Cup inserts. Not the cozy cups, but just the inserts. Heaven knows how long they had been sitting in her cupboard since they were a thing in the 1970s. Talk about awkward. I do remember thanking her and trying hard to pretend I was really happy with her gift. That is the strangest present I ever received.

    • I remember those. You really need to have the plastic cups for the inserts. Otherwise the inserts will topple over the first time you use them for liquid. They are great if you make snow cones. 🙂

      Still…it is a strange gift.

  160. Sigh. One of my former coworkers would hit the dollar stores all year long and pick up stuff that caught her eye. She would go home, throw everything in a giant rubbermaid tote, and when an “occasion” came around, she would hunt through it to find “the perfect gift” for someone. She insisted we exchange gifts, so I would try and find something nice at around the $50 mark, because I can’t give something I wouldn’t want to get. One time a nice throw blanket, one time a leather journal and matching pen, one time some headphones. The gifts I got in return? A Justin Beiber lanyard with matching stickers and picture book (I was 45 at the time). A mini battery operated lamp with a broken shade. And the kicker was a really pretty scarf that when you opened it had moth holes in it – and for some reason a box of suppositories to go with it. Yeah. Good times.

  161. I learned how to make socks the year my daughter was seven. I still wasn’t very quick at the point I decided I would make her a pair of socks for Christmas. Come Christmas Eve I had one complete sock and one still on the needles. So I wrapped just the finished one. The look of profound confuzzlement on my kid’s face when she opened that present was a gift to me.

    She did receive the second sock prior to New Year’s.

  163. As a birthday present one year my best friend arrived at the bank where I was working as a teller with a long white florist box with a big red bow on it. All my coworkers were sure I was getting beautiful long stemmed red roses. He brought the box up to my teller window and waited while I opened it. My coworkers expected me to be thrilled when I opened the box, but I was obviously shocked at the contents until I remembered a phone conversation from several weeks earlier I’d had with my friend. He’d called when I was busy baking and I had just realized I didn’t have enough flour for the cake I was trying to make. He’d been asking me what I wanted for a gift and I’d replied “a five pound bag of flour.” Sure enough, he paid a florist to place his five pound bag of flour in a fancy florist presentation box! He was laughing, my coworkers were puzzled why he gave me flour, and I was mortified! I did take the flour home and use it, though.

  164. Come to Maryland! I’m not from here, but I truly love it and won’t leave if I have any choice.
    My uncle (in TX) had a gardenia plant mailed to me for my birthday. In December. In Pennsylvania. In a tiny apartment with little natural light. And I have trouble keeping air plants alive. The poor thing never stood a chance! I want desperately to keep plants alive, and I take it very personally when they die. He essentially gave me anxiety for my birthday. It’s the only time I’ve ever asked someone to stop sending me gifts.

  165. I received a gift and I don’t know what it is. It has a nice brass ring like a keychain but larger. It has a leather pom pom thing, about 4” long strips of leather, and is an odd yellow-green-puce color. It has a second smaller key ring with a leather tag with my initials attached. It is about the size of my hand. It looks like it is expensive. It is hideous.
    It is from my boss for
    Christmas. I want to ask “What? Why?, and WTFFF!, but that could be embarrassing. I am the only female on my team. My boss is female.
    I want to ask the guys what they got, but that might be considered tacky, And also embarrassing if they do know what it is.
    I am going to donate it and hope someone with my initials has a use for it.

    • You should post a picture of it! Maybe someone on here will know what it is. Offhand, I would guess one of those bangle things that you attach your wallet or clutch to so you don’t have to hold it? Maybe? ????‍♀️

    • Sounds like a fancy luggage tag, they are supposed to be eye-catching so you can spot your bag on the carousel, and then its also personalised with your initials. Were you planning a trip?

      Getting an ugly gift from someone when they’ve gone to some expense or care is so much worse than getting just something random . Hopefully it finds its person!

  166. Maybe you could try long-stay Airbnbs or the like in different parts of the country to see what suits you.

  169. The year I turned 7 I opened a gift from my sister and was so excited the box was a Barbie dining table set. I opened it and it was empty. I started crying I was so crushed. She then hurried and got the dining table that she had taken out of the box for a joke. I did not think it was funny. Neither did my mom. Although eventually I was able to laugh about it I still remember the heartbreak of an empty box.

  171. I hope your cooktop transition goes smoothly. My favorite authors don’t need anxiety.

    I don’t get very many presents – I mostly get gift cards for Barnes & Noble when I get anything. I used to get a lot of suitable for age by sex stuff. As long as it wasn’t white or frilly, I could deal. There were a couple of people who used to buy me jewelry with opals. I still have some of those – I like opals. But I honestly can’t think of anything I’ve ever been given that would qualify as strange, which is odd, considering the number of people I’m acquainted with who think I’m weird.

  172. My mother was living with me recuperating from cancer treatment until she could have a Feb scheduled operation. She died suddenly of a heart attack on Jan 3rd in 2016. As her only child I had to plan the funeral, find the insurance policies, call friends/family etc. I told my father & his wife (mom 2) & they all drove 4 hrs with 3 my half brothers in tow. They took me out to dinner after the wake on Jan 8th & passed me the bill for my portion of the meal. The funeral was the following after on Jan 9th & they asked me to cook brunch for them since they were staying in a motel. My best friend talked me out of it as we had been frantically cleaning my house (where my mother moved in all her belongings) to host the reception as I was unable to afford a hall.
    Oh yeah: my birthday is Jan 10th, & I was supposed to be happy that they showed up & that I was paying for my own dinner & birthday cake.

    • That’s terrible. I’m sorry for your loss and that you went through that. They could have at least treated you to a meal, damn.

  173. A container of tooth picks. At a work secret Santa party. For my first Xmas as a married woman my husband of 11 days gave me an electric hand mixer. I was taken aback, but honestly it was a great gift, it lasted 35 years of regular use.

  174. When I was in my twenties, I helped my sister peel those little red potatoes. I was using a vegetable peeler but it slipped and I sliced off a bit of the tip of my index finger. I don’t remember being dramatic, in fact I think I suffered in stoic silence. (Mostly shame, my mom had warned my sister I couldn’t be trusted around sharp objects.)

    Over a decade later, I was gifted a reinforced glove designed to keep you from hurting yourself when cutting. Because of the potatoe peeler incident. Sigh.

  175. Strangest Christmas gift I got was from my brother in law (who continues to be the king of strange gifts). It was a No-No. You know those electric zapping hair removal thingys that was on infomercials years ago? He wanted one and it was a buy 1 get 1 free.
    I never used it but a family member wanted to try it. She said it zapped her and she could smell the burning.

  176. A ball of string … there is a photo of me going WTF? The next present from the same brother was a book abouts cat’s cradles, the string was both for the WTF moment, and so I could play cat’s cradles with anyone who would co-operate. I have five brothers, but no sisters. The string got used for everything except cat’s cradles, apparently boys don’t play cat’s cradles.

  177. Instead of a gift I’ve received, nothing can beat the unusual gift my mother received on her 18th birthday from her mother: a cemetery lot.

    Because once you’re a legal adult you have to prepare for your impending death.

    Luckily mom didn’t make that a tradition with my sister and I.

    • I’m a volunteer for my hometown museum. The area I live in has a multitude of Mennonite churches. One of our docents mentioned that in the 1850s, when a Mennonite girl turned 16, she was given a dower chest; one item that was ALWAYS included was a whole bolt of white muslin – to wrap her dead children, and possibly her own dead body, in.
      I get chills every time he tells that story. I know it was fairly normal back then, but still!

  178. Might I suggest Dragonspeak instead of typing. I write continuously and not fun stuff. Very technical and precise. I generally hit 50 to 60 pages a day. I moved to dragon about two years ago because.. well.. age+hands and though it took a month or so to “teach” it my style and lingo, we cruise right along now. I do still have to proof because English has all those pesky rules and sounds alike words, but it’s been a hand saver for certain!

    • Was it hard learning to “write” out loud? I’ve tried dictation and it feels really uncomfortable to me, because I don’t speak like I write, but I assume people adjust to it.

    • You can see ModR’s sharing of the link above when House Andrews tried that. I recommended voice to text to Ilona a long time ago, and it didn’t quite work out.

  179. As a kid I quickly learned gifts from my Dad’s sister were a mixed bag of crazy. ‘The thought that counts’ was quickly challenged in my young brain….’kinda wish I hadn’t been thought of’…but I knew better so I always said my, “thanks” out loud.

    Before I was 12 I had received the following Christmas gifts:
    – a broken, solar, calculator
    – 1 sock….no match…and I wasn’t brave enough to smell if it was a clean sock or not
    – an opened box of tissues, mostly gone
    – 4 promo shirts from her uncle’s candy store 8 sizes too large all the same color and design
    – a used dog toy

    The crazy, to me, part was that these gifts were wrapped, bows and all. I could never figure out why she would go to the trouble to box, wrap, and mail these things.

  180. Years ago a co-worker gave me(her boss) 12 of her old ratty play girl mags-not collectables, just her old ones. She was “interesting” to work with.

  181. Many years ago, we had a house in Pennsylvania. One year for Christmas my wife (who is handy, I’m not) wanted a table saw. The guys at the hardware store were: right, this is for your wife, right. But, she loved it and used it until we sold the house.

  182. Lots of love from Italy ❤️

    The strangest thing was a ball full of…nothing! There was this plastic clear ball and an explanation. It was a joke between friends, not acreal present.

  183. My strangest Christmas gift was a curtain tie back- singular. I don’t have single curtains at home only pairs. This tie back was also a bejewelled sparkly number, definitely not my style. And lastly… a tie back ????????‍♀️

  184. My husband gave me a Swiss army knife for Christmas many years ago. Back in those days we had a malamute sled team and I was moaning about not having anything to cut a dog free in case of an emergency. Best gift ever. It lives in my purse now and the only time I leave home without it is if we are flying.

  185. An electric toothbrush. Mom was a dental hygienist, and I still have bad memories about dental visits I had as a child. Anyway, it was supposed to be a very good toothbrush, but when you don’t ask for said toothbrush, you become very self-conscious about your teeth – even if you brush three times a day. My husband got one too. I mastered the closed mouth smile for all family pictures after that gift.

    • That reminds me of the time my dad gave me a gift of Crest Whitening Strips. I did not want or use them.

  186. Just chiming in from the Tri-Cities, WA.

    We’re in the PNW but we don’t burn. Surrounded by a ring of fire for three months every summer? Yes. Light on significant fire ourselves? Not yet.

    Plus, Patricia Briggs is here!

  187. Weirdest present – a home improvement gift card from my parents with a note attached, “this is a faucet in disguise”. Our first house was a fixer upper that immediately started falling apart even faster when we moved in. My mom lived across the country at the time, and happened to call right after the kitchen sink faucet cracked right down the middle, spraying water everywhere. So there I was, soaking wet, crying in frustration in my mostly dark kitchen (most of the lights had stopped working the previous month and we couldn’t figure out why), and my mom called to ask what we’d like for Christmas. I wailed, “A f&*%ing intact kitchen faucet!!!” Three days later, the gift card arrived. I loved that faucet. I almost took it with us when we sold the house years and years later.

  188. My aunt and I loved reading books. Her husband bought us books for Christmas but he swapped the gifts and I ended up with the bondage theme and my aunt got the illustrated fairytale books. I was maybe ten. They were both mortified when I opened my gift in front of the family ( who laughed themselves silly)…

  190. I’m confused about the propane cooktop. I never heard of using propane indoors! I live in Michigan, and our gas cooktop uses natural gas; the cooktop just hooks into our gas line. Do you have a line for propane or a tank you have to refill? Why are you nervous about using natural gas?

    • Same, this confused me too. I’m from NJ, and we tend to only have electric or natural gas stoves, never indoor propane. That seems weird as hell.

    • We have a big old buried tank. Once in a while, a nice gentleman from Bubba Got Gas comes over and refills it. It acts just like natural gas, meaning there is a line going into the house from the tank. 🙂

    • Natural gas is generally available in urban areas, while rural areas have propane. NG is transmitted through a web of pipes like water is, while propane is delivered by truck and pumped into large tanks, which are hooked up by a single underground pipe.

    • As for the NG versus propane, the two burn VERY differently. You have to switch out the orifices on all the burners to switch from one type to the other.

  191. I got a pair of baby shoes and a guide on raising a vegetarian baby from my mother. I did not actually have a baby, and it was a full decade before we decided to try from one.

    I recommend northern Germany! Definitely four seasons – I could never give up Autumn having grown up without one. As long as you aren’t right by a river (some of the recent floods have been tragic) there isn’t much trouble from climate change. I wish I could say the same of my original home in Tasmania, but Australia seems to be on fire every second year now.

  192. I got a pre-use breast pump… Mind you I was 18, not pregnant nor did I have I have a BF at the time. And my family thought this was hilariously funny.

    The lead up to this weird gift will make it clearer and still weird but funny. We use to do a junk gift Christmas swap for adults. (It was just too many people, 30+ adults, to buy for but this way the adults got a present to open at the party.) It’s where we get something that’s still useful but we don’t want and wrap it up and put it under the tree. Then we’d draw numbers and pick. The person who gets number 1 picks first, then number 2 and number 3 and so on into all the gifts are out. Then we open in number order but if number 2 like number 1’s gift better they can swap. And this repeats for everyone. Then at the end number 1 gets a final choice. Well that year I was left with a pre-used breast pump. Which, as part of the rules, you’ve got to take home before throwing out. There were a few gifts that went around family as they kept getting wrapped up. It’s all about the fun.

  193. Well, it would be nice if you come to Spain, we don’t have so many fires… (unless you go to an island with a vulcano, that is)

  194. It is not a strange gift, just a very memorable one. When I was a kid in the 70’s we would go to my maternal grandmothers house for Christmas. My sister and I had a cousin that was much older than us. He was about 12 years older. I never talked to him, I was very intimidated. But he gave my sister and I the same gift every year. It became the family joke because he never deviated. It makes so much sense to me now because what would a young man know what to give is younger baby cousins. We got a stack of coupons for Papa Ginos or McDonalds gift certificates. We did not have a lot of money back then so I know my mother used them and probably really appreciated them, even though we all joked about it.

  195. I am so going to win this one …

    My mother, in her infinite wisdom, once gave me a toilet brush, where the holder was shaped like a toilet, only made of porcelain with a blue and white willow pattern on it.

    Apparently it was funny ????????????

  196. My parents gave me a toilet seat one year for Christmas. My siblings and I all looked at them like they were crazy. In there defence, it was a nice wooden one that wouldn’t freeze my bum in the winter.

  197. A friend of mine decided to prank me and gifted me an ornament that randomly chirps when “activated” (and it activated by being hung and the weight transferring) I was in my mid-twenties and didn’t have a tree of my own, as I was recently divorced. Oblivious, I hung it on my parents’ Christmas tress, and waltzed out, heading back to my apartment.
    3 days later I receive a call from a set of slightly amused and slightly irritated people who had gifted me with birth telling me a tale of woe and confusion about a “cricket” that turned out to be my “special ornament” that had them rather bewildered for 72 hours. I couldn’t hide the laughter when I tried encourage them to look on the bright side and pointed out that as a retired couple, it’s not like they had a whole lot else to do other than hunt for a nonexistant chirping bug for a few days. Neither of my parents cursed… much… but that day might have been an exception.

  198. A broken toy machine gun. My father’s excuse, “Santa’s helpers were playing with it and broke it.”

    He didn’t realize the house furnace’s in draft not only opened in the living room, but also in my bedroom. Two of my uncles were in the military and made a surprise visit home. They brought presents with them. One of them said he wished he had that toy when he was a kid. Then a whirring sound and, “Bang your dead”. All at once every one of them said, It’s my turn”. I finally fell asleep.

    The spring was broken. I put the toy in my closet. I tossed it when we moved five years later.

  199. About your hands: is there a voice-to-text software you could use to write rough drafts? God knows the speech processors aren’t perfect, but it would probably spare your hands a lot of wear and tear on net.

  200. It wasn’t for me, but one Christmas my dad gave my mother instructions to a garbage disposal. Mind you not the actual disposal because he never bought it, but the instructions all wrapped up in a box. The other issue they can’t have a garbage disposal because of sewer issues. To wrap this all up my mom never got a Christmas present that year and I don’t let my dad forget it. He is much better 10 years later. Thankfully my husband knows better.

  201. Strangest gift. Hmmm. A small handful of colourful golf tees (I didn’t golf at the time) from my 2 year old daughter. My husband took her shopping (he did and does golf) and let her pick anything she wanted for Mommy in the golf shop.

  203. For Secret Santa one year, while working at a large, formal company, my dear colleague bought me a yodelling flamingo (toy obviously).

    I was pregnant at the time and had thought it was meant for the baby (still odd), but she very seriously told me that no, it was just for me.
    It is very loud and the neck twists round and round as it yodels.

    Several years down the line I still have it, as it reminds me of my friend.

    The kids hate it.

    • I wish I had seen this last week. We had a white elephant gift exchange and I totally would have bought one of these for it. Cause that’s just awesome.

  205. My husband gave me “The Chicago Manual of Style” for Christmas one year. He decided I should be able to edit his writing in a more professional manner. As a professional writer he could also take the book as a tax deduction.

  206. The now infamous potato necklace. My then mother-in-law either took or saw a craft demonstration of cutting up potatoes, drying and then painting potato pieces blue, then stringing them with silver painted plastic beads to (supposedly) look like turquoise. The hilariously ironic part of this is that I lived in AZ at the time where turquoise is easy to come by and not terribly expensive.

  207. This year I got an advent calendar that had freeze dried larvae dipped in cheese powder. That same calendar had a Lil’ Pooper finger puppet. It’s exactly what you think it is and is apparently a Holiday good luck tradition in Barcelona.

  208. Present? Ah, well. I would say that’s the year my SIL got everyone (even ex-BIL, her sisters ex husband) a really nice international trip and handed out tickets at Christmas. My husband and I were last at her insistence. We opened them together. I got an empty box and he got “Find the one you want, fix the one you got.” Then I got blamed for not having a sense of humor.

    When they went on vacation (now-ex also went because his ticket was in the book), I got to take care of her sister’s plants.

  209. Growing up my mom would fill stockings for my sister and me. Candy and silly little things with the occasional piece of jewelry thrown in. One year my sister and I got through the stocking and saw these little doll shirts. We just looked at each other and shrugged. My mom apparently forgot to buy the doll they went on. So we had wind up chattering teeth and doll shirts that year ????????

  210. I used to ask for World Peace at the top of my Christmas List. One year, one of my offspring gave me World Pieces… be careful what you wish for ????

  211. A boyfriend once gave me a plastic laundry hamper for Christmas.
    That was it. Nothing else.

    Still have the hamper, but the boyfriend didn’t last. The hamper turned out to be much more useful. ????

  212. For our wedding anniversary my husband got me plasticware dispensers like you see in cafeterias. I’m not a fan of washing dishes and we are good about recycling. My family thought he was crazy but it was the best gift lol

  213. My husband gave me a universal remote control for Christmas.

    A boyfriend in high school gave me a pumpkin for my mid November birthday.
    … Years later I understand the benefits of a good universal remote but not back then!

  214. I don’t know if it counts as weird but it’s my (and my mom’s) favourite Christmas present I’ve ever received.

    When I was around 4 years old, I got really, really into cardboard boxes. Like, cat-level obsessed with them. I asked my mom, who used to work logistics for a big company that makes construction vehicles, for a box for Christmas. Nothing else. I just wanted a really good box. She offered other presents to ask Santa for. No. I just wanted a box.

    Well, my mom loves me a whole lot, so she went to the warehouse and asked them for a very large box. When Christmas came, I got the biggest box I’ve ever seen in my life. My whole year was made and it’s still my favourite Christmas ever. My mom assures me that I had other presents, but I cannot recall a single one other than the perfect box of my dreams

  215. A video game, minus the console to play it, from my grandparents, for Christmas. I had to borrow my sister’s console until my birthday when my parents bought me my own.

  216. My sister Marjorie is real big about personal gifts ::sigh:: this means that they are handmade and crafted with love. I, however, am not crafty, talented in anyway with needles, crochet hook, etc. One year Marjorie took a slice of wood, made a handle with barb wire and glued a giant sunflower seed pod/head whatever to it for my Christmas gift. It really is the thought that counts and I will say the birds loved it, so all was good. But, yeah it wasn’t really something on my list :).

  217. The southerner comment is too real! I moved from GA to VA and my grandmother sent me a parka, and apparently assumes I live in a frozen tundra.

  219. My MIL gave my 8 year old son a fruitcake one Christmas, he stood up and and yelled “Why would MawMaw give me a FRUITCAKE?” Turns out it was for my Mom and at 2:00 am my husband’s skill at reading tags was nil.

  220. Come live in Ireland! Temperate climate, never gets too hot, only very rarely gets cold. No hurricanes, tornados or earthquakes. Lots and lots of coastline & lakes to choose from. Our government are a bit sh^t, but only by European standards iykwim. The strangest gift I ever received was a Plush Pig as an “I’m leaving the country & breaking up with you” gift ????????????

  221. This Mississippian is laughing hysterically at “Maybe all the way to Virginia. ::dies::” 😀 Before we were married, my husband once bought me a very nice rifle for Christmas in hopes that I would become so excited to hunt deer (I’m not) that I would immediately pay to join a deer camp (I didn’t) so that he could hunt. That was at least 10 years ago, and I still haven’t fired that gun. Deer season is cold and wet, and sitting that still and silent just leads to naps.

    • Speaking of cold, wet deer seasons… as newlyweds my husband wanted me to go deer hunting with him and his friends but I don’t hunt so I stayed back at the campsite. We had tents and an open cookfire. It started to rain and it was my job to keep the fire going but the wood got damp and the fire was sputtering threatening to go out and I was cold and desperate and I dumped most of their big bottle of Old Bushmills Whiskey on the fire to get it going again. Worked great but when the damp cold hunters got back and wanted to drink the whiskey they were not pleased. My husband let me stay home after that when he went deer hunting with the guys 🙂

  222. Smiles and peaceful greetings from the edge of the earth in Oregon …. it’s as far as I could get away from NY without needing a boat … meanwhile, I can relate to the sore hands issue … My solution is CBD balm rubbed into my hands and wrists in the morning and evening … if you shop around, you can find some excellent CBD products. I prefer the direct application types such as cremes and balms, as the ingested CBD products take hours to evince any pain relief, whereas I find the balm works in about 10 minutes. Also, Google has a note-taking (you talk into your phone using the app) app that produces an on-screen typed out transcript of what you said … I was able to access the transcripts on my Google Drive, and copy and paste them to word processing software. I’m certain you could find something like that to use … or even a tape recorder and hire someone to transcribe it so you could edit the typed transcript. Smiles, wishing you the best, always, and a happy Solstice this coming Tuesday the 21st … we’ll start getting more daylight hours!

  225. Hahaha! The elderly grandmother of my husband once sent a wrapped package containing… just the two-piece knife of an electric knife set. Nothing else, just the metal knife blades. I was befuddled. Thank her? Ignore it?

  226. First, to you moving dilema – buy a home in the Great Lakes region and live there 75% of the year. Beautiful Summers (usually under 100 degrees); Spring and Autumn are lovely; And you can stay for the first or second snowfall and then go to your second home in Florida or Texas for the remainder of the winter. If you purchase a home on one of the Great Lakes, it is similar to living on the Ocean since they are really inland Seas.

    The strangest Christmas, holiday, or birthday gift you have ever gotten was a dead plant. It was delivered, so it wasn’t intended to be dead.

  227. My DH was gifted a bronze/metal cigar for Christmas from his boss (a man). Neither of them smoke and he gifted all of his “underlings” with one. This was the year after the whole Clinton-Lewinsky mess. Not quite sure what we were supposed to think of THAT gift.

  228. My birthday is Christmas Day and it is a weird time for me. Over the years I learned to let it all go and buy myself something special. I also get a cake from a really good bakery and have them put “Merry Birthday” on it.

  229. My most unusual gift was from my grandmother. She gave me a brass lobster. I can only assume it was already in her home and wanted to give me something. I still have it ; )

  230. I must have been about ten. It was underwear with days of the week on them “from” one of my male teenage cousins. He was probably even more embarrassed than I was.

    PSA – let others buy the family presents at your own risk!

  231. Strangest Christmas gift? A (real) preserved alligator head from my
    Mother in law. It quickly made its way out to a yard sale

  234. A safe…a 3 foot cubed safe.
    Neither I nor my husband ever hinted that we wanted one. So there it was at my parents place resting in chunky glory beside the tree and my parents thought it was fabulous. Costco freight delivered it, but how would we get it home? Our place was tiny, where would we put it? The following conversations were strained.

  236. A little back story – my husband played raquetball for years and would frequently loose the nail of his big toe from jamming it into the end of his shoe. This was a running thing with us. One year he put the shed toenail into a ring box, labeled it toezanite and put it under the tree. Never laughed so hard in my life!

  237. The strangest gift I felt I ever got were hand knitted ponchos from a great aunt 2 years in a row. I appreciate the thought Aunt Verina but ponchos are not a exciting gift for a 7 year old. The worst gift was a white elephant party gift. Dish towels and $5 worth of scratchers. Even the men’s gifts are better than that(booze, flashlights, tools).

  239. I live in Michigan. We don’t have hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, or even bad winters (in the southern part of the state. The farther north of Lansing you go, the more snow). Lots and lots of lakes and fresh water. We do have mosquitoes and ticks, but pretty much everyone does anymore. No scorpions, rattlesnakes, or black widow spiders. I hear the northeast (Connecticut, Maine, etc) is nice too, though I think their winters are harsher than mine. There’s not as many crazy people as the news would have you believe either. Cities tend to be more liberal than the sparser populated areas, but it’s like that in a lot of places.

    If I was going to move to Europe I’d choose Germany. I lived there five years as a kid/teenager (Idar-Oberstein specifically), and the people were nice and the winters were mild. It is absolutely beautiful, and they have a great social net. People also seem to really like Denmark too, though I’ve never been.

    • Oh, weird gifts. My mom is the Queen of weird gifts. One year she bought me a Wii U Mario Cart bundle. I have no idea why. I’ve never owned anything by nintendo before. I played it one time and after that it decided my password wasn’t right and I couldn’t reset it with nintendo no matter how many times I’ve tried. It’s still in the box six years later. I don’t know what to do with it, but I’d feel bad getting rid of it.

      Last year she got me a mini beverage fridge, with a glass door. I have a 22 cubic foot fridge I don’t fill up, I certainly didn’t need another specifically for beverages. Still in the box until my husband figures out where it’s going to go.

      This year she decided I needed a wine storage thing, and an outdoor griddle. I don’t really drink, certainly not enough to have a special cabinet for it, and I have no idea where I’m going to put an outdoor griddle or what I’m going to cook on it… She’s been told to not buy anything else that can’t fit in my pocket.

  240. My grandparents never had a lot of money (black East Texas subsistence farmers in the 50’s) but always got everyone something for Xmas – and with 9 children and 40+ grandchildren it was a struggle but my grandmother was so practical. When I was 12 (and I’m in the upper third of the grandchildren), she gave me a pair of panties labelled “Tuesday” and an orange because Kmart sold sets of 7 panties with the days on them and I was so happy not to get Saturday because of the poem. And apparently getting an orange back in the day was a big deal.

  241. When I was sixteen my mom bought me a food dehydrator. At the time I had no idea what to do with it. We didn’t have a garden. We didn’t do any canning, or food storage. It seemed like a strange gift for a teenage girl. Now that I garden, and can I would love it.

  242. Hi! This comment is not relevant to this blog post, but I wanted to share something with House Andrews. Last week was a bad week for my family. The week started off with my husband stressed out over something at work, then two of our cats got sick (they’re fine now, but the vet bills were astronomical). Then, at the end of the week, we got news that one of my husband’s brothers had died at only 54. A bad week. I started out the week listening to the audiobook of “The Mirror and the Light” by Hillary Mantel. I’m not criticizing this book, in fact the opposite: It’s a great story, extremely well-written and engrossing, and the narrator does a terrific job. But, it is dark. And I needed less dark last week. So I switched to Ilona Andrews audiobooks, starting with “Diamond Fire.” Your stories lifted my mood and helped me survive this bad week. I wanted to let you know what your stories mean to me, and I wanted to thank you for them.

  243. Greetings all,
    My strangest gift was from my stepmother. She took pictures of all of the furniture in her house (yes, just the furniture, no people or animals) and put them in a cheap album and gave one to my twin and one to me…at least she was fair…

  244. My husband had a PS3 with all the extra bits, but got nauseated when he played. Our oldest nephew wanted one really bad, and had saved up but didn’t quite have enough cash by Christmas. So we decided to give him the very lightly used PS3, but my husband being a practical joker decided to wrap up a 10 lb bag of potatoes to give him, with the intention of handing him the PS3 after he opened the bag of potatoes.
    Poor kid, he was about 15, and had been raised to be polite. When he opened the potatoes, his heart was crushed but he was trying so hard to be grateful and nice. When the hubby pulled out the PS3 and all the extras, the nephew broke out in tears. He was so happy.
    The nephew has told that story for years about how he turned a bag of potatoes into a PS3.
    We had potatoes for supper that night, a strange supper for a Chinese/Filipino family, but it worked. 🙂

  245. A friend of mine just bought a lovely apartment in Spain, Alicante region. It’s wonderful – and real estate is well affordable right now. I’m tempted as well. Just saying… Europe is fine ????

  246. When I was 15 years old my ex step-grandparents gave me a vintage badminton racket with broken strings.

    Teenage me already thought they were odd, but they become epically uncool after that present.

  247. I was a little girl attending the Ringling Bros Circus in the mid 1950s. My parents and I were seated on the first row, right behind the posts and ropes that separated the audience from the rings. I was loving the show when a clown stopped and leaned down to me. He pulls a peanut from a bag and shows it to me then put it on the post right in front of me. He draws back a huge wooden mallet and swings it up and over to hit the peanut. I must have had eyes as big as saucers because I remember thinking how loud it was going to be when he hit. Just before the mallet hit, he stopped and gently tapped the peanut and handed the shelled nuts to me. What I didn’t understand was the excitement of the crowd around me. Then my mother explained to me who Emmett Kelly was.
    Years later, she commissioned a wooden carving of Kelly, the mallet, post and peanut bag as a Christmas gift.

  248. The weirdest gift — and mostly my gifts were fairly normal because my family was fairly normal (except for me) — was from my best friend. It was a sword. A cool sword, but I think it was more his dream present rather than mine. I eventually rehomed it with him. 🙂

  249. The weirdest gift I ever got came from a beloved aunt who had a somewhat puckish sense of humor. One year on or around my birthday, I received a package in the mail. Now at this point in my life I had never received anything through the mail beyond a card with a bit of money or a hanky in it, so I was mucho excited. Imagine my devastation upon opening the box and finding a small wooden crate full of dried salt cod. My gramma made creamed salt cod sometimes and I deeply hated it. Also as a kid, I was kind of a drama queen. In retrospect, I can laugh at myself and imagine my aunt chortling over it, but I can still call up the ginormous sense of disappointment I felt at the time.

    • Sorry; replied to the comment about possibly moving to Spain before reading the thread.

      Uh…a 1 Euro house in Italy for Xmas?

  251. Spain is one of the easiest countries to get citizenship in. They have this interesting rule that it’s easiest if you live in a former territory of theirs. That includes Puerto Rico. You would have to live there a year, and then you could move to Spain and it would only take you two years to get citizenship.

    Though I know you were kidding, I just had to pass this on.

  252. My strangest Christmas present… I was 16 and received a small pink suitcase (smaller than today’s purses) that said ‘Going to G’mas!’ It was perfect for my 5 yr old sister. Unfortunately it is also how we knew Grandma was losing touch. BTW the 5 yr old received a nice sweater (in her size- the presents weren’t mislabeled). She preferred my present!

    Follow up. Mom and Grandma took me out for a special dinner, and Grandma started getting the help is now required.

  253. First Christmas with my partner he got me a trash can and a three year supply of trash bags. It is a very nice trash can, but still…

  254. Hi Ilona and Gordon, when I was first dating my husband he fixed the speedometer on my old, beat-up Datsun 180B for me. For our first Christmas together ❤ ????

  255. for my 8th or 9th birthday maybe, my older sister (who was 20-something at the time) came over and when I opened the front door she gave me something wrapped in purple paper, I opened it and it was a regular red apple… so obviously I’m dissapointed but I was raised right so I thank her, and then she’s like “it’s to feed your new hamster!!!” and just pulls out a huge cage from behind the door, definitly the weirdest/funniest gift I have ever received

  256. There used to be a large obligatory Christmas eve party in my family. Presents from people my family saw once a year. And vice versa. One year my mum persuaded my aunt who hosted the part that it would be nice if everyone drew a name and just did a gift for that person. She drew my aunt – who had everything, and if she didn’t could afford to buy it. So – a really good pearl that my folks had gotten when they worked in Japan. But that looked small. So my mum dyed a nylon stocking red, put the pearl box in the toe and proceeded to fill the stocking with other boxes containing small useless things – like a broken rubber band, broken paper clip etc. She tried not to duplicate anything too. The challenge she didn’t anticipate was that the stocking stretched as she filled it, so she kept having to come up with small useless items to wrap and put in it. Took my aunt a good half hour to get to the bottom and her pearl! She was a sport about it, but some of the younger cousins got really upset for a while.

  257. After Despicable Me came out ,my daughters and I bought my Husband a Fart Gun for Christmas. He didn’t love it they way we do – which is still weird because Boys and Fart jokes??
    Still the best present ever, we (the girls)get it out at any inappropriate time and start laughing our heads off. Also really handy for trading in Baha-Char.

  258. If you live in LA and have pets, you evacuate to LSUS in Shreveport. You do it early because they take pets. The field house is the evacuee center. You have the campus to walk the pets. I was a professor there through many hurricanes. I liked seeing dogs running around campus. The biology department even had pet chickens for a while until a hawk discovered them.

  259. Strangest gifts. From my family, scented candles, perfumes, scented lotions… I am allergic to all of that and they knew it. During that 10 year period where that was the go to gifts for me, they had this knowledge for 10 to 20 years. I finally convinced everyone that Amazon gift cards were the only gift.

    In short, I was given the gift of needing Kleenex, zyrtec, and my inhaler.

  260. Hope your hands continue to work for you! As a possible suggestion, one can dictate texts on cell phones. I don’t keep up with the latest technology but maybe one can now dictate to the computer & have it type your words for you? As for moving to another locale, I hear you on the self sustainment issue. Thing to keep in mind is to check out the fresh water situation. Spain has water supply issues as do many other parts of the world. Fresh, potable water isn’t something you want to forego. I looked at Spanish property for sale & quickly noticed that a lot of the properties for sale had pools – empty pools. Apparently illegal drilling for water is rife, which simply exacerbates the water issues.

  262. My grandmother gave me a little clear plastic sink, about six inches tall, six inches wide, four inches long. It was to hold soap. 😐 At this point, I didn’t even have my own house, so I was maybe 22?

  263. a reciprocating saw- from husband…also this year a shop vac,,,, but I asked for that. grin

  264. +1 for the Mediterranean area, anything from Spain to Italy to Greece has amazing weather and waters. And NO HURRICANES! (tho definitely the rains can get a little much. And also the heatwaves have been getting bad.)

    One year one of my friends tried to induct me into a cult for my birthday. We are…not really friends anymore lol

  265. The year I turned 18 I got 3 white on white embroidered handkerchiefs with the price tag still attached. Next to me, my 16 year old brother opened a telescope. 23 years later I’m still confused. Both were gifts from my parents purchased by mom.

  266. It wasn’t really “a” strange gift it was a weird kind of theme. I had an unfortunate hair color experience and the bark ash blond with lighter ash highlights somehow became a medium orangey copper color with brassy highlights. (Totally inexplicable since my hair was naturally silver to begin with) but somehow every gift I got for my birthday was in some way orange. I don’t really care for orange unless it is leaves in the fall. It is almost my least favorite color. It was bizarre. New apron? A blue and hideous orange butterscotch color! Silk scarf? 70’s afghan orange. Peach lipstick. Burnt orange coated stainless steel mixing bowls. Water color of the Orangerie in Paris. A demi-crate of Indian River navel oranges . A beautiful bouquet of chrysanthemums in a truly hideous orange anodized aluminum. An orange stoneware palette shaped serving platter. An Orange Bowl souvenir T-shirt- the venue not the game. Many of the gifts were loved and I was appreciative and thankful for them all but it was ridiculous that all my gifts matched my hair.

  269. My former husband bought me a tube of mascara for my birthday one year. It’s ok, the big doofus was trying. It was my brand and color, so points for that.

  270. The answer should be North Carolina and pick up a decent size RV for emergency evacuation. If you buy up a place on a lake and/or an hour from the ocean, you could have a great time. The temperatures are not crazy and you do get four seasons. Enjoy your hunt.

  271. My grandmother gave me the 4th book of a 5 book series. I hadn’t read the first 3. ???? It turned out to be a great series, though (the books were at the library). [The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper – perfect for a 5th grade introvert.]

  272. The strangest gift I ever got was on my eighth birthday. I got a baby sister. If you think a big brother is overprotective with a younger sister when they don’t share a birthday it is threefold when they do.

  273. My younger sister (the bane of my childhood) and her fiance gave me an unusual Christmas gift the year I started college. They gave me a large wrapped box, full of crumbled newspaper, with another box (also wrapped) under it all. When I unwrapped the seconed box and pulled out a life-sized wax skull candle, I immediately channeled Hamlet and declaimed, “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.”
    And then had to explain the quote to the whole family (not into Shakespeare, lol). The two of them were sort of speechless, I don’t think they got the reaction they were expecting!
    I don’t know why they chose it. I was not into goth, or candles, or death rituals. Weird gift.
    I still have Yorick, sitting on my bookself. I burned it just far enough to fit a tealight inside, and have kept for the past 50+ years.

  275. Not a strange gift but the context was funny. At the time I was teaching in a small, rural school with about 15 staff in total. One family had 4 children there so most of us had interactions with at least one of the children on a regular basis. The staff were all called to the office after school one day where we were greeted by a lovely selection of wine. The family had bought a bottle for each staff member.

  276. One year my cousin was saving up for a really nice guitar, so she just asked the family to gift her money for her guitar fund. My dad felt bad just giving her an envelope of cash, and decided to wrap the money up in a box so she had something to unwrap like everyone else. Except the box was so light it was very obvious that there was nothing in it, so he needed something to weigh it down with. The only things he could find on short notice were…potatoes. On Christmas day she opens up her fancy, nicely wrapped box and exclaims, “POTATOES!!!” with utter wonder and delight. Dad did tell her she didn’t have to keep the potatoes if she didn’t want to, but she wasn’t having any of it. Those were her potatoes, damn it. You’d better believe she took those potatoes home and ate them.

    It’s been almost 20 years, and to this day whenever anyone in the family is gifted cash, gift cards, tickets, etc, their gift comes wrapped in a box of potatoes.

  277. My ex gave me a shovel one year and an ice chopper the next. For my near to Christmas bday he gave me a 4 way tire iron. He only gave 1 present per occasion and no these were not “gag” gifts.

    • I hate to say it, but those four way tire irons are awesome if you ever have to change a flat tire. Much better than the usual kind. And you can use them to beat off zombies in the apocalypse. But it doesn’t sound like the ex-husband was a keeper anyhow.

  279. One year my Mom’s sister gave me a Chinese Love Lamp that she purchased from a gas station on the way to my Grandmother’s house on Christmas morning. My Dad’s family would have every one over on Christmas Eve and open presents, but while all my cousins got gifts, they seemed to forget to get one for me.

  280. Family White Christmas last year: fuzzy blanket colored to look like a burrito, dad joke book, squatty potty, fart balloon, and elk cheesy jerky. I can’t wait for this year.

  281. “I told you, those who attend the chat will get to read the first chapter early.”

    I attended the chat and someone above mentioned that they already received the first chapter. I haven’t seen anything so I’m confused.

    Please help me Mod R! You’re my last hope! ????

    • Hey AP,

      The chat hasn’t happened yet, it’s on Saturday, so…how is the future? ???? No one has gotten the chapter yet ????

      The chapter will debut for those who attend the Fangs for Christmas vampire panel this Saturday https://ilona-andrews.com/2021/fangs-for-christmas/
      Not the House Andrews Q&A for the release of Fated Blades, which I think is the confusion here ????.

      • My ???? isn’t that good either! ????
        I’ve signed up for that chat – looking forward to it!
        Thank you! ????

  282. I got a SheWee (female urinal device) from my then boyfriend for when we were out traveling/backpacking and it was hard to find a clean, safe place to pee. I never got to use it. I did keep both the device and the man though. Gotta love a guy who thinks outside the box.

  283. A beach towel with the logo and name for a sports team. I don’t follow any sport at all and have no connection with the city it was based in.

  284. These massive granite balls that are meant to cool your whiskey. You’re supposed to freeze them and then put them in your drink, so your booze stays nice and chill, without getting watered down by ice. There’s some really nice, ice cube shaped ones out there, and the concept is neat.
    Except I don’t drink Whiskey or any other booze where ‘watering down’ makes a lick of difference, and the ones that were given to me are round and far too massive, so you have to be careful when you tip your glass because they roll around and the impact of stone on glass might actually break the glass. And do not ever think of taking a sip while they are in the glass, because you’re going to brain yourself with a heavy rock. So yeah. I now have two useless rocks I can maybe throw at people. The strangest part is that a relative of mine thought I’d like this as a gift.

  286. When I was twelve, my aunt/godmother gave me a solid brass coat hanger with a brass hinged bracket that let it hang away from the wall.

  287. I didn’t get this but my husband did. His sister gave him a “Thirty-one blanket”. Thirty-one is a type of bag company that produces anything from purses to luggage…. He made the funniest face I’ve ever seen him make, a very displeased face, which he never does, and the whole family lost it, we must have laughed five minutes. We still give my sister in law a bad time about it.

    • I meant why as in why, grandma, would you give your teenage granddaughter disposable razors as a gift? Why single bladed? Might as well be popsicle sticks. And why for Christmas?

  289. Years ago my mother gave my husband a crystal banana for Christmas. Why?!! There is nothing about my husband that would cause anyone to think he would absolutely love having a crystal banana. We laughed over that gift for years until my mother died. Now its a happy reminder of Mom.

  290. This made me crack up because it is definitely something someone in my family would say:
    “Maybe we will go up north a bit. That was such a Southern things to say, haha. Up north. ::clutches imaginary pearls:: Maybe all the way to Virginia. ::dies::”

    As for weird gifts that I have received, I can’t think of something off the top of my head but I would have to go with metal drinking straws.

  292. Well, for years I would give a friend of mine a sock filled with chili on his birthday.

    It started as a conversation about how it was not the gift that mattered, but being in a persons heart and if the best they could do was a sock full of chili (reaching for as absurd an item as I could) , well then, that was alright so long as it was lovingly given. He replied he’d never received a sock filled with chili, so had no basis for comparision.

    So…for years it was a variation on a theme. Practical, these will actually fit you socks stuffed with zipper lock bags full of cooked chili. Pantyhose with ingredients knotted into the legs. It was fun to see how creative I could get.

    Alas, the day came where he could no longer eat chili and the game ceased, but it was fun while it lasted!

  293. Odd to others but fabulous to me – my then boyfriend now husband wanted to give me a Valentine’s gift. We were both broke college students. He drew me a bouquet of roses on art paper and folded it into a fan to present to me. I still have it. The best part? I’m allergic to roses (and most flowers) so it was the first bouquet I didn’t have to run away from in tears and sneezing.

  294. So in grade school, we did a gift exchange, you bought a gift for the kid seated in front of you, that kid bought you a gift. I was excited as it was my friend Sheila. We were very lower middle class family, so I saved and bought her a special journal she wanted. The big day arrived to exchange gifts, I got a wooden ruler with a plumber’s name on it. I was crushed, sigh

  295. Mine was a wedding gift. A lovely, very pale, hand-knotted, silk Muslim prayer rug – roughly 24 in x 24in.

    We are lapsed Episopalian/Catholics. The gifter was Christian, from China.

    Kept it for years, trying to find in our lives a spot for a teeeeny tiny white rug…

  297. Socks with moisturizer in them to help alleviate dry feet. It was a package of three but I only received one pair because two other people apparently also needed to alleviate their dry feet.

  298. Florida is wonderful. Come on over and we will take you to the club. Great shrimp and grits for breakfast with mimosas.

  299. As a kid my Grandfather and his second wife gave me a Piano Shell Jewellery Box. While the interior was lined with red velvet and piano keys were not bad, the shells? that outlined it remind me of salmon back bones and I was too afraid and repulsed to touch it.

  300. Regarding strange gifts, one of my friends received a set of stove burner drip pans from her husband for her birthday. She was “a bit upset!”

  301. A chia pet from my uncle who could be relied on for fun and different sorts of gifts. To say I was disappointed would be putting it mildly.

  302. For some reason, people think this is weird, but the coolest Christmas present we’ve gotten was a small McCullough chainsaw from my parents. We’d just built a house on 5 acres of pine trees in Colorado, so it was perfect! That thing ran for 20 years and I’d still be using it here in Montana if we could get parts.

  303. I got this weird Santa figure made out of springs from my neighbor. It was so weird you couldn’t tell what it was

  304. When son #1 was getting married I finally met the bride’s mother a month before the wedding. Two days later I received an email from her stating her daughter told her I like to read and thought I would like this book. Attached to the email was a link to an Amazon book site. The book was a weight loss book from the 1990’s. Needless to say I didn’t purchase it nor did I reply to the email.

    However, a dear friend is a jeweler and when she heard about the “book suggestion” she insisted on lending me pieces to wear to the wedding. Diamond and sapphire earrings and her own diamond necklace. 10 years later, still not close with the MIL but still have the awesome friend.

  305. Spain is the place for you! Being a southern myself (from Cadiz, Andalucia), there is not better place to live because of the weather and the vibe there (I live abroad and miss it soooo much) but if it is too warm for you… We still have amazingly beautiful landscapes in the north! Although I recon that without speaking Spanish at all the experience may not be the same…

  306. Strangest Christmas gift: 20 years before my grandmother was diagnosed with dementia she gave me 2 perfume samples and some airline snack. The perfume samples came in the little 0.5ml glass tube attached to a card. They were used.

  307. My strangest gift was from my husband. I got the movie The Streets of Laredo and the mini series Lonesome Dove on DVD, neither of which I ever mentioned wanting. I had several movies on my Amazon wish list, but these weren’t on it. My husband swore he got them from list. Turns out he looked at Sheila Lankford’s list – but not this Sheila- someone else had the same name and he didn’t notice. We still laugh about it over 10 years later ????

  308. My paternal grandmother and her sister were 13 years apart in age. At one point, one of them sent a birthday card to the other and forgot to sign it. The recipient saved it and sent it back (still unsigned). They traded the card for over a decade or two before one of them misplaced it. They could not remember who originally forgot to sign the card nor who lost it.

    This same grandmother gave un-birthday gifts. (I believe this started because my Dad and Uncle are only 16 months apart and competed with each other constantly.) So my sister and cousins (uncle’s two daughters) and I would get truly odd “practical” inexpensive things on our sibling’s birthday. We would frequently all get the same unbirthday gift. This was espescially impressive since our birthdays are not all in one season. (Jan/Jan and Jul/Oct) One we all remember is the plastic ring lingerie drier. Imagine a blue plastic clamp style hanger with white plastic chains leading to a small blue inner ring with blue clothes pins, and then more chain to an outer ring with more clothes pins. The idea is that you would hang it over a shower bar and then clip your bras to it. I believe my mother still has mine and uses it for her swim shoes.

    This all led to a discussion about unbirthday gifts between the 4 of us last spring. I then decided to see if I could find something “Grandma worthy”. I searched for “weird practical gifts” In the first few items on that search was the portable bidet from hellotushy.com. We threatened collective to give to a husband (oldest cousin), nephew for his 18th birthday (also oldest cousin and her sister thought it was a great idea), and nephew and his new wife for a wedding gift (me).

    (PSA – the algorithms for an internet search use your search history so think really hard about what you typically search on and look at before doing your own search.)

  309. My husband and I split a package of Reese’s peanut butter cups to celebrate the birth of our first child.

    I still love peanut butter cups….and the husband, and all the kids.

  310. The best and oddest Christmas gift would likely be my daughter lol. She wasn’t due until the end of Jan. Early Feb. but we had complications and it was during a full blown covid surge. We thought she wouldn’t make it or I wouldn’t but they had to go in and get her and risk it because I wasn’t going to make it if they didn’t. I woke up prepared for the worst and she was fine. A perfectly healthy, sleepy 4LB baby so tiny they said the bones in her fingers were as thin as sewing needles and she had to be isolated because babies that small usually struggle a lot. She had trouble with her temperature but they sent us both home after only 5 days on Dec 23rd. I’d been hospitalized and we were all so freaked out no one did anything remotely Christmassy. Christmas day rolled around and she was there and my mom brought us all dinner and decorated with my daughter. We had rotisserie chicken and a very odd assortment since the other holiday stuff was sold out and stores were closed. We didn’t do gifts or a tree until the New Year but it was a great Christmas- we didn’t have any clothes or things ready for her but my family showed up with whatever they had or could find. Weirdest gifts ever and my favorite holiday memory now.

  311. Not my gift, but my dad’s. Dad LOVED chocolate covered cherries. One year my fave BIL had his brother, who worked in a candy factory, get one of their 55 gallon drums. We family members each got about 10 boxes of chocolate covered cherries, totaled about 900 cherries. We packed the bottom of the barrel with old newspaper, added cardboard to hold up the cherries, about 4 layers worth, and all laughed ourselves to exhaustion when we saw the look on George’s face when he opened his present. He couldn’t decide if he was happy or overwhelmed when he thought he had received 55 gallons of cherries.

    Both Will and George are gone now, but this was one of the best Christmas’s ever!

  312. My mom was a child in the 1940s, first poor on a farm and then poor-ish in the city. Santa’s presents included daily use things like socks and toothbrushes. When my brother and I were young, we always got “a toothbrush type of gift.” Now one of the things I consistently ask for because they make me happy is socks.

  313. Picture this- 6 year old with no sense of humor that just watched her older brother get a cool new toy. I unwrap my present from my Uncle to reveal Rowan Atkinson making a weird scrunched up face at me. I definitely thought Mr. Bean was creepy at that age. I cried before I finished unwrapping it, and my Uncle was traumatized

  314. My mother once asked for a bundt cake pan for Christmas. My brother (as a joke) got two, toy cake pans. He beat one with a hammer until it was very misshapen. Then torched the other until it was blackened. He told her he couldn’t remember if she wanted a burnt cake pan or a bent cake pan, so got both. After much laughter, he pulled out a beautiful non-stick bundt pan. It was one of our best Christmas memories.

  315. One year my grandmother gave us each a couple pairs of irregular nylons. I’m guessing she didn’t realize that they were irregular–just thought she was getting a really good deal. We have had several good laughs over the nylons with one leg longer than the other. ????

  316. Have you both considered the beaches of North Carolina? Doesn’t get hit with ad many storms and kind of 4 seasons! Plus near a lot of old and beautiful houses.

  317. If you are considering Florida, look at north Florida on the Gulf Coast. I grew up in Jacksonville on the Atlantic coast but I believe the Gulf is much more beautiful. The town I live in is in the “armpit” of Florida where the state turns to the west toward Pensacola. It is called the forgotten coast and is more unspoiled and quite lovely. My husband is a forester and did a study for the large multinational corporation he worked for until he retired and he found that the area we live in has the least incidence of hurricanes of any area in the state. The curve in the land “slingshots” them away from us we think. 🙂 Anyway, look at the area around Taylor County on the coast. We are within 45 minutes of Tallahassee, so not far from major shopping and restaurants. If you like just chillin, this is the place! All the land around here is either in state forests or large private forestry operations so it will not be developed and will remain pretty unspoiled.

  318. Spain is lovely. Of all the Mediterranean places I’ve visited, Spain and Sicily are the two I’d move to in a heartbeat.

    I can’t think of any one gift but as a child my father’s mother was well known in the family for odd little gifts. She had 6 kids and consequently many grandchildren, so she was shopping for a lot of people on a budget. We’d get the strangest little things from Grandma, like a flower that dances or a weird little musical instrument you play with your nose. She was a hoot ???? It’s a good memory, thanks ❤️

  319. my aunt went through a sewing phase. she made me a blouse but the sleeves were two different lengths.

  320. The strangest gift I ever got was a four-pack of toilet paper when I was a teenager. I kept stealing household rolls to give to my hamsters. They chewed the paper and played in the tubes.

  321. Okay – I had to share this one. One Mother’s Day, my husband had taken our 2 children to the grocery store to get my Mother’s Day gift. My son, then about 2-years-old, gifted me a 3 pound package of chicken hotdogs. He was so excited to give them to me!

  322. I got myself a shark vaccum for the pet hair… for Christmas – but pretty grossed out after the first run of the house!!! So much needed!
    I sleep in lightweight, fingerless compression gloves – I am amazed at the difference it makes for my carpel tunnel and arthritis – have you tried for your hands?

  325. I’m a transcriber and have my own business (in Australia). I have had a problem with my hands and thought I would be put out of work. As someone mentioned below, Dragon Dictate is something you could look into. I’ve found it to be really great. It does make mistakes, but not that many and it saved my career. Not only do I now type very little, but it has sped up my workflow, I didn’t have to retire and I actually make more money, it’s much faster than typing. I don’t sell it, haha, it doesn’t worry me if you try it or not, but it changed my life so I can recommend it FWIW. I didn’t expect much when I got it, but now I would never go back to typing, even if my hands were suddenly okay.

  326. I didn’t have an answer for you when you posted this as I couldn’t think of any unusual Christmas gifts I’d received; but I can now. This year I got given a stationary set with cards and notepaper. That’s not bad; however, they all say “Congratulations Graduate” at the top of the paper and on the front of the cards. I have no idea when I am ever going to use them.

  327. This year? This year the weirdest thing I got was a large plate of obviously stale and seemingly already picked through cookies from my nieces family. She had 5 kids that “helped” put the cookie trays together.

  328. I hesitate to suggest medical treatments, but after I developed hand problems, my endocrinologist told me that one of the primary causes of hand problems in women is thyroid malfunction. Perhaps, if Ilona has not had her TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) tested, she should.

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