It really does feel good to be a gangsta

I love buying and giving gifts (LOVE!), I love making spreadsheets of stuff to buy, stuff bought, amount spent, ship date. I love watching people's faces when they open that perfect little treasure picked out just with them in mind.

The wrapping can suck it.

Just this morning, I was sweating over the gift mountain--stacks of Amazon boxes and etsy mailers in a corner in our bedroom. My mom always had a gift wrapping ritual. She'd plan approximately three Saturday evenings or Sunday mornings wrapping bunches of gifts, listening to Carpenters Christmas Portrait, and sipping my grandma's family recipe for eggnog.

Me, not so much.

I let it pile up, stress about it, then end up wrapping 34 gifts at once, cursing under my breath while I try to form perfect corners and match the wrap pattern where I sliced the paper just so. I also match the paper to the tree theme, by color. And I usually run out of tape.

This year it all became too much. I have four kids, a Christmas Eve lunch to host tomorrow, a house to clean, billable work to do, pecan pies to make, and a brother to take to dinner for his 25th birthday. Something had to give! I decided to take advice from the Geto Boys, whom you may know from the soundtrack of Mike Judge's cult classic Office Space. Their wisdom is, simply, "Damn it feels good to be a gangsta." *Probably not good for little ears*

And how does that relate to gift wrap? First, wrap and rap are homophones. That's an easy enough connection. Second, and more importantly, the point is you do what you gotta do, and you own it. So this year, I am wrapping free form. If it didn't come in a box, you're going to get a squishy gift half-ass wrapped without the pattern matching across the jagged tear line. That's right--TEAR. And instead of matching the gift wrap to the tree, I'm using up all the folded up, hoarded paper I came upon during my holiday organization mania.

Instead of giving myself anxiety over gift-wrap perfection, I am going to create the most hideous showstoppers you've ever seen under a Christmas tree. Just like the tablecloths I can never manage to iron before a party, butt-ugly wrap jobs will become an MBG trademark. People will judge my feelings for them based on how terrible their gifts look (inverse ratio).So far, so good. I'm feeling really merry and bright while I cackle over this totally un-MBG like wrap off.

Happy holidays, my friends. I hope you get many lovely gifts shrouded in shockingly unappetizing layers of fug. And if you're getting something from me, you can bet on it.