Gripe-apalooza

Okay. So I don't know what to get my parents for Christmas this year. Me and the HB are sort of on a tight budget this year, so whatever we get them is going to be small. Like dinky ornament small. Which they would love and they wouldn't need anything else. So that would be super. We've got them covered. Check them off the list.

Yesterday I found the perfect gift. Well, not the perfect gift. But it's pretty damn spiffy. I think they'd get a kick out of it. But who knows, I'm a bad gift picker-outer. Anyways, I think they'd like it, so I want to buy it. Only problem is it's expensive. It's more than what I was planning on spending. A lot more. But I mentioned it to the HB and he said it sounded like a good idea.

ME: Can we spend this much on my parents and your parents?
HB: *making a cute little EEK! face* Sure.

He was going to get the gifts for his family at work. And it would have been really cheap. But last time we stopped by their house for a visit, they already had what he was going to get them. So now he's working on plan B.

But he said, 'Sure, buy the gift,' and that was all the convincing I needed. So this morning I set about buying it. It's off the 'net - a special offer from my company. Ain't that nice. (In case you couldn't tell, I typed that last sentence very sarcastically.)

I click on the item I want and go through the process of 'checking out' my 'cart'. On the main page of the item, underneath the price there was this line: $5 shipping surcharge applies. I thought, 'hey, five dollars ain't bad.' Then I get to the page where they want me to put in my credit card number. And I see the final total. They've added on 15 dollars for shipping! Holy Price Gauging Up The Ass Batman! Dude! The item is small. It's a little book. There's no way it will cost 15 fucking dollars to ship that thing! Maybe that's a special rush for the holidays. Who knows. And maybe it comes from overseas for some reason. Bleh. That means the gift costs twenty more dollars than what I thought. And that's a lot. Especially when we've got to spend money on his parents because Plan A fell through. Damn. I've got to do some complicated money shuffling in my head now. I hate playing musical chairs with bills and money.

::sigh::

Being broke sucks.