Before it’s totally untimely: the final remnants of my much-adored Christmas Stocking.
1. Chinese New Year Kit. The gold bars say Hell Bank on them. Anyone know what that’s all about?
2. Flowery, fragile sesame cookies. Crunchy, crumbly, crave-worthy.
3. A rainbow’s worth of macaroon-like soaps.
4. And a bin of macaroon-colored Taro wafers.
(Everything on Earth reminds me of macaroons these days.)
Last Christmas was the first year I specifically gifted myself a treat (my Russian Lomo LC-A film camera). It wasn’t a ritual I had specifically intended to turn into an annual holiday tradition, but after recently re-posting my year-long fascination with the Beams Plus work oxfords, I wound up indulging myself in a fancy, foreign find for the second Christmas in a row.
Like practically everything worth wanting these days, men’s fashion-wise, my Beams had been trapped in Japan, for what I thought would be forever. But Treasury reader Vadim K. commented that a proxy such as JapanGoodsFinder.com could make my Beams Dreams come true. (For a not-small fee.)
So on Saturday December 19th I submitted an inquiry about my shoes. The next morning a brief, polite e-mail was in my in-box as well as a PayPal invoice which tacked on about 25 percent of the shoe’s regular retail price. Hmmm….
I agonized over whether it all was worth it, and if I had requested the best size, and wondering what I would do if my shoes didn’t fit. But by the afternoon of Sunday December 20th, I pulled the trigger via PayPal and less than four days later, on Christmas Eve, my shoes arrived fresh from the Beams shop in Harajuku. (Packages from J. Crew take longer than that!)
I waited until after Christmas to unbox my risky gift to myself. I didn’t want the possibility of them not fitting to fowl up my holiday. But everything turned out perfect. My dweeby oxfords looked just like I’d dreamed they would, fitting roomy and right. I can’t wait to lace ‘em up properly and poke around like Pete Martell.
Many thanks to Japan Goods Finder and to regular reader, Vadim K!
Gold and silver and other metallic-ized gifts.
1. Postalco Jotter Notebook.
I had really needed this as all year I had been scribbling phone numbers and directions on a stupid stocking stuffer from last year: a box of little loose (and easily lost) sheets of paper printed with a light orange graphic of man climbing a cliff or jumping over a river or something (I’ve blocked the beyond-dumbness from my memory) and the words “The will to succeed.” (Yesterday I easily mustered the will to successfully toss them in the trash!)
2. My dog Aesop looks like a fox, so thus this door-knocker looks like my dog.
3. My mother gave me the vintage spoon, along with a story: When we moved from England back to America when I was nine months old, the movers had accidentally packed up my baby spoon and my mom was in a panic about how she was going to feed me during our week long sea voyage back to the states. She said every restaurant in England had these little silver spoons in the standard brown sugar tins set on each table. So she guiltlessly stole one with which to feed me at sea. Flash forward 30 some years and she comes across the spoon somehow in my sister’s kitchen and steals the spoon (once again!) and gives it to me for Christmas.
4. Ultra-chunky pretend nails, perfect only for laying around looking pretty.
5. Another vintage English gift, though not stolen. A stamp sheet cover from the 1940s. Trying to figure out how/where to display it as it doesn’t really fit modern American stamp books.
6. A hunk of Brazilian pyrite now giving gritty glam to the top of a stack of books.
With all these shining, sparkling gifts, my digs are one big disco ball!
A preface to this volume including further information on its founding editor.
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