Christmas memories...

Merry Christmas Eve!!! Now, I'm not really a crazed Christmas person, and the older I've gotten the less exciting Christmas usually is for me.

Last year I believe I was home alone on the Eve, and I didn't do any interactions with people on Christmas day until late morning when PPE called me to wish me a merry (this was also the first time that PPE and I have ever actually talked with each other). I spent my morning reading I Love You, Beth Cooper and laughing my ass off.

Anyways....Christmas...not an exciting time.

Last year I shared some good times from Christmas past, and I thought I would share some more.

In high school, one of my glorious retail jobs was working in gift wrap at Marshall Fields. Gift Wrap was a bunch of fun. There was an interesting mix of ladies in GW, from retired school teachers, to ladies just wanting to work a bit because they were bored, to the high schoolers. Seasonal help was always interesting from LBM to this girl named Penny who was missing teeth and had her brother come to pick her up at work and reeked so much of pot, I think I got high from the fumes. Fun, fun times.

The high schoolers, were myself, MK, and KT. We became really good friends while working at Fields, and even kept in touch after we left the job, but life, after awhile, stepped in and we slowly lost contact. MK and I have gone in and out of contact, but after a while KT was totally MIA. Thanks to FB a couple of weeks back....guess who I found!?!?!?! My GW Girls.

Needless to say GW during the holidays was cuh-razy!!!! I said a couple of posts back I could work 40 hrs in 1 week while in school and still get homework done. I don't know how I did it, and I don't know if I really want to do it again.

The GW area was tucked away in a corner of the store, almost like an after thought. We were between the office and the stock room for china. The main wrapping area was what should have been storage, and we had a front greeting area that was all 'pretty' for customers (which where called guests). Along with wrapping, we had to do ship stuff too. And it was back in the shipping area that something happened, that MK and I would always laugh about...

People like to buy/ship fancy stuff. So we have a nice $200+ Waterford set of toasting flutes, we wrap it, then we bubble wrap it, then we peanut a box, plop in the flutes (that will probably never be used), and add more peanuts. Interesting I know!! So we would have bags and boxes of peanuts like 20 ft up, on China's high shelves, unused real estate that they so graciously shared with us. It was a high shipping day, and MK and I spent a good part of our Saturday or Sunday getting the shipping under control, while 5 others (wo)manned the wrapping. We needed more peanuts. I find the biggem ladder (that's like a staircase), and push it over to the big box of peanuts on the shelf. MK's on the ground to catch the box when I drop it. For some reason, this was always a 2 person job, and cumbersome. I climbed up the ladder, and grabbed the box. As I'm positioning and twisting myself to drop the box down to MK, I hear rain falling. I ask MK if she hears the rain too, thinking to myself driving home on ice covered streets is going to be a bitch. As I get out "MK is it raining??", MK is starting to say "L the peanuts are all falling out!!!". The bottom of the box wasn't taped shut and all the styrofoam was falling all on MK.

Styrofoam bits is a bitch to clean up, especially when high static cling is involved. And the amount that had fallen out was about half the box that was at least 5 ft tall probably a 3ft wide. It was a lot of crap to clean up.

To make matters worse the only think we could shovel everything with was one of the baby dust pans. I think we spent half out shift picking up styrofoam peanuts. The whole time MK kept saying "MK??? Is it raining???"

I'm sure you are thinking this is a lame story, but it still makes me laugh. Whenever MK and I would reconnect after a gap of MIA-ness, one of us would alway mention hearing rain.

Another fun GW time between the GW girls was when we decided to make shirts for ourselves. It was just when the "new technology" of printing on iron-on paper at home to make your own iron-on tshirts. And in the flare of CoEd Naked Tshirts, the GW slogan was "Gift Wrap: C'mon baby get in line, we can handle more than one package at a time." I can't remember which one of us came up with that brilliant saying, but it was good!! Weeny was working in Jrs at the time and we made one for her too...but she never really blended in the GW group, just like I really didn't blend in with her Jrs girls.

I can still wrap a mean present, and make some pretty bows. When I get a gift, that's been wrapped, I do a little critiquing in my mind.

Happy wrapping for those who still have presents to finish off...

Rock out with your wrapped cock out!