Christmas gifts

I love going nuts with the presents on Christmas.
Overcompensating? You bet your sweet meep.

Like a lot of folks, my holidays as a kid were pretty bleak. I remember carving things out of dirt clods (-or a stick, when I could find one in this f#cking desert) and walking all over the countryside to kill time.
I can kind of understand the mindset of those middle easterners that obsess over their religion and spend the day trying to catch each other out. There's just nothing else to freaking DO. It's amazing how a guy'll run in circles and start doing crazy sh#t like throwing acid at women when he's not able to learn or experiencing anything new. Every day it's always the same place, listening to the same crazy old pedophile in a turban and beard ranting about keeping yourself nice and intolerant and how life in heaven will be better.
After a few years, taking pot shots at strangers might start to sound kinda fun.

But, I digress...

The folks had bills to pay and work was scarce, so Christmas was a time for getting clothes and shoes. Sort of a ambivalent time where you don't bring up the fact that the new pair of shoes you kept in a giftwrapped box for a month could've been protecting the frostbitten toes that everybody at your kid's school were too polite to notice. Or the jacket that the kid needed in November to keep his poor nuts from clacking like little frozen castinets when he ran around on the playground.
These are the sacrifices we make so that there's SOMETHING under the tree.

BTW, I don't know if mine was the only family that did this, but whole branches would
stop talking to each other for months because one or both asked for a gift for nephews and nieces and then one or both stiffed the other.
My brother and I make it a point to never even ask.

So anyway, I go apesht with the gifts.
I've been blessed by fate with a job that pays enough for a beat up old house, a truck in much the same condition and groceries every week with enough left over to keep a single guy and his mutant offspring conservatively entertained.
So with that in mind I've got a couple of guidelines I've learned the hard way:

1. Clothes are not fcking gifts. You buy them the moment they're needed.
-Unless it's like, a $300 leather jacket or something.
2. Power Rangers' Zords are NOT Transformers. Bristle Blocks are NOT Legos.
Ratchett and Clank is NOT Call of Duty 2. Nerf... Well okay, I personally like their
Maverick and some of the others... -But they aren't BB guns.
If the only visitor you have at your retirement home is the occasional grenade rolling in, well... you have only yourself to blame.


So what did I get them this year?
Like usual I made a few things just to keep a hand in:


For the boy; This is a doctored-up rubick's cube I found the plans for at "Constructables".
Pro-tip; Don't build it with craft store jewelry. It'll run you about $75 that way.

Since he's doing better at school and seems to be minding his manners, I also made him a sword.


He's got the new Call of Duty 2, Mirror's Edge and Assassin's Creed 2 for the PS3 and the big Optimus Prime figure from Transformers.
The girl got some gift cards(just to be safe) some pricey skin care products that SHE SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR, a Justin Bieber CD, some See's Candy and this:


to feed her serious gum addiction.
She asked me to make her a rocking chair too. I'll get started on that.