"Gotcha"

My girlfriend and I attended the wedding of a fellow co-worker a few years ago. The last name was Swanson, and they "cutely" decided that the parting gift for their guests (a weird little tradition I think, but that's for another post) was a little dish with a lid of two SWANS sitting pretty. The gift looked like it belonged in a garage sale my grandmother was having. I get the swan idea (albeit cheesy)....but I didn't get the ceramic grandma dish. Neither did my friend.

The wedding was in October. In December, my friend and a few other co-worker friends (NOT the guy who got married) had a gift exchange. It was a "nice" exchange, although I can't recall what our nice gift was. After we opened it, my friend announced that it had a surprise attachment gift. Yup. The swan dish. Now I was the lucky owner of TWO swan dishes.

Ever since then, we've gone back and forth with her swan dish. I took my second dish home, but the next time I returned to her house, I hid the dish behind a picture frame and called her about it when we left.

At T.O.'s birthday party one year, it was left in his gift bag. Another time she threw it back in my car when we were leaving her house. One time, she sent me a message that insinuated she left the swan at my house when she had been visiting. I tore the house UP looking for it, and come to find out she hadn't really left it at all. It's been back and forth going on three years, I believe.

Today, she received TWO swans on her desk at work. :)

I requested the aide of a mutual friend who still works with her. He and I met for lunch, completing Operation Drop Off. He then proceeded to take the gift bag (she's expecting, and it was a baby gift bag) to her desk and watched her open it. Both swan dishes were wrapped in a swaddling blanket. It had a note inside that read:

The Art of Swandling

There once was a baby who was growing.

His mom thought he'd be as big as a Boeing.

But her friend knew better,

And sent her a letter,

Two swans wrapped up as his mom was DOH!!-ing.

Gotcha.

She sent me an email and called me a bitch. I love it. What a great Thursday.