Mother's 90th birthday tomorrow. This morning was a whirlwind of early deliveries - flowers, cards, parcels, very exciting! One tall cardboard carton seemed to come from a florist, so I thought I'd better open it straight away in case a plant needed water. One dozen helium balloons burst out like jack-in-the-boxes - we jumped out of our skins, breakfast tray went flying, the cat nearly cr*pped herself and hurtled from the room, the dog started barking his head off…
Well wasn't that a lovely surprise. I just hope nobody gets any funny ideas about her birthday cake at tomorrow's posh luncheon party.
I do volunteer work at a local hospital on Saturdays and once in awhile we will get a tall boxes from an on-line florist to be delivered to a patient.... I know the sender meant well, but how on earth is a patient, who is hooked up to all sorts of things, or someone who is elderly, going to open up that box? I wish I could help open the box but one needs tools or brut strength to tear into it.
Some on-line services have direct delivery from a local florist and we get to see the flowers when they come in by the florist itself.... or a person can call a hospital gift shop [if the hospital has one] and buy flowers from the shop to be delivered.
Years went by, and she relaxed the TV ban somewhat, although she still didn't have a color television until the mid-1980s, my husband and I gave her our old one.
Later on, she and her boyfriend got a small flat-screen TV that the boyfriend used to watch golf tournaments. MIL mostly avoided it like the plague, although she'd sometimes watch things like "Masterpiece Theater." Husband and I liked to joke that she surreptitiously watched "Jersey Shore" and "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," when no one was around to catch her at it. The TV, was kept in a little room off the main living room, because MIL believes it's "tacky" to have a television in the living room. (Husband and I have a HUGE flat screen TV in our living room, a fact that she probably puts down to my corrupting influence.)
Then one day, about a year ago, when she was out of town, her boyfriend's son thought it would be a nice surprise to buy them a large flat screen TV and put it in the room they use as a library. MIL came home, found it among her "beloved books," as she calls them (she's a major drama llama) and had a shrieking meltdown. It was removed but she still talks about how awful it was to come home and find it. You'd think it was a severed head, the way she carries on about it.
Christmas came. My ex - and though he may have his faults I never said he wasn't a smooth b*stard - didn't give the children a television. He gave ME a television. Thin end of the wedge… Your MIL was right!!!
I also resisted cellphones for about 15 years. One year my OH gave me a lovely bottle of perfume, but because he'd wittily packaged it in a Vodafone box it very nearly got chucked out with the trash.
I am also beginning to think that people who send flowers who don't also send vases need to think it through...