The Holidays, Part XIII: What's in the Box?

 (Days of work remaining until holiday time off: 2)

So here it is, the final weekend before Christmas.

I don't count next weekend because next Sunday is Christmas Eve, and I count that as Christmas as much as I do the day itself.

And Daisy is sick.

We don't know exactly what's wrong with her, but it's likely another bad cold. She tested negative for Covid, and her symptoms don't seem to be as severe as the flu. But, suffice it to say that she's on the struggle bus at the moment and is basically -- for all intents and purposes -- down for the count.

This means we likely won't leave the house today or tomorrow -- which is, honestly, fine by me. This coming week -- and I'm including Christmas in that, even though it's still nine days away -- has a lot of activities and social energy will be needed for it, and I'm perfectly content to just be a vegetable for the time being. 

Every bit of the digitizing, archiving, and storing of all of the family videos is now done -- the last of the flash drives for the Canadian side of the family arrived yesterday, and I spared no time in getting them loaded up with the appropriate videos as necessary. In front of me on my desk I have the copies for everyone else. I was even able to back up my hard drive (on the new 4TB HDD) to not only double-down, but triple-down on the storage of these precious videos -- they're all on the flash drives, my PC's hard drive, and now on the backup drive as well. This means if anything happens, short of the house burning down or something like that, I can't possibly lose them. 

The international stamps I need to send the drives to Canada don't arrive until Monday. That means the absolute earliest the Canadians will get all of their stuff mailed out will be Tuesday, the 19th. Knowing the speed of the mail during the holidays as well as accounting for Canada's mail speed once it crosses the border, it's almost certain that they won't arrive until after Christmas at this juncture. It can't really be helped; I've done everything as fast as I could. I've been working on this stuff since around Thanksgiving and I've likely failed in this regard.

Yesterday, something else arrived in the mail for us -- the yearly box of things my parents send me/us for my birthday and Christmas. My mother had told me she'd sent it on Monday, but there was no tracking provided for it and I honestly had no clue how she'd mailed it -- if she'd done it via USPS, UPS, etc. Normally if something's sent via USPS, I can track it on my "Informed Delivery," which tells me what I'm getting in the mail every day -- mail, packages, etc -- with pictures of all of it and tracking numbers for the packages. However, this giant box never showed up on there.

We've not opened it yet; I was awake for approximately four hours yesterday afternoon, during which time I ate dinner and watched a little TV with Daisy before being back asleep by shortly after 7pm. I plan to open it later today once Daisy and I are both awake and up/about for the day. 

The way presents with my parents work is a bit strange, but there's always a pattern to it, and it goes like this:

1. Sometime in November, usually before Thanksgiving, my mother asks us what I want for my birthday and what we want for Christmas for the year. I respond by telling her we don't really need anything, but I'll get back to her. This is usually done by text.
   
   
2. Sometime around or after Thanksgiving, my mother asks me the question again, and adds the secondary question of whether I want her to make her famous Chex Mix (which she makes according to the original recipe that Chex put out in the 70s or 80s, following it to the letter). I tell her sure, because her Chex Mix is fucking amazing. This conversation is usually done via phone.
   
   
3. I select what I'm doing for them for Christmas, and it's almost always a random smattering of things that I like that I want to share with them (coffees, usually some sort of food like energy bars or vegan jerky, and at least one personal item for each of them that is very clearly meant for its designated person). Sometimes I do one large blanket gift -- I've made them canvases of pictures of us and of their dogs, for example, which they have hanging on the walls of their house in NC (I can prove this, we were there). Sometimes the "blanket gift" is an actual blanket, as there was a weird tradition in our family that at least one person, if not everyone, would get a blanket every year for Christmas. Anyway, I figure out whatever I'm doing for them -- with or without Daisy's help (mostly without, but sometimes I get her input if it's a big thing, like something large or expensive), order it and have it shipped to their house in NC.
   
   
4. I then reach out to my parents, tell them their presents are on the way and provide the known delivery dates once I have them so they can watch for them -- and then I update my yearly logs* to reflect what I got and how much I spent on them.
   
   
5. My mother will then reach out to me a third time to tell me she's making the Chex Mix and readying a box of stuff for us -- including both something uniquely for me for my birthday and then Christmas presents for each of us -- even though we've not told her anything we've wanted and when I've actively tried to dissuade my mother from spending money on us or on the shipping of a giant box to us. This is usually done via text message. I acknowledge and thank her warmly without putting up a protest, because she's set in her ways and I also think she feels obligated to send us stuff after she knows I've sent them stuff. Also, I want the Chex Mix, so...
   
   
6. At this juncture my parents' presents arrive -- usually anytime between Black Friday and December 10th. This year I sent them early and they arrived well over two weeks ago. They confirm with me that they received all of them. They will not open any of them until Christmas morning, even if I tell them to.
   
   
7. My mother then texts me that she's sent the box and to be looking for it. Usually she follows up with subsequent texts over the course of the following few days asking if I've gotten it yet, but she did not do so this year. I again acknowledge and thank her warmly.
   
   
8. The box, eventually, arrives -- usually about a week before my birthday, but I've had years where it showed up on my birthday or right before/after Christmas, depending on the speed of whatever shipping service she uses on any given year. The box is always repurposed and home-taped with an excessive amount of clear packing tape, and is almost always a re-used box from pet superstore Chewy.com with the old address labels removed and ours pasted on. 
   
   
9. I tell my mother the box has arrived and she encourages me to open it and enjoy all the treats and presents within.

The dates may vary a little here and there every year, but that series of events is, almost always, exactly chronologically the same from year to year.

What's interesting is what my parents send every year. I wouldn't call them eccentric, but there are a number of things that are almost always inside the box no matter what every year:

1. K-cups of some sort -- sometimes a box, sometimes an assortment
2. At least one or more boxes of cordial cherries or cordial blueberries
3. Candy bars, usually Zero bars or Payday bars
4. Lindt truffles
5. Two cards -- one for my birthday and one for both of us for Christmas
6. The aforementioned Chex Mix, two gallon-sized Ziploc bags
7. The Christmas/Birthday presents themselves
8. Fuzzy or otherwise holiday-themed socks, which Daisy will generally wear
9. Some random assorted household things, such as kitchen towels or a bottle of fancy hand soap or something like that -- one year they sent us some kind of airtag devices called "tiles" that I don't think we ever actually used -- perhaps Daisy did, I can't remember
10. Utz chips

This list has changed considerably over the years; it used to include loaves of bread from my favorite bakery back home in WV (my Dad could not find them this year, I checked with him beforehand), and before I was a vegetarian it would always include pepperoni rolls and giant bags of beef jerky. It also used to include bags of coffee too, or variety packs of flavored coffee, back when I still used the drip coffee pot and not just the Keurig. 

It'll be interesting this year to open the box later today and see how many things I'm right about. I'll also note that usually my Dad sends over an e-gift card to Amazon or somewhere like that for my birthday/our Christmas gift as well, in addition to everything in the box. 

It's very sweet that my parents do all of this for us. I am my mother's only child and while she and I may not have seen eye to eye on everything over the years, I am truly her pride and joy and even when I'm in my 40s and she's in her 60s, she wants to continue to "take care of me" with these boxes as a way to show her love.

*I keep yearly logs for everyone I get gifts for, including what they were, the dates they were purchased, and how much money was spent on each individual gift, along with a grand total for each "set" of folks. My parents' stuff this year was a total of $122, and the stuff we did/bought for Daisy's parents was somewhere in the $130 range, give or take. I'm not going to mention here until after Christmas is over what everyone got, on the off-chance that my parents or Daisy's parents randomly decide to visit this website between now and Christmas. We didn't just do the videos for the parents, of course -- we also got them other stuff. In addition, I'm absolutely not going to mention what I got for Daisy or what her total was because if I mention the total, she will know what 2/3 of the gifts are, and she did tell me that she went back and started reading through my posts here again recently.