I Hate Gift Cards - a Rant

I know this might be a bit Scroogey and I may be looking the proverbial "gift horse in the mouth", but I hate gift cards.

I know they have allegedly been the "hot gift" for Christmas the past few years due to some marketing genius, but they suck.*



A few reasons why gift cards are an awful awful gift....

1. The store always wins.
Whenever I'm using a gift card I feel like I'm playing some bizarre Price Is Right/over-under game where I'm trying to spend exactly $25 or $50 or whatever my gift card is worth -- calculating tax doing all kinds of crazy mental math. I don't want to be over because the only reason I'm at the store it to spend my free money -- I'm not trying to spend more money at the store. And I don't want to be under because I don't want $3.27 left on the card that I'll either never spend or carry around in my wallet for the next three years. I usually end up going over and the store scores a cool few extra dollars from me that I never would have spent without the infernal gift card.

2. You have to remember to bring the gift card to the store.
I'm not going to carry around 10 gift cards in my wallet for the off-chance that I happen to stop into Ikea/Williams-Sonoma/Bath & Body Works on my way home from work. Case in point: I still have a $15 Best Buy card from last Christmas (I know because it has a dancing Santa on it) that I have not yet used. Not because I don't shop at Best Buy, because I never remember to bring the dang thing with me. **

3. There is an amazing alternative to gift cards.
Did you know there's something that works just like a gift card except it can used at any store, never expires, has no restrictions, and you can always carry it with you? It's called cash (or a check). Cash can be used for all kinds of amazing goods and services! Feel weird about giving cash or check? Remember a gift card is just restrictive, annoying cash.***


I'm not trying to be a brat about the whole gift card thing, I'm still a very thankful and gracious gift receiver. I'm just stating the truth; gift cards are a giant pain. I've made a personal vow to never give gift cards except in extraordinary cases.

Does anyone share my sentiment, or am I alone in my gift card loathing?




*I will admit there is a time and place for gift cards -- like giving someone a gift card to the place where they set up their wedding registry. But that's about it. Giving someone gift cards to a random store as a wedding present? Not cool. I still have some of those over a year later.

** Another acceptable gift card one to a place that you know I frequent, like Starbucks or Trader Joe's. That would be considered acceptable because I would carry that card with me in wallet and would not be worried about over/under because I pretty much visit those places weekly.

***Don't even get me started on the Amex or Visa "anywhere" gift cards. That's a whole separate rant.

Taking Charge of My Fertility

Note: this post is for all of the ladies who read this blog. My one or two male readers can just skip this one. K, thanks!

A few months after I started blogging I started to hear more and more about a certain book, "Taking Charge of Your Fertility", particularly around the TTC, baby, and mommy blogs.

I'm a pretty voracious reader, so I thought, "hey, this could be interesting" and headed down to Borders to grab a copy.



The book was very interesting! I definitely learned way more about my body than I had ever learned in any high school class. But a lot of the book, particularly the parts about cycle charting and ovulation, didn't apply to me at the time because I was neither trying to get pregnant nor trying to use natural birth control.

Flash forward almost a year later ...
For the past several months I've had what I believe to be side effects of "the pill", as well as some other "female problems" related to aunt flo (I'll spare you the details). So I've decided to go off of the pill and use other forms of contraception to let my hormones reset and to allow me to chart my cycle to see what is really going on.

Taking Charge of Your Fertility talks about how to use "Fertility Awareness Method" (FAM) as a form of natural birth control. Has anyone out there used FAM as an effective birth control method? If so, please let me know your "best practices."

Obviously, I can't use FAM as my primary birth control method until I've charted my cycle (using basal temperature, cervical fluid, and cervix position) for several months to establish a pattern and let the hormones get out of my system. So in the mean time, I've been researching other birth control methods. I found a really cool interactive Birth Control Effectiveness Chart. Does anyone have experience with any of the female "barrier methods" listed in the third row?

The irony of this whole situation is that one of the reasons that I want to chart my cycle is that I'm afraid that some of my female problems could indicate infertility (although I have no solid evidence for this outside of personal paranoia). But now I'm also afraid that I am going to get pregnant before I want to be!

Note: Sorry if any of you find this post boring or disgusting. One of the reasons I love blogging so much is that this community of women offers such great and diverse advice that I could never find in just my circle of real-life friends.

Regardless, I'll be sure to keep you all updated on how it goes!


PS- Thanks for all of your sweet comments on my sicky post. After a weekend of lots of rest I am feeling much better!

Sicky Equation

This

+ this

+ this


= One sick Friday working from home.

I have an awful head cold (thanks goodness, it's not H1N1). I blew my nose so many times that I made the Mr. do a special run to CVS to get the Kleenex with aloe in it. Now I just need to get through eight more hours of work. TGIF.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

The Newlyweds Next Door have been busy "making the yuletide gay."

How so?

Let's take a tour!

Welcome to our condo...


When you walk in the front door you'll see our "Beach Tree"...

{click any of the images to enlarge}

This tree has always been a dream of mine and this year I finally did it!

It's all white shells with turquoise balls and ornaments. I just LOVE it.

I made pencil starfish and sand dollar ornaments using starfish and sand dollars left over from our wedding by hot gluing blue ribbon to them. Super easy and looks great!


I also picked up some fun turquoise ornaments and balls at Target.


This beautiful starfish ornaments is from our trip to Nantucket. A perfect memory of fall 2009.


Next you'll see this sparkly Santa on the pantry door in our kitchen.


And our dining room table scape.


When you step into the living room, it's aglow with lights! We hung icicle lights all along the inside of the floor to ceiling window in living room so you can see our unit all lit up from the street (which is cool since we can't display outdoor lights in our condo). It looks very cheery!


And of course, you'll see our main tree.


There's no theme to this tree. Just my favorite ornaments.

Some from my childhood...


And some from recently...


Things that's I've made and bought...


Uh oh... look who's hiding out, determined to destroy my tree...


Next you'll see our living room bookcases, that we changed for the time being to display some fun Christmas items.


Including this nativity scene that I've had since I was little.


Hope you enjoyed the Christmas tour! Can't wait to see all of yours!

The cat is fine! And reflections on pet parenthood...

I'm happy to report that this morning our silly cat, Judah did pass the string! Hallelujah! I am so relieved.

Of course, my cooler-headed-husband thought Judah was going to be fine the whole time, and of course, he was right. (side note: does anyone have a husband who is right more often than they are? Does that drive you crazy? I thought wives were supposed to be right all the time! Anywhoo...)

Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post with words of encouragement and stories of their dogs eating string! Like Ams said, I also used to wonder why people freaked out about their pets so much. But it's crazy how fast these little creatures become part of our families, isn't it?



But it definitely got me thinking, "if I can be this crazy over being a cat-momma, how am I going to be as a real momma?" I don't want to be the crazy mom that freaks out every time her kid eats a leaf or dirt and has the pediatrician as speed dial #1 in phone. How do moms not die of stress over their kids?

All is well that ends well. I'm off to the final USC game of the decently dismal season. Go Trojans!

9 Lives?

I'm literally sick with worry right now.

This afternoon while I was on a conference call from my home office, I saw our cat, Judah, eat a 7 inch piece of yarn/string off of the tweed chair in our office. I ran over to him but he had already swallowed it!

As soon as my conference call was over I called the vet to see what I should do - I called the regular vet and the emergency vet. Both of them advised me to wait 12-18 hours to see how he does because it's possible that he will just pass the string. But there is also a chance that the string could get caught up on his intestines and require invasive surgery!

Right now Judah's happily running around the house, and not showing any of the signs that he's sick from having the string caught in his belly -- but he wouldn't likely show those until tomorrow. I'm so nervous!

I keep praying that he'll pass the string and I won't have to decide to pay for expensive surgery or not. I'm hoping this is just one of his 9 lives!

To make matters worse, I'm not sure I am even for doing expensive surgery on cat. This is why...

When I was 15 I had a cat that got bit by a rattlesnake, but we didn't know that. He was acting all funky, so we took him to the vet. After many hours at the vet, they finally realized that it was snakebite and administered anti-venum. But it was too late. And we were stuck with a dead cat and $2,000 vet bill. My Dad made me pay 1/2 of it to teach me "responsibility" -- which ate up every babysitting dollar I had ever earned and then some. I vowed then that I'd never take a pet to emergency care again. But now, 11 years later, with my sweet cat that I love so much, I can't bare to think of losing him!

I'm not going to ask you to pray for my cat, because there are so people out there who have sick children or who have lost a family member that need prayer much more than a cat does. I'm just sharing this because I'm scared and sad and I need an outlet.

My little guy...


He's such a character; sleeping all twisted in my office a few weeks ago...


I'll keep you updated on how he does over this weekend.

It takes a (Christmas) village

A couple weeks ago I blogged a bit about the Christmas Village that my Mom and I set up every year in San Diego at my parents' house.

This year's village is all set up and it looks great!


{Click any photo to enlarge}

Here is a look at some of the areas of our village...

(Note: our entire village is Department 56 Dickens Village Series)

The "homes" area...


The "churches" area...


The "commercial" area (shops and restaurants)...


The "seaport"...


Every year we buy a new house or shop for the village. This year we bought an art shop and gallery. It's so cute with the little paintings in the window!


And just for fun, here is how it looks while we're setting it up. You can see how we totally transform that table!




If you have any pictures of your Christmas Village, post the pictures and put the link in the comments! I'd love to see how you set yours up!