I am rested (LIE: like many perimenopausal women, I wake up at, say, 4:00 a.m., then lie awake until half an hour before my alarm goes off at 6:30/7:00); I have taken my vitamins (true); and I am ready to get back to gift ideas (true).

 

This first item is not gift-related—but I wanted to tell you that Amaz0n has Kraft Mac individual 4-packs for $2.34 right now, well under half-price. In their favor: they can be microwaved, and they’re formulated to be made with just water (i.e., don’t require milk or butter). There was a limit of five per customer, but I was able to order five and Paul was able to order five, so we could give ten 4-packs to our local food pantry for under $25. The expiration date on the ones we received was May 1, 2026, and many food pantries including ours have a policy that donated food can’t expire within 6 months—but I contacted our food pantry, and they gladly accepted these because, as they said, it’s such a popular item, and moves fast. If I’d been thinking, I would have had them shipped directly to the food pantry: they are surprisingly bulky.

 

Similarly: the board game Sorry is on sale right now for $6.99. Sorry is one of the few board games I am willing to play, and it works for a mix of ages. If you want to donate a game to a toy-collection box near you, this is a pretty solid choice. And there’s a buy-one-get-one-50%-off deal right now (the link is on the game listing) if you want to donate TWO games.

 

I’m sure you have already seen this, but Merriam-Webster has a new baby. From their birth announcement:

For the first time in over twenty years, and only the twelfth time since 1898, Merriam-Webster has published a new edition of its iconic Collegiate Dictionary.

Complete with thumb notches and a deep red cover, weighing almost five pounds, the Twelfth Edition is available now.

Thoroughly updated and redesigned for students, professionals, and word lovers, the Twelfth Edition features over 5,000 new words (including cold brew, farm-to-table, rizz, and dad bod), 1,000 new phrases and idioms, enhanced entries for the top lookups, and more than 20,000 additional usage examples.

Baby picture:

So handsome!

I IMMEDIATELY ordered one for Henry-the-English-major, and I will probably want it on my own wish list as well. I ordered it directly from Merriam-Webster and the shipping to my house was $7; it likely varies, but maybe not much. For some reason this was my Amaz0n line in the sand: I WILL GIVE MERRIAM-WEBSTER EVERY POSSIBLE PENNY, COME HELL OR HIGH WATER.

 

We have purchased this Ninja portable-cup smoothie blender twice, once for Rob and once for William:

In both cases, we bought it because the child in question complained that the cups included with our beloved Ninja blender-with-two-16-oz-smoothie-cups (which is its OWN gift idea) are too small. Or rather: they make the right size of smoothie, but they don’t have enough wiggle-room for making it. And neither Rob nor William currently uses a blender for anything else. So we bought them the SMOOTHIE-CUPS-ONLY version (though of course you can blend other things than smoothies in a smoothie cup), but with smoothie cups that are 24-ounce instead of 16-ounce. Frankly I was hoping William would add his to the household, because I agree about the smoothie size, but he has put it aside for the day when he has his own place.

 

I have bought this Swiss Victorinox small serrated knife for Rob and also for myself, and I use mine all the time:

Rob had mentioned that he needed a small multipurpose knife like the ones we have at home. I couldn’t find the ones we have at home with direct shipping. I found this one with direct shipping. Then I got jealous, and here we are. I use it for many kitchen tasks, and also for cutting open shipping boxes (the serration is GREAT on that fibrous tape).

 

William had been fussing over humidity and so forth, and using a vaporizer to try to increase it in winter, so I bought him this La Crosse hygrometer/thermometer that resembled the one I’d inherited from my grandfather and used constantly until the cats knocked it off a shelf one too many times and broke it:

I found it at a local hardware store, and I bought one for myself as well, to use until I can figure out if there is such a thing as a hygrometer/thermometer repairperson.

 

William goes on a lot of long walks, even in winter, and says only his hands are an issue. Paul snowblows our enormous driveway, and even though the handle of the snowblower is heated, his hands still suffer. RECHARGEABLE SLIP-INTO-GLOVES HANDWARMERS FOR BOTH:

Paul has lost his, and has asked for another pair this Christmas.

 

Speaking of reorders, my parents originally bought this meat thermometer for Paul, and it finally broke after many, many years, and he asked for a new one for Christmas, and I bought it gladly because I use it all the time too:

You just stick it into the meat, and it thinks for a few seconds, and it shows you the internal temperature of the meat. I use it mostly for salmon; Paul uses it mostly for steak, burgers, and turkey.

 

This was specifically requested as a cheap, short-term item: one of the kids wanted a two-time-zone watch, to keep track of a friend who was going overseas. There were not as many cheap options as I’d hoped, and we chose this one, which was around $23 when we bought it. It worked as well as expected, which is to say it lasted the summer, and we don’t know if it would have lasted longer because after that it wasn’t needed. It’s advertised as a “women’s” watch, but we used it as a unisex item.

 

Oh, hi! Do you play Pokemon Go, or does someone you love play Pokemon Go? This is a gamble, because not all phone-rockers work for all phones, but this is the phone-rocker I have, and it works for my phone, and it was recommended to me by many other people who also have phones and play Pokemon Go:

I bought this before I had my knee surgery, when I knew I would be unable to go walking as the game required to meet certain goals. Others may use it when they have NOT had knee surgery; I don’t judge. Here are the tips, which sound complicated but are actually easy: the Pokemon Go app should be closed; the phone case should be removed; some people find their phone needs to be upside-down in the holder. Voila: steps.

 

Last year Elizabeth drew William’s name in the Sibling Secret Santa, and she bought him these cat-brushing gloves:

They have been a wild success. William loves them. The cat loves them. I don’t love them. I dramatically prefer this little contour cat-brush, which the cat ALSO loves.

It’s not the best I’ve ever seen at removing fur (that award goes to a vet-recommended wire brush I bought in the 1990s which can no longer be purchased anywhere as far as I can tell), but it is terrific at gently-but-firmly tidying the regal ruff of our medium-fur cat.

 

Do you know someone who has a Steam account, and likes puzzle-solving games? MAY I RECOMMEND BLUE PRINCE:

There are very few games I can tolerate being the AUDIENCE for (*unpleasant flashback to my high school boyfriend wanting me to watch him play one of those stupid start-all-over-when-you-die-which-is-every-10-seconds video games such as Pac-Man or Donkey Kong*), but this is one of them. William and I have been watching Paul play this game for a week now. The gist is that you gradually build the floor-plan of a house room-by-room, in order to figure out your inheritance from an elderly relative who loves puzzles/games. There are things to find (coins, gems, notes, clues, letters, news clippings, security codes), and things to interact with, and things to observe, and mini-puzzles to solve. It’s visually compelling (I WANT TO LIVE IN THIS HOUSE), and fun to gradually figure out what’s going on. Paul and William are more obsessed than I am (there are some rooms where, for example, you figure out how to configure a steam/water pump to make things happen in other rooms, which, YAWN), but I am still enjoying it too.

 

Perhaps you did not realize Old Spice had a holiday deodorant line. WELL LET ME INFORM YOU. I thought these might make good stocking stuffers, so I have tested Jacked Frost and Snickerdudel, and I would say that Snickerdudel is a perfectly acceptable vanilla-type scent (with a little of whatever it is scent-makers think “cookie” smells like), not too strong (I notice it only when I’m putting it on, and not throughout the day—but on the other hand I wear perfume, which tends to mask subtle deodorant scents), and that Jacked Frost smelled unacceptably MAN COLOGNE on me—and not even REMOTELY like mint. It says it is “frosted mint”! I caught NO mint!