Well, it can take all day for one thing. Not because you've been extravagant. Who can afford that these days? But because you're wrapping your own presents and the ones you picked up for your father to give which he can't wrap himself. And because you've an extra family to wrap for, the family you plan to marry into, and the presents aren't large but the family is.
While gathering supplies, you find out after the fact that the pen you grabbed has broken and you're not only covered in ink but you've been spreading it all over your hands, your clothes, the counter, the X-mas cards, the ... OMG! NOT THE PRESENTS TOO!
You can realize that you miscounted the people to whom presents need to be given, and still need to go shopping. Which, of course, leaves you with more wrapping to do another day.
Your legs can go all pins-and-needles while you're sitting on your bed all cockeyed wrapping present after present after...
You can find the present you misplaced last year and need to give this year but you've already gotten that person another present and this isn't something that will be appreciated by any other person than the one to whom it was originally intended. So it all winds up being a bit overboard.
You can't find that present you know you got this year. This winds up being a good thing after all, since it's for the person whose present you lost last year and just found. Now you have a year to locate this present. And to try to remember not to buy another.
There can be the wrong number and sort and size of boxes to put things in. Now, we have this family tradition of reusing boxes for presents, so one learns never to trust the wording on the box means anything about the contents, but one still winds up needing some sort of a box. It's particularly frustrating when the box you just used was really the perfect one for the next gift to be wrapped and now there's no box at all for it when any of several boxes would have done for the previous gift.
You can, while checking the gifts before wrapping, find out one of them, or more, are damaged in some way. For example, I was checking the calendars, and the very first one I picked up looked a little odd inside. It turned out that all the pictures were upside down relative to the calendar layout. It is a unique calendar, having one of my very own pictures in it, but it can't possibly be given in that condition. Plus the place to exchange it has no open hours where I can visit for several months. It's something I shopped early for with just that issue in mind, but who thinks to look at every calendar to make sure the pictures are right-side-up?
You know that sweet spot on the scissors, the one that curls the ribbon just so? Well, it's good you remember it, because the scissors doesn't.
You know that sweet spot on the scissors, the one that suddenly glides right along the paper, slicing it like a razor, instead of sawing through like a scissor? Some scissors just do not have them. Others do but only for a bit, and suddenly you hear a ri-i-i-p-p-p-p... It seems to happen when the paper is being cut with very narrow tolerances for how it covers the package.
The paper also is good at tearing as you pull it around corners, so you get to chose whether to invest a yard of tape patching it or starting with a whole new piece.
When you cut it just a little off, you can wind up with a trapezoid to cover a rectangle, or something so large that there is an abundance of extra paper to wrinkle into impossible shapes for folding that an engineer couldn't salvage into mitered corners the way Mom taught you to fold it. Even if you can avoid the wrinkles, there's an extra bit of under-paper sticking out showing the wrong side or jagged cutting.
After folding around the package oh so carefully, nothing lines up. You either have a spiral wrapper winding around the package or a stripe that just won't line up. It did until you put the tape on, but moved just as the tape stuck.
The tape cannot be repositioned without leaving a big jagged raggedy hole in the paper.
The tape runs out. You know you bought plenty more. It's somewhere. You can bet it'll show up next year when it's time to start wrapping again.
The packing tape got left in the car. Because it's winter, and you've been lounging in your PJs, you ask your son to please run out on his very next smoking break and fetch it in for you. Because it's winter, he rummages through the basement and proffers another roll instead. When you pull on it, the tape decides it would rather split into pieces and chunks and decreasing-width stripes rather than peel off the roll in any usable form. You ask your other son to please go get the tape from your car. Because it's winter, he rummages around and finds another roll to offer instead.
The replacement pen refuses to write on the surface of the gift tags.
You are left with blue and silver tags to go with the red and green paper. Maybe nobody will notice. Ri-i-i-i-ight!
You have known for years that you have a thing about collecting X-mas wrapping paper on sale. Every year you wind up with more. Every year storage gets harder, not to mention the simple challenge of putting less paper back in the space it came out of mere hours earlier. Every year when you open the storage tote for the paper, there's nothing in it you like. It all looked so beautiful on sale. Now it all looks so ugly. And the rolls are all the super large economy size. They never run out. You hope somebody in the family will help you by using some of it up. They're wise to you. It's still ugly. Paul has developed the prefect excuse by making and giving jelly each year. It's impossible to wrap, so he doesn't. He just hands it out in boxes.
I think I can see his point.
Did I mention it can take all day? And at the end of it, there hasn't been time for sitting with a book, sitting watching a DVD, sitting.... And the knees ache. It's a reminder that so much was going on that ibuprofin got skipped, a really really good reminder. There's still paper, labels, removed price tags (uh, they were removed, right?), tape, scissors, pen, packing materials, scraps, ribbon, and what-not to be removed from your bed before you can get to sleep. Leaving it on top of the dog's bed doesn't work either. Deprived of his own spot, he'll fill your dreams with doggie bad breath, doggie gas, squirming, turning, digging up the blankets until they're just so....
But hey, the presents are wrapped.
Mostly.
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