New beginnings and

The saga of the last Christmas present, 2016 that is, not an early 2017 one!

Ever since before Christmas my former housemate and I have been e-mailing back and forth about the saga of the missing Christmas present. She had seen something that she preceded to purchase for me – well in advance as she usually has her Christmas presents locked in before the new school year starts!

It didn’t arrive. After a couple of months she re-ordered and was reimbursed for the first purchase – still sending it to my Swiss address as the French one is never reliable and she is often not at her current Swiss one. Getting confused? Our lives are not your ordinary “live in one place and take holidays once a year” type.

The second one also never arrived in spite of repeated reminders from her part to the company through which she had ordered it. Finally in desperation she placed a third order and had it sent to her daughter’s house in Massachusetts: just a reminder, both my housemate and I live in Switzerland, but we travel a lot and the chances of picking something up from an USA address, or alternatively having family there send it turns out to be a lot more reliable.

Anyway, that order did finally arrive and made it back across the ocean in her suitcase just a couple of weeks ago (never mind that at that point she had returned to her home in France, there was a trip planned to Switzerland).

The upshot: drum rolls, high fives and firecrackers so acknowledge the receipt yesterday of my final 2016 Christmas present.

What, you might wonder, was so special that she went through all the effort? Ah… not only one of my favorite activities (and having finally finished my taxes I can now enjoy a bit of leisure so its arrival was well timed) – a puzzle, but such a cute one – a cat that greatly resembles Cléa, wound around books on a book shelf. It is also only 750 pieces so I have already been able to put a dent in the frame and start it. It may have been the last present, but it was definitely one worth the time and effort on her part!