FIVE Earflap Hats! FOUR Tubs of Chex, THREE Gift Cards, TWO Unicorns, and a Cooling Pad on the Front Porch

Oh, that's not all. I don't have time to rewrite the whole song. Those are a few of the items I've been wrapping and labeling to be delivered by Santa Hick on Christmas Eve. We won't even start on the baking of the Oreo cakes. At least I had The Pony to help with that. He makes a good sous chef, though he is a bit indecisive and requests affirmation.

 

Of course there are way more than FOUR tubs of Chex. More than TWELVE, even! Let the record show that I have 14 adults and 6 kids to gift, which has been a chore this year.

 

"Oh, VAL!" you say. "No need to be so dramatic. You ain't the first woman ever to give Christmas gifts." 

 

WAIT! That's not you at all! That was Hick, when I was put on bed rest for a week, three months before The Pony's birth. As I recall, his exact words were, "You ain't the first woman ever to have a baby. I don't think 'bed rest' means you can't stand up for a half hour to make supper and wash dishes." Right before he left me home on the couch (in favor of traipsing through the woods, claiming to be deer hunting), ALL ALONE, after taking a week off from work to tend to me. 

Anyhoo... the gift-choosing and keyboard tapping and PayPal paying was not taxing. The wrapping itself was not all that much trouble. I've made Chex Mix so many times I could do it in a trance. No need to decorate the tree, because it is still up from last year! No, the effort was not the problem.

 

The most difficult part of this year's Christmas preparations has been GETTING THE GIFTS DELIVERED! I'm not even talking about our packages going to complete strangers, and also the next-door neighbor. I have a package in LIMBO! It has been IN TRANSIT since December 8. I'm pretty sure the Pony Express could have had that delivered five or six times by now. But it looks like the USPS cannot do the ONE JOB they are paid to do!

This package contains four gifts for The Pony. It's not like he's getting a lot besides that. I guess I'll hand him an IOU. He DID get one of his gifts that actually arrived EARLIER than predicted. It came yesterday. I was notified by an email from FedEx that it was on the porch. AND IT WAS! That must have been their ONE reliable deliverer, the woman in the white JEEP. 

 

I sent The Pony out to look for it within three minutes of the notice, and he found it! It was the cooling pad that he wanted for the new laptop he bought with his casino winnings. It's a fancy one, with colored lights around the edge. He picked it out himself, so no surprises there. 

The main item I wanted from that missing shipment is for my niece's daughter. It's a unicorn light. Like a night light, but it doesn't plug in. It runs on batteries, with an on/off switch. I'll just have to wrap a picture of it with a promise that SOME DAY, she will have her pretty unicorn.

Don't you worry about Niecy Jr. She's getting ANOTHER unicorn, with wings that light up when you stroke it, and also emits SPARKLY sounds! Yeah. I don't know what that is either, but it was in the description. I have it here, in a giant box. The Pony and I tried to fit it in a smaller box we had on hand, but it was a no-go.

"Um. Yeah. I don't think we'll be wrapping it in this."

"Not unless we cut off the head..."

You can be the judge of who proposed the decapitation.