Wrapping rage. The curse of opening gifts.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s already started. Wife and I bought a new coffee maker for Xmas. Not wanting to wait, we opened box. Chinese no doubt, because opening the box required ninja weapons I do not have. Then taking all that tape off every part of the machine, after wresteling it from the box with all that Styrofoam making those “nails on the chalkboard” sound. Lovely. Finally got it open and was too tired to try it.

Got to save my strength for opening all those plastic packages that require military grade hardware, or explosives, to open. You know, the ones you have to stab with a knife to cut enough of a slit to get the chain saw in to finish opening it. And all those little twist wires that they use to attach 10 to 15 areas of the contents to the cardboard backer. PITA.

Rage on as you attack those Xmas packages!

2

Those aren’t real problems, are they?

3

Well, you could lose a finger if you open packages like this.

4

It’s not just opening them. It’s wrapping them. Gift cards are awesome. Shove it in an envelope and you’re golden. Wrapping a toy is a special kind of torture. Ever wrapped a basketball?

5

I have and it was kind of fun.

It is the little gifts that drive me a little nuts. Though stocking stuffers I get lazy on and wrap them like oversized candy.

As to opening the packaging, I always use to have my tool box handy, made life easier.

6

When I was a kid, stocking stuffers were never wrapped. The stocking itself was the wrapping, as it were.

7

That’s how it was when I grew up, too, but in my husband’s house, everything got wrapped. So, he wraps everything for our daughter. It’s fine by me because he actually enjoys it and I can’t stand it. Gift cards and gift bags were created for me.

8

I had some fun wrapping a gift once.

We had an office Xmas party scheduled, with a gift exchange. I wasn’t able to attend (actually, I didn’t want to attend, and the office manager was so insistent I finally had to tell her that :eek: ), but I sent a gift.

The same office manager had spent about a year or more trying to update our product’s user manual, in the course of which she had generated umpteen reams of printed drafts, much of which I had taken home to use the backsides as scratch paper. In product testing (cash registers), we had also recently generated miles of printed receipt rolls.

I cut up a bunch of pages into crazy-quilt pieces and taped them all together, and used that for wrapping paper (printed side out, of course). I made an elaborate bow from the receipt paper and put that on top.

When I gave the box to the office manager to take to the party, she said: “Thanks. I needed that.” I’m told the whole crew, at the party, got a good laugh.

9

My dad is just such a tape wielding masochist. I once received a basketball, but he wrapped it into a package that included a football “box” to try to deter me from figuring out what I was getting. Yeah, yeah. I got the football too.

10

I like to make bows. I don’t know why, I just do. It hurts my heart to see them ruined in pkg. extravaganza of Xmas morning. A few years ago I started taking them off pkgs in the wee hours. My kids thought Santa stole them every year. Til they started recognizing them from year to year. Then they just thought I was crazy, well they do anyway. But this was a special brand of crazy. Only for me.