What's in a Name?

My mother gave me a very strange name. So strange, in fact, that when I was a little girl I had to give myself a nickname – because I could NOT pronounce my OWN NAME! How bad is that?
So, my name became “Shossy”.

You may be thinking "Shossy doesn’t sound like the worst nickname a person could have", which may be true until you flash forward 35 years and see that the darn thing actually stuck.

My brother will not call me anything else. And, he finds it necessary to tell everyone he knows to call me this…nice.

Me Shossy.

A Leap of Faith

Okay - so here we are. Let's talk about Christmas shopping...oh please let us discuss this horrible, painful, never-ending ritual.

-Flash back 3 days ago-

I am inspired by god-knows-what to do some high-powered shopping for the holidays. I make the trip to SEVERAL stores, fill the car to over-flowing with stuff people will either never wear, never read, never play with, or never look at again. I then return home, do the inventory and realize I am short a few gifts - so I do the unthinkable...

I order some things online. It seems to go well at first. I choose items, put them in my basket, select the super-speedy-get-it-here-quickly-because-I-have-no-waiting-skills option, checkout, give credit card, date of birth, menstrual cycle, shoe size, I.Q., bathroom habits, preferred lotto ticket numbers and bra size where needed. And then I wait for the arrival of these final items.

-Flash forward back to yesterday-

I check the order status on the company's web site. It states nothing useful and sends me to the UPS site to track the packages. I diligently and happily go to the UPS site, track the packages, and see that they have already been delivered. Hmmmm. How could that be? I am here, at home. Packages - not here with me. Packages not on front porch, not at neighbors, not stuck up in the tree, not hidden in bushes, not in Mr. 411's office. THEY ARE NOT HERE! So, I figure there must be a mistake. Not a mistake made by me, mind you.

I search and search for an explanation. I call UPS and get this: They cannot tell me anything except that the items have been delivered. They do not know who they were delivered to or to which address. They do not know the actual name of the driver who delivered them, and they will not have any of this information until the stuff has been MIA for at least 24 hours. Nice.
24 hours later the items are still missing. I call UPS and find out that they delivered the items to an address 2 cities away...they don't know why. "Why yes, the address says xyz, but no ma'am...we didn't deliver them there. For some reason known only to the underwear gnomes, we instead took your prized Christmas gifts to a completely unrelated address and gave them to some guy at the front office of an apartment complex. Is that a problem?"

Oh golly, gee. Why on earth would that be a problem?

Fucking Christmas shopping.