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Pants and Presents

By Anonymous

Yesterday after my swearing-in I finally picked up my clothes from the woman I found to alter them. I had dropped off 6 pairs of pants, 1 skirt, and 1 jacket- all the bottoms needed to be taken in at the hips and waist and the jacket had to be taken apart and reconstructed to fit my narrow waist and not-so-narrow swimmer's shoulders. I was very excited to suddenly have all of my wardrobe available for me to wear, getting ready in the morning was taking forever as I tried to find new ways to match my two pairs of pants and assorted tops.

Because of the work involved I was expecting to pay anywhere from $100-150 and maybe more depending on the cost of the jacket, and given that all of these items had originally been quite expensive (though of course, I bought them on sale) I considered that price well worth being able to actually wear them. And the grand total was: $27.50. When she told me that I waited for her to go on, assuming that was the cost of one item, maybe the jacket. When I realized that was it, I spent ten minutes convincing her to charge more. She had done excellent work and my "new" clothes fit perfectly; there were eight items in there, that's barely $3 per piece! I ended up paying her $40 and still feel guilty about it. I am all for a good deal, but it's different to shop the clearance rack at Marshalls versus a single older lady in a little house who cares for her elderly mother. I dropped off a few more items (I went through my winter clothes and discovered none of them fit either) and next time I'll probably up her bill again, maybe double it for Christmas. JP and I are saving everything we can to build back our decimated emergency fund and my very high loan payments start in January, but I'm pretty sure that extra $25 means more to her than me and I don't care if she insists the time it took to take in my pants is only worth $2.50.

And on the topic of holiday giving, I wanted to solicit advice on presents for the various support persons in your life. Like Landon's teacher at daycare- there are two teachers in his class (one who is specifically his) plus another one who is there in the late afternoon. I'm assuming we get something for all of them, but can the one for his special teacher (who he adores, quick story: the other day when I picked him up she told me they'd had a "lunch date" - Landon had decided to hold her hand the whole way through lunch. Oh, the cuteness.) be different and/or bigger? What are some ideas of things to give? Being very anti-clutter myself I hate just giving them some kitschy holiday thing to put on a shelf and I'd imagine they get a lot of cookies and such. There's also our cleaning woman. I broke down and hired one when I started working, she comes every two weeks and does the major cleaning and we touch up between visits. I miss being able to randomly go out to eat when we don't feel like cooking, but the increase in my free time at home is well worth the sacrifice in expendable income. Any thoughts? Just pay extra the visit before Christmas? If it were me that's really all I'd want. And that just leaves my secretary, but we have a pool so I don't have one specifically assigned to me. I'm assuming there will be some kind of organized gift giving among the attorneys who share the center.

I like getting all of this out of the way early so as to spare our bank accounts a huge blow in December. I already have my gifts for my parents, JP's family, and my sister (still looking for my brother). JP and I never spend much on each other as we'd rather just save the money or enjoy a dinner out- with both of us so busy, time together is immeasurably more valuable than anything we could put on the credit card. We're trying to decide what to get Landon- I think it will either be a train table or play kitchen. Both would be big, solid pieces I hope he and our future children will enjoy for a long time and would be a good addition to our downstairs play room.

So, thoughts? Gifts for the daycare teachers and maid? Favorite play kitchen or train table? I should warn you ahead of time I'm biased against brightly colored, noise-making plastic monstrosities. Sturdy Little Tikes-like plastic is fine, but I really hate toys that make a million electronic sounds, ours didn't growing up and we did just fine (better, in fact) making them up ourselves. Landon loves the very basic kitchen at his daycare and is obsessed with our dishwasher at home. But he also loves his trucks and trains and a nice wood play table (with storage for said trucks and trains) would be great to have. I can now see how well-meaning parents end up spoiling their children, I'm probably more excited about playing with the kitchen set and trains than he's going to be!

Full post as published by Lag Liv on November 19, 2008 (boomark / email).