Expiring?

Magazines make a great gift to yourself or someone else. In fact, this is one of my favorite gifts to give, especially if I know the friend or family member will read the magazine. I give a dear friend Bon Apetit for her birthday every year because one year I asked her what she wanted and she told me this. For the holidays, I give my ex-husband, Bill a New Yorker subscription, since I know he’ll read it and I found out he stopped his own subscription. I call this “gift-giving made easy.” Well, almost easy. Once you start a subscription, you get bombarded with renewal notices, where some include a free gift if you renew then, others give you a percentage off the newsstand price and still, others offer you the ability to give a free gift subscription. Well’ most of us see these renewals and blindly respond by mailing in the renewal with a check or going online and using a credit card. All that blindness can mean that you have renewed your subscription for enough years that it may need to be delivered to you at a cemetery or other burial site. The other day I received a renewal notice for the Bon Apetit gift subscription. This time I was careful to read it and noticed the expiration date is 2022. Yes, the date is included. Obviously I didn’t renew the subscription at this time, despite the offer of a free gift. In fact, the only gift I could think about is the one I will need for my friend for her birthday 2021. Since the magazine is paid up through 2022, what will I get for her? I guess I need once again to ask her what she wants.