The Joys of Wrapping

About an hour ago, I packed up all the teacher-gifts I got last week, folded gift bags and wrapping paper, tried and failed to decide what to do with the two really chintzy gifts I got, and then went looking for things to wrap.

Having not yet wrapped a single gift, I found plenty. (No, Piet, I'm not telling you where I had hidden them.) I brought them all downstairs and plopped them in the middle of the living-room floor. Then I went looking for the tools of the trade: paring knife, wrapping paper, tape, gift labels, and ribbon.

The paring knife was not a problem. It was in the dishwasher, which was on. I shrugged and found scissors, instead.

The ribbon and labels were not a problem. They were in the trunk in the living room, exactly where I put them last year after Christmas when I packed up. I also dug out of that trunk a whole bunch of cardboard boxes, mostly with logos like "Gymboree" or "Old Navy" on them. Useful, definitely.

The wrapping paper and the tape turned out to be a problem.

I bought a big roll of 'noman wrapping paper on Saturday. When I say big, I mean big - it was twice as long as the ones I used to buy. I suppose the wrapping paper manufacturers have figured out that people only wrap gifts in paper when they're too big to fit in gift bags, and therefore, bigger rolls will sell better. I looked high and low for this wrapping paper. It is nowhere to be found. I'm wondering if it got left in the trunk of the car or something.

Then I went looking for the tape. Last I saw it (about a month ago) it was in the drawer of the microwave cart. I would have been prepared to swear it was still there. I sorted through a dozen candles that were leaking dye all over the inside of the drawer, through manuals for every small-to-middling appliance in the house, and through elastics and other odds and ends that collect in drawers like that. Do you think I could find the tape? (Here's a hint: if I'd found the tape, I'd be downstairs wrapping presents instead of up here typing a livejournal.)

I came up to page Piet on MSN, to ask him if he knew where the tape was, or better yet, both tape and paper.

It is lunchtime at his office. He had just left.

So I can't wrap presents right now. I think I'll finally finish that Port Spar chapter today. I will definitely finish baby laundry and unload the dishwasher. But wrapping? That's going to have to wait until I find my supplies and baby and husband are both out of the way. I'm thinking ten o'clock tonight.

The Wrapping Marathon

I have finished all the wrapping I can do for now. That's not all the wrapping I need to do - just the wrapping which requires tape. I ran out just as I was getting to the last of the can't-bag-this gifts.

Or, almost the last. I'm not sure where Piet stored the two gifts for my sisters. They're somewhere in the basement, but it's easier to wait until he can tell me where than it would be to search. I also haven't touched anything he bought for people in his family. Piet's not that good at wrapping things, so he usually takes them to a booth in the mall to have them wrapped properly. This has the added advantage of mixing up the wrapping paper under the tree. We have a surfeit of snowmen under there at the moment, one big roll being cheaper and nicer than several smaller ones.

Question: How many of you with kids wrap gifts that they receive from Santa? If you have no kids, did you always get things from Santa wrapped? My family had it that nothing from Santa ever got wrapped, mostly because there were four of us and my parents were chronically broke. But Piet's family always wraps everything, in an effort to draw things out during the lean years, and I'm wondering now how to handle this. Do we wrap Elizabeth's Santa stuff? How old will she be when she realizes that Santa wraps things at Oma's house, but not at Mommy's or Grandma's? I remember comparing notes with my friends, and wondering, but I don't remember how old I was.

I'm off to write more about pirates. This book is so much fun. :)