The 'dre days

I can shop for holidays for my folks pretty well and have done so for years. Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick's, birthdays...whatever. Not too difficult. Mother's and Father's day, however...those consistently stymie me.

For mom, much of the trouble lies in the fact that we historically haven't been the best of friends, nor have we ever spent a lot of time together (the latter being a partial function of the former). That's not to say that I'm not greatful. To the contrary, my mother's a wonderful woman and dedicated mother and wife. She wasn't around when I was younger, though, and we approach things from such opposite angles that our relationship has never been stellar. All that to say that I have little idea of what to get her.

For dad, he has no use for many of the typical "dad" type gifts due to his disability, and he already has ticket packages for three of the four major professional sports teams in the area. I don't want to get him the same things each year (he has a list of books and cd's that he wants that we typically draw from), but then again if he's asked for them I guess it's not too bad.

Given the fact that my parental situation is far from standard I probably should have seen such challenges coming long ago, but even if I did it wouldn't make it any easier. This year we did mother's day on Saturday because...well, because she wanted to. Kinda shot the weekend, but it's her day so no big deal. I ended up getting her a gift certificate to the Build-a-Bear factory. We'll see how that goes.