A while back, I opened a package from Amazon.com and thought maybe I was starting to lose my mind.
Inside the package was a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle featuring highlights around the Dublin, Ireland area.
Yeah, that all made sense for me as a perennial puzzle gifter, but I knew I hadn't ordered a 500-piece puzzle for anyone on my gift list.
I have tried to remain careful about such things since the year I ordered a SPACE-related puzzle for my younger brother.
I was so pleased with my gift selection because Jim has always loved Star Trek and all things outer space.
Well, my pride in gift picking took a big hit on Christmas Eve that year when Jim opened his present.
The puzzle had all of 24 pieces to put together.
OOPS!
I learned then and there to examine all the fine print before making my selections.
So, when the 500-piece puzzle of Dublin came, I knew something had gone astray but couldn't quite figure out what.
I had ordered puzzles for others, in the 1000-piece category, but certainly not this one.
So, I just put it aside and figured that eventually a light bulb would flash off in my brain, and I'd suddenly realize that, yes, I did order that.
I also considered who could be the recipient if I needed to give an extra gift.
Here's where it's important to share that I received a text from Annie some time before Christmas telling me that packages would be coming to the house and that they were NOT to be opened like the one last year.
"Which one was that?" I asked.
"The Dan Rather book," she answered.
Ohhh, yeah, I did remember that mix-up.
Never mind that I had ordered a Dan Rather book last year for Annie. Unbeknownst to me, though, she had done the same for me.
So, my indiscretion with opening packages at least had an excuse in that situation.
This year, after receiving her note, I remained resolute NOT to open any packages addressed to Annie.
In fact, I was rather proud of myself, taking the REI package straight to her room and leaving it on her desk.
Annie had said packageS in her note, so I remained on the lookout for a second package which had not come by the time she arrived home on Dec. 18.
No more worries, I thought. It will arrive on her watch.
Well, that didn't happen, but the verbal protest upstairs the morning she had begun to wrap her presents did.
"I told you not to open any packages," she yelled from above.
"I didn't," I said, explaining the great care I had taken to avoid that this year.
A minute or so later, she came downstairs with an opened blue and white mailer from Amazon.
"What about this?" she asked, pulling out the "mysterious" puzzle from Dublin.
"Ohhhh," I said, then relating to her that it was a mystery and that I hadn't remembered ordering it.
Of course, I wouldn't remember cuz I didn't order the puzzle from Dublin.
Annie did.
As a gift for me.
And, so my tainted record of opening other people's packages carries on.
Maybe this has something to do with my inner desire to open mail, dating back to the infamous time noted in my book Pocket Girdles, when, at 5 years old, I opened lots of packages and other mail in our woods on North Boyer.
Only problem: they came from neighbors' mailboxes.
That was an OOPS I never would forget because in that case, the Federal postal authorities came to visit me.
When they were done gently luring the truth out of me in front of my parents, my mother's intervention into the conversation has stayed with me to this day.
"You have a prison record," she emphatically announced to me that day in the early 1950s at the end of the driveway. "You'll never get a job!"
Well, happily, my early "prison" record did not count against me when I was 13 and had my first job ironing clothes for KT Littlefield.
Happily, employment continued but opening other people's mail did not UNTIL those pesky packages sent to the Lovestead but meant for Annie Love entered the picture.
Long story short, I received one 500-piece jigsaw puzzle for Christmas and two 1,000 piece models.
So, I've got work to do during these long winter days. As do members of my family who received their 1000-piece puzzles.
It definitely is a puzzling time, and I'm hoping next year when the packages come, I will maintain a clean slate in what not to open.
In other news, Willie's girls basketball team won again yesterday afternoon at the tournament in Boise.
This time they handily defeated Caldwell. This morning, in an hour or so, they'll finish off the tournament, taking on Columbia High School of Nampa.
Kinda neat for Willie, since he used to write sports stories about those teams while serving as assistant sports editor of the Idaho Press Tribune.
Hopefully, if they pull off a third win in the tournament, the current IPT sports writer will be able to write a nice story about the Sandpoint Bulldogs.
Fingers crossed. GO, BULLDOGS!
Happy Thursday.
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