I'm a Wrapper

I'm spending a lot of hours these days wrapping Christmas gifts. My printer is under here somewhere. You don't want to see my desk, or the rest of the office. First there's the problem of finding the right box for the gift. Clothing is easy, and most stores will provide boxes, even if you do need to stand in line for them. Sometimes I have to make a box fit by combining two or altering the original configuration. Anyway, my point is that boxing the gift is the major time consumer.

Wrapping is next. Yesterday I pulled the paper around the box to know how much to cut off the roll - but I measured the wrong way and ended up with a square that wouldn't fit because it wasn't long enough. So I then had to box up smaller gifts to wrap using this wrong-size paper. And there's also the tissue paper and little squares of leftover paper.

Then there's the ribbon and/or bow. Easy enough to buy a bag of bows, pull one out and stick it on. But half the bows in the bag are crushed or kinked up on one side so that when it finally makes it to the package, it looks as if it drank one Margarita too many.

So I either make my own or buy ones stuck on pieces of cardboard. Gold is usually a color that goes with most Christmas paper. Except this year. So I have lots of gold bows and ribbon still waiting to be tapped for a package. The red and green are all in use. I think I wasn't paying attention when I went paper shopping.

I know, I know. It's silly to spend so much time on something that gets ripped apart in .0001 second. But the packages look pretty under the tree. And the prettier the package looks, the more anticipation it builds for the recipient. But sometimes, the prettiest package of all contains a gag gift.

Sometimes life if like that, too.