In Search Of A Ceramic Rhino: a house log
The story of Sherry’s Valentine’s gift starts last month when I got an e-mail entitled “OMG I need this for my birthday” that included a link to this white, ceramic rhino from Z Gallerie. Her birthday is in March (and I already had gift plans for that), so I figured this would be the ideal V-day gift, right? Wrong. It was out of stock and Z Gallerie could not tell me if it’d be available in time for Feb 14th.
You see, Sherry had been searching for a ceramic rhino for at least a year, since she first laid eyes on this baby in the Nate Berkus-designed room pictured in his portfolio, never knowing that the most-likely-especially-pricey-rhino (perhaps this one?) would someday be made by Z Gallerie for the masses.
Knowing Sherry should never be denied the company of a white, ceramic animal, I pre-ordered it anyways and offered it up to my sister Emily as a birthday gift she could give to Sherry in March. Well, I am not a strong liar. Sherry could tell I’d ordered it and swiftly became convinced she was getting it for Valentine’s Day. Uh oh. She even went as far as to gush to Emily about this striking rhino I was giving her. Emily thought it was hilarious, but I was starting to panic. Even though the rhino did arrive last week (to my office), Emily was not planning to give it to her for another month. Not to mention that the gift I did get her for Valentine’s Day was more on the practical side. Sherry was surely primed for disappointment.
Fast forward to Saturday morning, as I held Sherry’s real Valentine’s Day gift behind my back, I told her one last half-truth: “I ordered your rhino, but it did not come in time. You will get it for your birthday.” Then I handed her our digital camera which now contained a new Eye-Fi wireless SD memory card. Again, not the most romantic gift, but I knew my go-to little blogger would save plenty of time uploading pictures now that our camera could do it automatically and wirelessly. It went over quite well (a big relief to me) and seemed to distract her from the absent rhino for the time being. Being able to turn on the camera in any room of the house and effortlessly upload new pictures is fairly sci-fi. And Sherry loves anything that allows her to journal smarter so there is more time to fit in more projects that we then get to journal about.
Later that evening we headed over to Emily’s house for a Valentine’s Day party as planned. Sherry did not know it, but her horned ceramic mammal awaited. Emily and I chose it’d be too cruel to withhold the present for another month, so she chose to give Sherry her birthday gift early. But not without having a little bit of lively first.
Emily took me aside when we arrived and began pointing to various picture frames around her living room. Inside each of them was a picture that she and her kids had staged with Sherry’s rhino (see a few samples below). We figured the typically-quite-observant Sherry would notice in no time. Instead, it took her nearly an hour. During which, by the way, she even pointed to the photo of our niece Olivia reading to the rhino and said “ahhh, cute” without noticing the ceramic animal snuggled nearby. We in short had to say “Sherry, did you look closely at all the new pictures?” for her to at last catch on.
Needless to say, Sherry was thrilled and the scavenger hunt ended with the glad reunion of girl and rhino. I was relieved that I did not have to keep secrets for another four weeks and that, with the assist of my sister, I hadn’t disappointed my wife on Valentine’s Day. And I am sure the rhino is quite content in his new home in our living room:
All-in-all, a quite glad (if not intricately schemed) Valentine’s Day. Do you folks have any funny V-day stories to share? Any gifts you gave that went over particularly well or particularly, um, not so well? Do tell.
Images courtesy of Z Gallerie and Eye Fi.
