Happily, we enjoy a selection of great Christmas shopping opportunities here in South Valley but alas, there is always that individual who requires his or her gift be purchased from a catalog.

You know, those slick publications that number six times the population of Planet Earth and arrive by the thousands in your over-burdened mailbox at holiday time. And with every catalog order you place you get - yikes - shipping charges.

Try as you might to shop locally, inevitably your spouse or your kid or someone else equally high up there on the old shopping list will sidle up to where you're nestled comfortably on the couch.

They'll earnestly explain how there has never been a flashlight or bangle bracelet or bottle opener like this one right here on page 47 of the "Most Clever, Most Coveted, Most Expensive Gifts Ever Made in the History of Earth" catalog and darn it, they've just gotta get it for Christmas!

You know what this means, people. If the catalog is from one of those trendy stores at the mall, you climb into your vehicle and haul yourself to the socked-in behemoth shopping center and hunt for a parking place.

If you actually manage to find one before Labor Day, you face an unknown fate inside crowd-infested department stores and hope the item hasn't sold out in the last 15 minutes. Yeah - good luck with that.

But perhaps you wish to skip the whole mall experience or maybe the desired gift can only be bought in Ackworth, Iowa.

Then, Christmas shoppers, you're going to visit the Internet. Keep your extreme magnifying glasses handy in order to see the teeny-weeny item numbers in the catalog.

Squinting between the catalog and the computer screen, enter the 73-digit product code and - Voila! You've pulled up ... a 29-piece set of wrench-ware. OK, something's wrong. This is definitely not the "Flower of the Month Pewter Bracelet" your 17-year-old daughter has her heart set on. So you give it another go or three and finally you're on your way to "Checkout."

Whoops - what's this? Shipping is how much? For a bracelet? That weighs mere ounces? OK, paying $22 to ship a $45 item is ludicrous. So you look for a way out. Is there a "free shipping" option?

Well, yes, sometimes, but you may have to cough up another $60 to get it. This leads to the slippery slope of "Well, maybe I'll do more shopping on this site and snag the free shipping." I mean, there's always somebody left to buy gifts for, right?

Well, of course there's your spouse's Aunt Hilda who is totally impossible to shop for. She either (1) has everything or (2) hates everything. Maybe something edible: a nice cheese log or a chocolate sculpture of the Empire State Building.

Of course Aunt Hilda is on a perpetual diet and you've just ruined it. Sure, you could order her a basket of fruit, but then you run the risk of appearing to suggest she actually needs to diet. So scratch Aunt Hilda.

A very sticky wicket you'll invariably encounter with Internet shopping is the shipping issue. Is that cute ceramic seagull you ordered for Uncle Fred coming from Latrabjarg, Iceland? Then order early, people. There are few things more stressful than anxiously waiting at your curb for the UPS guy on Christmas Eve.

Now here's the fun part: determining what you'll pay for shipping versus how long you'll have to wait for your order to arrive.

Pay for "standard" ground shipping and you may not get your order until Easter. Or pay the big bucks and hope it arrives by Christmas Eve. Either way, you're going to wait for that brown delivery van as anxiously as a teenage girl waits for her prom date.

So if it feels like the UPS guy is moving in, you're not alone. During the Christmas season he shows up repeatedly at your doorstep delivering the goods.

And no matter how cute he may look in those brown shorts, at some point you want him to stop coming already. Because all those gifts he's bringing? Yep, that growing pile of parcels all have to be gift wrapped.

Personally, if I see someone heading toward me bearing a glossy mail-order catalog between now and Christmas I'm running the other way because if

I can't buy their gift items here, it ain't gonna happen. I just can't take any more stressful Christmas shipping.

Gale Hammond Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill 24 years. Reach her at GaleHammond@aol.com.