Stealth Gift Wrap

I've thought many times that maybe my calling in life is to go get a job as a gift wrapper during the Christmas season because I really do LOVE wrapping presents.  (Then I remember all the Me Monsters I would have to deal with and remember why I don't...but don't get me started again...)  However, I'm not sure everyone would appreciate my gift wrapping skills quite as much as I do. 

My "normal" mode of gift wrapping is to wrap everything in stealth packaging.  Patrick, on the other hand (and bless his sweet heart) makes no attempt whatsoever to try and disguise anything...whatever condition he walks out of the store with it, it goes straight into the wrapping paper....no boxes, no stiff cardboard backing...nothing.  Case in point is the year he bought me a scrapbooking navigator and when he put it under the tree I could "see" the wheels.  Sometimes clothing gets a box if the clerk at the store gives him one without him asking, but otherwise it just gets wadded into a ball and wrapped in a nice squishy package.  It's actually quite comical.  If I make any effort at all to "peek" at the gifts he puts under the tree it's a good bet I'm going to know what it is.

Now, at the risk of making him look bad, I must go back and clear something up... He is a GREAT shopper.  He is very thoughtful and gets very stressed about what he's buying because he likes to make me and the kids happy.  I even have an awesome Tiny-Tim type Christmas story to tell about him...

Many years ago (19 to be exact...it was the first Christmas after Braden was born) we had NO MONEY.  I could get into all the technical reasons why we were so terribly broke, but it's unimportant to the story...so let's just say we REALLY had NO MONEY.  Not even money for a Christmas tree...we were buying groceries on a credit card...and there were NO GIFTS that year.  My parents came to visit before Christmas and they gave us $10 for a Christmas tree.  We went to the tree lot a few days before Christmas and bought a scraggly little left over tree and took it home and decorated it...but we agreed that there was no money to buy gifts so the tree just sat there naked and gift-less.  It was depressing.

Then on Christmas Patrick brought out a gift for me.  It was one of his ski socks filled with goodies from the gift shop where he was working at the time (he didn't steal them...his boss let him have a few things).  They were silly and strange, like a brownie mix in a little pouch...but I felt terrible because I didn't have ANYTHING for him.  But that's how he rolls.  He takes good care of me.  My parents gave us gifts, so we got some things...but I can't even remember what they were...I will NEVER, however, forget the ski sock.

Maybe it's because of that extremely lean Christmas, but Patrick likes to spoil me (and the kids...but I have a hand in spoiling the kids).  Every year he makes a point of buying one gift for each of the kids that is JUST from him--I don't tell him what to buy or help him pick it out--he does it all on his own.  It's usually something small, but he does a good job.  The last couple of years he's had a stressful Christmas only because he's being restrained by a tight money-makeover budget and he always has big plans.

And now I have gone completely off the point I have been trying to make...

The kids have been laughing at the presents he put under the tree this year.  He uses way too much paper, he doesn't trim off the excess (just wraps it further around the present) and nothing is in boxes.  He bought something in a long skinny box and only wrapped half of it--then he told me to "not look at the back half".   It's quite hilarious.  So imagine my surprise when he came home the other night with two gifts for me that he had paid to have wrapped at the store.  They are wrapped perfectly and they are nothing but boxes....when I shake them I can hear rattling but I have NO IDEA what is in them.  I went over in my mind the list of things I have mentioned wanting and nothing I can think of would fit in one of these boxes.  After 20 years of always being able to guess my presents, these two have me completely stumped.  To say that it's driving me nuts would be an understatement.  I sat at work and thought about it...I've shaken them at least 3 dozen times (although now he is taking them away from me and saying "stop shaking it")...I even looked to see if there was any way to see through the wrapping (sadly, I don't have x-ray vision so it didn't work).  So now all there is left to do is wait.  (My sister the temptress told me to peel off a side of tape and peek but I did that once as a teenager and it ruined Christmas...)

So kudos to Patrick...he finally accomplished stealth packaging...even if he had to pay someone to do it for him.  Yesterday he said "If I'd known it was going to drive you this crazy I would have started paying to have them professionally wrapped a long time ago."  I get the feeling I'm never going to be able to guess my presents again.