Christmas Crap Shoot

One of the things B and I have been doing during our time off is Christmas shopping. I war with myself on the subject of presents, because while I believe that we have too much, that the kids certainly don't need anything else, and that they are (in the end) just things, I also find myself walking through stores absolutely dying to buy things for them. I see items on the shelves that they would love, and I want to buy them. All of them. I don't even want to give them to other people as ideas. I want to give them myself. It's really ridiculous, and yet I can't seem to help picking up thing after thing, forgetting in minutes that I've already collected enough for three Christmases, because, gosh, there's a Lightbrite over there--wouldn't M think that was dandy?!?

Christmas seems like such a crap shoot to me, too, because there's no way of knowing for certain which gifts will be long term hits and which will fall by the wayside in mere days. I'm so often perplexed by things that keep coming out to play, and then puzzled by others that seemed like they would be keepers. So I find the gambler in me wanted to buy ten things knowing that only two of them will really pan out. Then I can just keep the two and give away the rest. See, if I try to guess the two, the odds are that I'll be wrong.

This is crazy, I know. I'm the first person to request few to no gifts from family, to complain about the house being too full, to push the family to see the intangible over the tangible. So what's wrong with me??? All I can think is that the holiday spirit has struck, and this year, she's greedy.