Wrapping, boxing, packing....

Except for just a few gifts for my cousin's little girl in Chicago, I have finished packing up all the Christmas presents that have to be mailed. All those brown-paper-wrapped boxes are piled up in my sitting room now, waiting to be mailed after Thanksgiving.

And just whose idea was it anyway to buy such fragile items that required odd-shaped boxes?  Note to myself:  Buy books for Christmas gifts, or anything that can fit into a box no larger than the size of a shoe-box.

Most of the gifts I send, especially to my cousins' kids, are books. I worked in a library for nearly 20 years, and I've always loved books, so those are always the first things I look at when it's time for Christmas. Books are easy to wrap and pack, and when you send them via Media Mail, the post office doesn't charge the proverbial arm and leg. (No disrespect to the post office... they've never lost one of the packages I've mailed since we moved here to Texas in 1993.)

I have a friend in England whose Christmas gifts are a challenge.... I want to send her nice things that won't get damaged along the way, in a heavy box that won't get banged up. Finding the gifts are easy... finding the correct size box is the hard part. Maybe I should find a good box first, and then fill it up with whatever fits.

My best friend in Maryland... this year, I found her an over-sized gift that I know she will use and love... finding the box for that was nearly impossible, but it's wrapped up now and ready to go. The smaller gifts for her husband and her daughter were a piece of cake, although one of those is fragile and the box is stuffed with bits of packing foam to keep the edges from getting dented along the way.

For anyone out there who's thinking that Christmas is still so far away..... wake up and smell the hot cocoa!  Christmas is just 40 days from today. Four-oh. Do you know how quickly these 40 days will disappear?  I never did understand how some people don't start preparing for Christmas until all the Thanksgiving left-overs are gone.  If a person starts shopping for gifts and decorating the house on December 1st, that leaves just 24 days till Christmas Eve.

I couldn't do all that I do in 24 days.... there would be no time for baking, no time to decorate every room in this house, hardly any time to wrap and box-up all the gifts for my family and their children, and certainly no time to enjoy it all, and that's the most important part.... the enjoyment.

Jingle bells, people.  40 more days till Christmas..... get going!