I am a sucker for the handmade, for the whimsical, for the one-of-a-kind.

So… not big on the whole extravagant gifts thing. I have friends who disagree heartily with me on this. Although I do love Michele Woodward’s quote that ‘every anniversary is the jewelry anniversary’, expensive baubles are not something that I yearn for.

My favorite birthday gift is a mug that my children wrote on with this special crayon that doesn’t wash off. They didn’t make the mug, but it is a wonderful memento of their school-age handwriting. It is the only item I wash by hand.

My favorite books don’t have riveting plots or mysterious labyrinths; they have life-size characters. Characters that you come to know so well that you could talk to them while loading the dishwasher.

Because the fun of knowing someone is understanding their uniqueness. Recognizing their likes and dislikes, knowing to order them a diet coke before they get to the restaurant. And then, knowing just what to say so the diet coke spews out of their nose.

So here, in this corporatized, homogenized world, where you can get a bucket of KFC in the Xinjiang Province,  it is refreshing to get to know someone a little before you buy the handy thing they have to sell you.

And that’s what I do, help people who have handy things to sell show their uniqueness a bit, so all this commerce (even e-commerce) isn’t so @#*% impersonal.

There’s a person there. It’s personal.