The Gift
The gift... oh... the gift...
If I assign myself a grade as a husband, it would be probably a C... B- at best. "You are your own worst critic" and all that aside. I am woefully bad at getting presents for her. Late, weird, not wanted, "what IS this?!?!" you name it, it's happened (if you are a husband reading this, I feel your pain. If you can not relate because you have phenomenal gift planning, I welcome your help).
The 'good' ones I HAVE gotten, also have sometimes come late, to her chagrin.
I get in my own head and never know what she wants, dragging things out and end up with zero time to get something in time. That's what I like to tell myself.
I waffle on a few gifts. She seems to have drop an explicit hint here and there also. A list develops. But nothing jumps out at me as YES, THAT'S IT! For a birthday like this, it's gotta have that impact.
I mentioned over complication previously right? Yes... so here's the thing... I don't love getting gifts that have been explicitly dropped on me, particularly for an event like this one. Oh I can hear the groans... save it LOL
A little while back, I feel she ribbed me for a gift that I've "owed" her for some time. It was an item that I scoffed at buying because "how hard could it be to make that for far less $". Yes, oh yes, I said that... many many moons ago... make that many cycles of the sun ago. Excuses aside, I still would prefer to MAKE this item but time to cut my losses.
I will not reveal the gift here as I would prefer she opens it before I reveal it to anyone. OK, I think one person knows because I needed some help an issue covered below.
Now... where the heck do I buy this thing? I recall she had found a website selling them but God help me if I could remember it. Well, a little help from God maybe came my way as I stumbled on, I'm pretty sure, the EXACT website she had shown me quite a long time ago. What's this? Promotion? SCORE!
Now... here's an insight to how my brain works, for no reason other than I enjoy typing.
This item has a large wood component to it. It is also out of country. I start wondering... would I run into import issues with the wood (COVID shipping issues aside).
I reach out to a friend about bringing goods in from this particular country, Japan (as a tease to the gift). He wasn't aware of the particular issues I had but did not see any issues with the vendor, they do appear very internationally oriented. OK, where can I get my answers.
Google is not particularly helpful but does dig up some CBSA information.
I'll admit, I'm old... I fail to realize the use of these new fangled social media sources, except for this one time. I decide to FaceBook message CBSA. Guess what? I got an answer back! Man, this interwebs thing is great!
Sadly they didn't have an exact answer and referred me to CFIA. I look up their FB page and repeat (I'm getting the hang of this right?). Answer back same day! No problems with the goods being imported. Alright! Now we're talking!
Simultaneously I had e-mailed the vendor asking about shipping experiences to Canada and all roads led to Rome... or Canada in this case :)
That was Jun 18. Guess dear reader, how long it took me to finally submit the order?
I'll wait...
Ready?
Evening of Jun 26... yes, a full 8 days later!
Do not despair, however, this story will not end in a flaming pile of wrapping paper. The shipping only expected to take 4-6 business days, tag on a little bit for COVID delays and I'm sitting plenty pretty at this point.
The ordering process had me holding my breath for a bit because they couldn't take my credit card. Paypal wasn't doing something right either and then I figured out that my credit card had caught the transaction as suspicious since it was thousands of miles away from where my bank expected me to be.
This was relatively easily solved. Now, how to pay this bill without Sonia noticing...
NOW, I get a checkmark
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