Santa's Workshop

I have been working on the presents for the local grandkids. These are the ones where UPS is not limiting the size or weight of my creativity. I have been trying to figure out how I could paint these presents without a heated workshop. Most years I dream up something that can be given without a painted finish. This year, I am not going to get away with that. These presents are going to need a finish.

Well, I had a stroke of genius and the shower-sauna shack is soon to be the fine finish building on a burgeoning Santa's workshop complex. We don't need no stinking Shower! (Use your best mexican accent here) Kris is really going to be excited about this idea. Sometimes she hops up and down and is moved to tears my ideas are so good.
We can shower today and try to get the presents painted and out of the shower building so we can shower again before Christmas. Two showers in one week--way more than enough.
Anyway, it solves the problem and that has me excited to get busy and finish them.

I still am one idea short of having all the presents dreamed up. Inspiration had better come today. I could make a great gift in less than an hour that would be perfect, but now you can't give kids a slingshot. When I was young, slingshots were given by parents and kids were warned not to shoot anybody with it. There were a lot of things on the no shoot list and when you violated the list you lost the slingshot for a period of time. Now these things are frowned on and I think the world is a lesser place for it. Few matches were better in the history of mankind than a boy and his slingshot. Even an unimaginative kid, could feel safer from wild animals with his slingshot in his back pocket. We lived in town and none of us had seen a wild animal bigger than a rabbit. Still, we felt safer. I'm sure the rabbits were not safer, although I don't remember actually killing any. I am sure we would have tried to get our mothers to cook it if we had. Letting little boys be little boys was part of parenting and minor injuries from being a boy were accepted not sued over. Shooting at rabbits with a slingshot was not a barbaric act of senseless violence, just something boys did to keep themselves out of trouble.

So I am stumped. Trying to come up with a really good PC gift is not as much fun. I guess the truth is Grampa finds a slingshot more interesting too.

Grandma just read this and she had a slingshot! Girls had slingshots? This developed after my childhood. Girls were on the no-shoot list when I was young.