Gift season offers challenges

My wife keeps trying to guess what I’m getting her for Christmas.

She knows I’ve made a decision on a gift and doesn’t really believe I’ll give away my little secret this early, but trying to guess is part of the fun.

That part of the holiday is unchanged and is much like those of the many Christmas seasons we have shared over the years. But the possibilities for gifts has changed so much in recent history that the old guessing game has taken on a new and previously unimaginable dimension.

Anchorage area stores offer many delightful options, so many that just wandering through one can send a person’s mind spinning in a surprisingly enjoyable way. And then we have the Internet which opens a literal world of possibilities with a virtually limitless range of prices.

Of course my tight budget narrows the price range down to a mere multitude of options. My wife is generally not impressed with how much I spend on her so going high doesn’t win me much in that regard. I am more likely to win points with her by testing the outer limits of my imagination.

Using my noodle gets me much further with her than going for the expensive option. It was her creativity and sense of adventure that brought us to Alaska in the first place and my challenge at Christmas and any other time of year is to make best use of those potentials.

That aspect of her nature influences a lot of decisions at our house. Our dog, for instance, is a goldendoodle, an exceptionally intelligent creature made by crossing a golden retriever with a poodle. Both breeds are intelligent and the retriever is as friendly as dogs come.

When we were thinking about what we should get to replace our then recently deceased hunting dog, I was thinking about another retriever. But my wife had done research and learned that goldendoodles could be trained as hunters and were almost intelligent enough to do your income tax.

Our Bonnie doesn’t deal with accountants that I know of but she is a very intelligent dog who stays out of trouble for the most part. Her primary bad habit is barking at the neighbors and people walking by our house, especially people walking their dogs.

Christmas is a little more than three weeks away and my big gift decision will become known to my wife on that day. I’m not too worried that she won’t be happy with my decision but I do worry that I will find some other way to get into trouble over the weeks til then. Those possibilities are literally endless.

My wife is a person of great imagination and enjoys the challenge of guessing, knowing well that she won’t learn the reality of my choice until Christmas morning.

She has given me hints on what my gift will be but she has offered them tentatively as a way of finding out what I might like to see under the tree.

Whether we will surprise each other remains to be seen. I knock on my forehead in hopes that my decision was a good one.