Baby Rant

One of hubby's co-workers had a kid, and invited us to the christening. Apparently having a kid and getting a zillion dollars worth of flowers for the mother, and some kind of expensive, and probably worthless baby gift basket wasn't enough, now we have to shell out money for a christening (whatever that is, I think it involves water). What next?

We apparently didn't RSVP in enough time to attend the actual dunking to be held in a church, and probably a good thing. Churches make neo-pagans such as myself, nervous.

Still, we were invited, so its time for the obligatory gift. We have dogs, we don't have kids, and have no clue what to give people with babies. Thankfully, someone invented the gift card... but where do we buy one?

I checked online and found a Babies R Us, but it wasn't conveniently located. Baby Depot was, so off to the mall I went. Baby Depot, part of Burlington Coat Factory, which doesn't make coats, but sells just about everything else, in my humble opinion, is a dump, but if I can run in there and get a stupid gift card... so be it.

I ran in, stood in line, stood in line some more... gave up when I thought I would be dooming the recipient to this crap also, and that's not a nice gift.

Off to some other children's store where I quickly checked, and they did have infant stuff, so good to go.

First I was asked if it was a boy or girl. Hmm, I think its a girl, but I'm not sure, got any cards that are unisex? Of course not, so I tell the salesgirl to just pick one, and I'll blame her if its the wrong type. She wasn't amused, but I don't care.

Then the card wouldn't scan. She tried another card, and it scanned and I threw some money on it, but then she couldn't remember which card scanned, so there was a 10 minute drama of her trying to figure out which card had the money on it, while very cranky post birthing mothers waited behind me tapping their feet.

Great, I got the right card and escaped the screaming store, then remembered that I need to get a card to put the card in. Ugh, so off to Safeway for a card for the card.

Twenty minutes standing in front of the mile long card aisle looking for "baby christening" cards. Is baptism the same as christening? I don't know and there was no authority to ask at the moment. Do I make a horrible faux pas and grab one, only to find I've done something horrible by getting a baptism card when christening was a whole different religion thing?

Then I found the cards that said "baby christening" WOOHOO, except I read them, and its all like "We know that our God will watch over..." or "Our God is almighty and blah blah..." Um, I don't believe in a God, where are the ones that say "We really hope your God has his act together and keeps your kid safe", or "best wishes on the kid dunking"? Huh?

After ranting and raving quietly in the card aisle and scaring off a few customers, I found a cutesy card with nothing in it. Let hubby come up with the sentiment, because my brain has bubbled out of my ear.

As I'm walking up to pay for the card, I see thise HUGE carousel of gift cards for all sorts of place, INCLUDING kids places! AAAAH, all I had to do was go to a grocery store and take care of this in one swoop, instead of stalking a mall for a store?

There really needs to be a neo-pagan card writer out there, and this crap needs to just pop up as reminders on your calendar, the computer goes out, finds something, buys it and ships it to the recipient and sends me a reminder so that when someone says "hey, thanks for the toaster, the baby loves it", I can say knowingly "ah, shucks, it was nothing".