It's the Blanket....With Sleeves!

This year I decided to be the loving daughter my mother deserves, rather than the absent minded one who calls a week late to wish her happy birthday, so I got her Mother's Day presents. I don't think I've done that since I was young enough to get away with a hand glittered card. My first gift was Dooce's first book, accompanied with a card that read "Happy Mother's Day! I'm glad giving birth to me didn't result in your institutionalization in a mental hospital". Touching, right?

My other gift was a stroke of genius. My mom used to wiegh as much as normal moms do, that is to say, as much as I do now without children (*sob*). Anyway, somewhere along the way she managed to lose a lot of weight. She says through diet and exercise, but I think that's a legally binding confidentiality agreement all skinny people have to sign after they get whacked with the Skinny Fairy's wand. The downside to being skinny is that she doesn't have enough insulation to keep her warm, and she unreasonably refuses to eat more cheeseburgers to remedy this. So I decided to send her the Snuggie:

This picture demonstrates the versatility of the snuggie, as it fits Teresa who is about 4 feet tall, and her husband Zac, who is approximately ten feet tall. For those who have not heard of the Snuggie before it is THE BLANKET WITH SLEEVES! Perfect for people who are too skinny to survive in the wild. Not that I am bitter.

Anyway, I went to the snuggie website and began the snuggie ordering process. I entered my credit card number, my address, and my mom's address. I clicked "order one set of snuggies", since it's buy one get one free (with free book light!). The next page pops up: "Do you want a free snuggie?" Thinking that the question was a bit redundant, I clicked yes. The next window- do you want a DELUXE snuggie, featuring adorable pictures of kittens or puppies? Although the fleece-y eyes of the kittens stared at me plantively, I thought I clicked no. Then a couple more windows popped up, and I apparently had something of a brain spasm and just began clicking the yes button to make them go away. Suddenly, my order confirmation page appeared. "Congratulations! You ordered 6 snuggies for the low price of $99.94!" I order $100 of snuggies in a variety of stylish colors. And I had to allow 24-48 hours for my order to process before I could call them to change it. This led to an embarrassing conversation with my husband:

Me: Um, I did something bad.

Danny: *sigh* What?

Me: You know how I wanted to order my mom a snuggie? Well, I accidentally ordered too many.

Danny: How many is too many?

Me: 6.

Danny: Oh that's not too....

Me: For $100.

Danny: WHAT?

And, of course, by the time I was able to call and attempt to cancel the excessive snuggies the order had already shipped. However, the snuggie people were perplexingly generous, perhaps because I was not the first person to accidentally order 6 times the number of snuggies they intended to, and they gave me ALL BUT ONE SNUGGIE FOR FREE! I got FIVE FREE SNUGGIES! And an unknown number of free book lights. The best part of this entire debacle was when my mom received an enormous box from the snuggie people, and opened two of the individually wrapped inner packages before she decided to call me at work to see if I had lost my mind entirely. She was pleased with the snuggie concept, but berated me for thinking she would want the "sage green" snuggie since she thinks green makes her look sickly, and one has to look elegant when wearing a blanket with sleeves. However, she then told me she has been wearing a fleece jumpsuit around the house when she gets cold, so I am still confused about how a sage green snuggie is unexceptable but what are essentially adult footie pajamas are the height of fashion.

Since then I have been thinking about other people I can bequeath snuggies upon. My officemate and I decided we are going to wear them at work, since our office is usually cold enough for us to see our breath. Danny thought maybe he could forsake clothing and just wear around a snuggie, and then I was thinking that Siva might appreciate a snuggie she could wear on cold winter nights. Does anyone else have some suggestions on innovative uses of the snuggie?