If you are like me, names come to mind instead of things when someone asks you what your absolute best gift was; my best gifts are Kati, Alex, Jordan, Cassidy and Carson. But in light of the fact that our kids are undoubtedly the most wonderful gifts we have ever received, what is your OTHER favorite gift? What is the best thing under the Christmas tree that you have ever unwrapped, the thing that either choked you up so much that you were speechless or made you jump so high for joy that there's still a dent in your ceiling from your head hitting it? And on the other side of this coin, what is the absolute WORST thing you have ever received? (No, your ex does not count.)

My best one was given to me by my son, Alex, the year after Jordan was killed. Alex was fifteen, and the weeks prior to that Christmas he worked as a construction helper for a friend of ours. It was the first real job Alex had ever had, and he worked very hard. And on Christmas morning, he handed me a tiny box with a little gold bow on it; inside was a gold ring with a marquis-shaped black sapphire.

I have always been a jewelry person. I even worked in a jewelry store for several years, and I had amassed a sizeable collection of really nice pieces by the time I was divorced. But when I became a single parent, the jewelry gained new meaning:  it became a source of income. My old wedding ring alone paid eight months' rent. When my kids needed something and I was short on funds, something else got sold. Christmas coming? There goes the big emerald and the heavy gold necklace. One of the kids' birthdays? First day of school? Bye, Bye, big diamond, so long tanzanite. Over the years, my jewelry collection dwindled, and by 2003, I had nothing of it left. So as I looked at that ring in the box on that Christmas morning, my son told me that he felt it was time he gave me a ring to make up for the ones I had sold to give him and his brother what they needed. So, he saved up every penny of his earnings from his first job and bought me one. "Just promise me one thing, Mom," Alex said. "Promise me you won't sell THIS one." It took a few minutes for me to swallow tears enough to answer:  "Baby, they'll bury me with it."

My worst gift also has to do with Alex, but it was given to me by his father a few weeks after Alex was born. My ex had a penchant for buying me lingerie; the ladies at Victoria's Secret knew him by name. The Christmas after Alex came, my ex outdid himself. There must have been ten gifts of lingerie under the tree for me, which would have been splendid, but for one thing:  They were all PLUS sizes...2X, 3X, etc. I had never worn anything larger than a misses' 12. When I asked him why he bought everything so big, he said "it didn't look like any of the regular stuff would fit you anymore". I don't think I stopped crying all day. He never was very bright.

So, there you have it, my best and my worst. Let's read it: What's yours?

I first posted this story two years ago on my Tehachapi blog. The original title is "Mister Know-It-All". Hope it gives everyone a laugh.

My ex-husband was the first to admit that he could be rather mean-spirited; in truth, he often boasted of the fact, as if his ability to snap someone’s head off with a cruel retort were a virtue to be proud of. It was a “talent” he learned at an early age from his stepfather, but he perfected it beyond even the old man’s ability. Unfortunately, during the five years I was married to him, I found myself most often on the receiving end of his cutting wit. At first, I had very little defense against this verbal abuse, until I realized that, while able to pull a nasty name out of the air at any given moment, he had very little common sense, and could be positively gullible at times. Laughter is the best balm for hurt feelings, especially when the laughter is at the expense of one’s tormentor.

On one day, shortly before we finally decided to split up, he was in an especially nasty mood. He had managed to find fault with nearly everything and everyone around him. The kids had scattered to safer places, and I was feeling completely dejected. It was just after Christmas, and I was busily un-decorating the large cut Christmas tree in our living room when he came in from outside. I braced myself for yet another biting comment, but instead he, for once, simply made an observation.

“That tree still looks fresh,” he commented. “Look, the needles don’t even fall off when you pull on them. It is a shame we have to throw it in the trash.”

I looked up at him and considered for a moment. “Well, we really don’t have to, actually,” I said in all seriousness.

“Why not?” he asked, playing right into my hands.

“I read a story in [some magazine] a few days ago, about a family who replanted their Christmas tree in memory of their dead grandma. They just cut off the bottom, so the fresh wood was exposed; then they planted it in their yard and watered it.”

His eyebrows rose in interest; he was hooked. “Did it work?” he asked, as I dug my nails into my palms to maintain a straight face.

“Oh, yeah, it worked wonderfully. They showed a picture of that tree, and it was twenty feet high already, and they only replanted it a few years ago.”

That was all it took; I had scarcely removed all the ornaments from the tree when he dragged it out to the front yard. Painstakingly he sawed off the bottom six inches from the trunk, and then he set about digging a large hole while the dead tree lay waiting patiently to be resurrected. After I poured myself a stiff rum and Pepsi, I went out to enjoy the show from the front yard sidelines. As my ex began planting the tree, my friend next door joined me at the edge of our yard.

“Am I missing something,” she began, “or is he planting a dead….”

“SHHH! Not so loud, he may hear you,” I answered in a whisper. Living next door to us, she was often the unwilling witness to my ex’s foul temper, and she just smiled in understanding and sat down in the lawn chair next to mine.

For several weeks my ex-husband went out religiously every morning and watered the dead tree before leaving for work. He even gave it gallons of blue plant food. He became famous in the neighborhood; people often asked me in passing if the miracle had happened yet. And whenever he yelled at me or told me how stupid I was for those wonderful days, I just smiled, knowing that he was not nearly as smart, and I was not quite as dumb, as he thought.

As time passed, the once-fresh needles on the tree turned from green to a dry khaki brown, and still he poured water and effort into it. Of course, this amusement could not last forever. One day he went out to water his beloved dead tree and found it leaning a bit to one side. He took hold of the trunk and attempted to straighten it. What happened was a scene straight out of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Nearly every one of the brittle brown needles dropped like a rock to the ground, leaving my ex holding the bare trunk of an obviously deceased tree. I watched from the front window, my eyes pouring tears from laughing so hard and trying to keep it silent.

Amazingly, he took his failed efforts at raising dead plants in stride. He pulled the tree’s remains out of the ground and proceeded to chop it up for compost. He then scattered the pieces over the front yard. Having no experience with compost, he did not realize that the pieces have to be smaller than six inches to decompose into fertilizer. There were still dead-tree parts all over the yard when we moved out several months later; we were divorced within the year.

I got a lot of mileage and many laughs from this story over the next few years following our divorce. So when my daughter brought her boyfriend to our house one night the winter after her graduation from high school, I relayed the story of my ex and the dead tree to him as we all sat soaking in our Jacuzzi tub. He roared with laughter, but for some reason my daughter did not seem to think it was as funny as it had been when it first happened. At first I thought that she was being protective of her father. “What’s wrong, Kati?” I asked.

“It’s not funny anymore,” she said with a disgusted expression on her face. “He made me water that thing every day. I felt like a moron.”

I was perplexed. “He did not, Kati. He watered it himself, every morning. He never asked you to do it.”

She folded her arms, clearly annoyed. “Oh, yeah, he did, last year, while I was staying with him over Christmas break. He did it again!”

I nearly drowned laughing in my hot tub, and so did Kati’s boyfriend.

It is always a satisfying turn of events to see a bully get his comeuppance. However, there is nothing more gratifying than watching as the bully unwittingly amuses those he’s abused. Except, of course, if he does it again, and again, and again….

A little over a month ago, my husband and I found our dream house in Pine Mountain Club. We worked out a deal with the owner through the listing real estate broker for a two-year lease option. At the end of the lease, a percentage of our rental payments were to be used as a down payment, enabling us to buy the home. We were so excited, and from what the realtor told us, the owner was very happy with the deal and looked forward to us moving in. We showed photos of the place to the kids, our family and friends, and basically anyone who would listen. We gave notice to our landlord, who put our current house on the market. We started packing and put an ad in the paper advertising a moving sale tomorrow. We even decided to forgo Christmas presents and use the money for the move, which would happen during the week between Christmas and New year's. Since my stepkids will be with their mother on Christmas, we did not even put up a tree.

Yesterday, I got a voice mail from the realtor. She said she "had some news" about our house, and could I call her back at my next convenience? When I returned her call, she pulled the rug out from under me. NEWS???!! Talk about an understatement. Apparently, the owner "had been in negotiations with someone else" about our house, and they sold it to the other guy on Tuesday! Apparently, we were being used as leverage to push the other guy into buying, and these people did not see fit to inform us until a week before Christmas and two weeks before we were meant to move in.

I am still in shock. I spent the entire night in tears and got no rest, and neither did my husband. I am sleepwalking at work today. I am having a moving sale this weekend, but I am not moving! I've already sold our washer-dryer set because the new house included a brand new one! My home is a shambles, with boxes and piles of stuff everywhere. Our landlord is getting ready to rent the house to someone else, and we now have nowhere to go. Right now, I would love to have a shot at those realtors and the owner of the house we were meant to buy. I'd spit in their faces. I can't believe that they could do something so callous as to keep us in the dark the whole time just to get more money out of the other guy. We never would have pinned our hopes on that place if they had just told us that it was being negotiated already by another party. But to make us pay for and send credit reports, call with congratulations, and then say "oh, well, sorry"? HOW COULD THEY?

Every time I think people can't surprise me with their cruel disregard for others, I am once again proven wrong. Some people simply have no conscience, and some people, like me, for instance, are gullible, easy marks for those who take advantage. I am so tired of being one of the gullible ones, but I really don't want to be one of the other kind, either.

And so, the search for a house goes on. If I had my way right now, the search would start back east, where I am from. But that is only an option if we leave my stepkids, and that is not an option at all.

larger view

Today I went out for lunch. Nothing special, except that I usually eat in my office, preferring to save the five-to-ten bucks it costs for lunch for other pressing things, such as gas money. However, I just itched to leave the office today. Everyone, it seemed, from my boss to my coworkers, and right down to me, was in a nasty mood and doing nothing but feeding off of one another. As soon as my lunch hour hit, I was out the door heading for my favorite Chinese buffet place. It has good food and it's cheap, only six-fifty for two days' worth of food, and so I go there for lunch more often than anywhere else. The owners always recognize me and greet me with a friendly smile, but today was different. The lady at the front counter, presumably one of the owners, smiled as usual, but this time, she said, "You're pretty."

I was taken aback, and I asked if she was kidding. I am unaccustomed to receiving compliments, except from my husband, and he gets paid for it. "No, really," she answered in her slight Asian accent. "You're very pretty today."

I normally wear office scrubs to work. This morning, though, I decided to get a little Christmas-y, and I put on a green knit top with red scrub pants. I topped it off with a red and gold headband. Nothing fancy, just a little change from my usual work attire. The point is, this lady who only knows me by my lunch took the time not simply to notice, but to pay me a compliment and give me a much needed and appreciated lift to an otherwise gloomy day. Since then, I have walked a little taller and smiled a little more today, and although my coworkers continue to lament over the falling sky in their lives, my mood remains lifted, thanks to a few kind words from someone who was under no obligation to say them. Even my son's recent accident and upcoming surgery seems a little less depressing because of the kindness of a virtual stranger.

And so I charge you, my blog friends, make someone's day tomorrow. The simplest kindness can make a world of difference, if only for a little while. I still have to go home and take care of my son, prepare for his surgery, and continue packing our house for our upcoming move. I still have more bills than I have money. My problems are not gone. But at least I can deal with them with a cheerier outlook. And the next time my husband tells me I'm pretty, I'll try and take it on faith.