June Chitchat

[Prot]

I was so lethargic, I napped between 17.00 - 20.00 yesterday. My youngest niece gave birth to a boy,Albie,on the 16th. I'll probably see him, about as much as I've seen his mother. I.E very infrequently. I did the dutiful great uncle bit - Amazon voucher to buy baby bits with. There won't be a thanks. There never is a thanks.

Contrary to the saying, blood isn't always thicker than water. My family here in Wiltshire means more to me than my birth family.

[agate]

I guess congratulations are in order for the birth of little Albie, but it is so discouraging when people don't even acknowledge a gift you've gone to the trouble of thinking of for them and sending it to them. How do you know that they even got it? Maybe it went astray and they never received it?

For years I sent gifts to the children of a nephew and his wife but only once throughout the childhoods of those 4 children did any of them acknowledge them. I've never met any of them in person, and by now that is just as well so far as I'm concerned.

Usually they send a holiday card but not always. Once they even sent me a gift--a lawn ornament (a few colored glass balls that you can stick in your yard for decoration).

I had no yard or lawn.

You could try pointing out to these people that you have no way of knowing whether they actually received what you sent unless they let you know it arrived. There are often ways of finding out if something has been delivered to the address you sent it to but even those notifications don't assure you that the person you addressed it to actually got it (unless you set it up so a signature is required--at least that's how it's done here but it may be entirely different there).