Confessions of a tacky gift wrapper.

Christmas shopping is about 95% done. Still need to figure out something for the boss. Oh, the boss gift. The bane of my Christmas shopping existence. He got me a cookbook. It was great, very thoughtful. Maybe I should get him some of that headache stuff that you “apply directly to the forehead.” Have you ever seen those commercials? It took me almost a year to figure out what was going on when I saw those commercials.
Anyway, I wrapped up Jared’s gifts last night. We don’t have any scotch tape, so we have been using packing tape to wrap things up. It’s pretty trashy. I’ve always admired a beautifully wrapped gift, but it always seems to be an afterthought for me.
Maybe it is because of the time Grandma Fae had a craft club meeting to teach me and my sisters how to properly wrap a gift. We all gathered around a long card table in her basement and listened to her talk about how to coordinate bows with paper and how to crease the corners just so. When out of the blue, right in the middle of our intense discussion on how to cut the wrapping paper in a straight line, my sister Marcie felt something scratching on her back. She nonchalantly brushed at the irritant, but the scratching didn’t go away. Seconds later I looked over, she looked back and what did we find? There were two baby mice (sans fur) scratching and clawing at Marcie’s lower back in an attempt to crawl up to the cheese in her shirt pocket. This is not a joke (except the cheese in her pocket part, she didn’t have any cheese in her pocket as far as I know). Marcie screamed, I screamed, the rest of the sisters screamed and we went charging up Grandma Fae’s stairs faster than a speeding bullet. The wrapping tutorial was over. Grandma Fae wanted us to toughen up, go down stairs and continue with the lesson, but we would have none of it. No way was I letting a baby mouse crawl up my backside - I would have to learn how to properly wrap a gift some other day. Once the shock wore off we walked home together, nervously giggling all the way. I blame this experience for my poor wrapping skills. It must have done something to my subconscious. Young girls + mice + gift wrapping tutorials = trashy wrapping jobs later on in life.