A Gift for Grandma

On Monday we got the surprising news that my 89 year old grandma is coming to visit for Christmas.

My first thought on hearing this news was something along the lines of "Oh good. The boys will love to see her!"

My second thought was "Crap. What am I going to get her for Christmas?"

Now that she will be here on the big day, the usual handmade ornament the boys make for her just won't seem like much when she watches everyone around her open gifts. She said she didn't want anything, but come on. It just feels wrong.

She's hard to buy for actually. She likes sports, specifically the Phoenix Suns, gardening, feeding the wild birds that come to her yard, and reading. That's about it.

Family members have latched on to that interest and continue to flood her home with all kinds of team crap merchandise. Frankly, there is only so much purple and yellow gorillas a person can take.

Pictures are not really an option. There are a lot of kids, grand kids, and even great-great grand kids now. Every picture we send gets stuck up on the wall somewhere. No pictures are ever taken down, so...yeah. (I did make her a calendar, though. I figure she HAVE to get rid of it when the year is up. If she likes it I can just make another one for her next year.)

Gardening and the bird idea were quickly nixed too. She's getting old enough that she can't do a lot of gardening. Plus, now she's watched the birds long enough to know a freakish amount of information on every kind that might possibly fly through her line of vision.

That, my friends, leaves reading. Easy peasy, right?

You are wrong.

My grandmother only reads romance novels. She will not read anything else. Ever. If she starts a book and thinks that it isn't from the genre, she puts it down.

Let me just say, that it is challenging finding romance novels for your grandmother. All the books at the bookstore looked like this:




I could not bring myself to buy her a book called Ecstasy Untamed. People. It's a "Feral Warriors Novel" even. (shudder) Could. Not. Do. It.

Nor could I buy her something like this:

Um, Nauti Intentions? For my grandmother? She may have naughty intentions, but it weirds me out thinking about what they may be.

Let it be known that I could buy these books if they were for my mother or friend. Then I would have had a field day with the double entendre of the titles and the hunks on the cover.

When you take out books with titles like those, the vampire porn romance stories, and the books with characters with stupid names, you're left with slim pickings. I also had the prerequisite that it had to be long* because if I was going to be spending my money for one of these books, she needed to have something to read for longer than two seconds.

I needed something safe. Because apparently I am a prude. (Sigh) I ended up with these bad boys or, um houses.

See? Not a naked body to be found!

Think she'll wonder what is up with this nonsense?

Probably. Lol.

Right now it doesn't matter. I got her some books. She'll be able to read. But most importantly, I won't want to hide every time I see her reading!

*Is.aac was quick to inform me that longer doesn't always mean better. Or so he's heard. I just about fell to the floor with laughter!