Sunday, December 15, 2013

The Christmas Wrap and Howl!

by Pa Rock
Holiday Wrapper

I plan gift-giving very carefully, always with an eye toward not having to wrap anything.  If the birthday or Christmas prezzie can be ordered off of the Internet and shipped to the most worthy recipients, that is the way I will go.  If I have specific things that I have to mail as presents, nothing gets individually wrapped in pretty paper.  They all get stuffed into a box and shipped - as is.

The spirit moves me - just not to the point of wrapping.  My attempts at dressing gifts in festive paper are much more than just artistic failures - they are full blown disasters.  I invariably wind up making cuts that would embarrass lumberjacks, turning what should be neatly folded corners into wadded catastrophes, and covering the entire mess in tape, a lot of which gets horribly twisted in the process.

There is one time a year when I get trapped into wrapping - and this year's fiasco occurred tonight.  Well, in point of fact, I am taking a break from the carnage - much of the damage is yet to be done.

The one day a year when I am forced to wrap is when I prepare boxes of goodies for mailing to my kids and their kids.  I put everything that I have collected over the past few months, unwrapped, and stuff those items into cardboard boxes.  Instead ob being smart and using purchased boxes, I have collected good used boxes from retailers.  (I continue to make that mistake year after year.)  Those used boxes have bar codes, stickers, and other printed  matter the make it necessary to wrap them in brown paper prior to mailing.  So far tonight I have done one-and-a-half out of four.  And what I have wrapped looks hideous.

Break's over!  It's time to get back to cutting and taping - and howling louder than the neighbor's cursed dog!

Happy holidays!


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