{"id":15487,"date":"2010-11-26T07:43:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-26T12:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2010\/11\/26\/haunted-by-the-spirit-of-giving\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:16","slug":"haunted-by-the-spirit-of-giving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2010\/11\/26\/haunted-by-the-spirit-of-giving\/","title":{"rendered":"Haunted by the Spirit of Giving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"clear:both\">Gosh, time is running out: I leave for Canada next week.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear:both\">I\u0092ve been off work since Tuesday, trying to use up my leftover vacation time for this year, but I\u0092ve spent the whole whole week working, just on different stuff. I\u0092m scrambling to get things made, because I need to have a stash of wee gifties when I travel at Christmas &#8212; in case I get ambushed with surprise gifts.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear:both\">I know, that sounds crappy, but I find it stressy, this externally mandated giving-time. I prefer to give things all year long as ideas and people connect in my brain. I wish we used Christmas as an occasion to just <em>be<\/em> with each other, which is far more important.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear:both\">I\u0092d love to show you what I\u0092ve made, but\u0085 they\u0092re gifts.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear:both\">In related news, the fella and I triumphed at jewellery-making class last night: We made our wedding rings!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear:both\">This is a breakthrough, because, while I\u0092ve been enjoying the class, the things I\u0092ve produced in it so far have been a cavalcade of horrors.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear:both\">This is unusual for me, because I\u0092m accustomed to being able to think of something and, most of the time, create it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear:both\">But jewellery-making involves blowing torches, melting metals, and talc-like glass powder that has to be melted in an 800-degree oven, so it\u0092s much harder to get the right hands-on result.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear:both\">So, phew, one more piece falls into place for the wedding. And I\u0092m excited about the idea that we didn\u0092t buy these, we <em>made<\/em> them for each other. (I also referred to this when writing our ceremony, so, like I said,<em> phew!<\/em>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"clear:both\">Right. I\u0092ve got a complicated book to make. The last present.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-content\/uploads\/posts\/1196\/haunted-by-the-spirit-of-giving1.jpg.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gosh, time is running out: I leave for Canada next week. I\u0092ve been off work since Tuesday, trying to use up my leftover vacation time for this year, but I\u0092ve spent the whole whole week working, just on different stuff. I\u0092m scrambling to get things made, because I need to have a stash of wee [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}