The White Elephant Thing

After taking the day off yesterday, I was ready to jump back into it today.  Warm ONCE AGAIN, I left Banks at home because I've been eating crappily the last few days, and really needed a good hill workout. I got it.  But it's not enough.  Seriously, would people PLEASE stop bringing stuff into the office to eat?  I want so badly to finish this thing strong!  I wanted to  try to lose eight pounds this month, and honestly, I've been afraid to get on the scale the last two weeks. Hope springs eternal.  I have two weeks left.

Friday was our office's informal Christmas lunch (Home Slice Pizza and salad) and white elephant gift exchange.  Do you hate that tradition as much as I do?  I mean the white elephant thing, not the lunch.  Maybe I'm a little on the sensitive side, but I have always found the routine of scheming for gifts, stealing away ones you like, discarding the ones you don't, and getting hyper-competitive in the process, to be off-putting and SO not in the Christmas spirit.  I know others don't see it that way.  Where I see grabbiness and greed, they see hilarity and high spirits.  Whatever.  So I told our admin, who arranged the whole thing, that I was going to opt out of the gift exchange.  No big deal, right?

But it turned into a very big deal, where I was apparently the only one not participating, and that was going to throw off the numbers, so someone was sent to fetch me, and I politely declined, which provoked great consternation back in the conference room......aaggghhh!!!  And I somehow ended up looking like a condescending prig, when all I was trying to do was avoid a situation that I know from experience is uncomfortable.  I probably didn't help matters any by trying to convince everyone that maybe next year we could consider the type of gift exchange my GNO group does, or better yet, adopt a family or a foster child.  Sure, they nodded, but I sensed some internal eye-rolling.  Party pooper. 

So in hindsight, it wasn't a big deal, it's over and forgotten.  But it won't happen next year because I'll be totally clear about it and unflustered and unapologetic about my stand on white elephant.  Which is that it's kind of sucky.