Birthdays and Christmas paper

Well today was a momentous day, my son's 8th birthday. I hadn't gotten him anything yet because I'm such a procrastinator and so I had to go and fight the Memorial Day crowd at Wally World this morning to find him something. I'm taking him and his sister and two of his friends to Boondocks next weekend which is a fun place with go-carts, miniature golf, video games, laser tag, and all of that kind of fun stuff. I've never been there so I'm actually looking forward to it. Anyway, I went and fought the holiday crowd at Walmart and got him a camping type of backpack so he can go with his dad and I when we go. He also got some clothes, some Hotwheels cars, and bunches of the other little things 8-year-old boys enjoy. I told him he wasn't going to get anything huge since he was getting his main gift, the trip to Boondocks, next weekend.

So I got the gifts, the cake, the ice cream, all proud of myself because I had spent only a little more than my budget, hopped in my car and got almost home before I realized I hadn't gotten any wrapping paper. Damn. I could have turned around and drove back to Wally World but I soooo didn't want to go back and fight crowds again (why is it that babies have to scream at the top of their voices when the store is the most full?)

So I got home, unloaded the gifts and then stared at them. What to do, what to do. I thought about wrapping them in tin foil (which actually looks kind of cool) but didn't figure I had enough of that. I then thought about just taping the gifts inside of Walmart bags, but thought that would be pretty tacky. I'm not exactly sure why I even bother wrapping anything anyway since being a boy and being 8 my son could really care less about wrapping paper, but those are the sorts of things I worry about. Then I remembered I had left over Christmas wrapping paper. That was just the ticket.

I busily wrapped all the gifts in last year's wrapping paper and sat them out. So there on the kitchen table was my son's 8th birthday presents neatly wrapped in dollar store Christmas tree wrapping paper and Walmart-special snowman paper. Oh it's great to be a forgetful procrastinator, it makes things fun.