Turns out that Jerome is a "big present"guy–he’s gotten me some very thoughtful, wonderful things since we’ve been together, including a contribution toward my 'Forge (we’re very, very frugal in most other circumstances). It was nice to get him what he needed for his business/design fun. That said, I can’t help but mention that my last boyfriend, who was a self-made multi-millionaire, got me a $3.49 earbud-cord winder for my 35th birthday. It still had the airport gift shop price tag on it. Now that you mention it, I’m lucky he got me the plain blue one instead of one that said “old fart” on it.
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Looks great! Thanks for the advice
Why do cute baby pics always make me cry?
Lovely.
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Not to defend him, but it is kinda impressive he could find something sold in an airport for so little. 
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I love this story…especially the last part about your 35th b’day gift. Long ago, I had put an ironing board on my Christmas list. We were pretty poor, as I remember, but my husband bought one for me and decided he wanted to have it wrapped, so took it down to the Elks lodge where they were raising money by offering a gift wrapping service. THAT was my husbands only mistake…taking that darned ironing board there to be wrapped. He never heard the end of it…about giving his wife a gift like that for Christmas.
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My aunt kept complaining her feet were cold so my uncle bought her an electric blanket for Christmas. That one didn’t go over so well.
My friend’s wife wanted some toilet seat (either her birthday or Christmas) and he came over trying to figure out how to wrap it. It wasn’t the hardest gift to guess what was under the wrapping paper. She was happy with that one.
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Funny things. It’s always fun to get something that isn’t necessarily practical, but sometime the practical IS fun, too. Personally, I would have loved the electric blanket way more that a toilet seat!
Yeah, that aunt did not do practical, much less household items, for gifts. Those friends didn’t have any money at the time and as I recall the seat was a bit broken.
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My wife loved the Dyson hand vac she got surprised with one Christmas. Normally she doesn’t want any presents at so she is a hard one to buy for.
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i hate getting presents, haha. we finally convinced the in-laws to stop buying us things that are…ill-suited…to take back on the plane (like the two didgeridoos my mother-in-law, er, blessed us with one christmas - those were left in the maritimes).
typically between us two we only give each other one thing, and last year we barely did that. i think this year we might start instituting a rule about only giving each other things we made ourselves; we mostly only give handmade things now…which makes buying presents easier. 
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Oh ye gods… me too!
I blame divorced parents turning Birthdays into a competitive nightmare and thence living in Japan for a decade where birthdays are considerably lower in importance than here in the West. (Your Death Day is the most important… but admittedly you don’t get to eat cake then)
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I’ll take your presents if you need someone to offload them on.
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