Dear self:
You tend to forget these things. Here is a list of what to remember. Not necessarily applicable to other people. Just you, self. Just you.
1. Make people who give you things in Christmas bags take the Christmas bags back again after you have opened them if at all possible. They like using them! You have no objection to getting them but hate using them! Win win! (1a. Find something to do with the stack of Christmas bags in the closet.)
2. Do not buy green wrapping paper. Really. You love green. I know. And some of the Christmas stuff is a beautiful deep dark green that looks great in the store. But when you, yes, you, self, imagine it under the green Christmas tree, you will invariably be disappointed at how it blends in rather than lending a festive hue. You will not reach for the green wrapping paper. The green wrapping paper will be with you always. Do not buy more.
3. Do not buy the giant rolls of wrapping paper. I know, they are economical, and you feel thrifty and pleased, and sometimes they have quite lovely patterns. But I know you. After the fourth year of taking out the same roll of quite lovely dark red with white snowflakes, it will appear dingy and sad from its sojourn in the closet, and you will feel dingy and sad. Don’t do it. Wrap in brown paper if you want to be economical; it will make you feel old-fashioned as well as thrifty. But mostly economize elsewhere and buy the only moderately giant rolls of wrapping paper.
4. There is a reason that toddler-Moo thought that “sparkly” and “sprinkly” were the same word. The shiny sparkly paper will give you sparkly carpet, sparkly sweaters, sparkly smudges on your forehead. Leave it in the store to sparkle there.
5. Make sure–no, really really sure–no, check again–that the shiny paper you have selected is not made of mylar. Even your mother, who objects pretty firmly to religiously-based swearing on religious grounds, has been heard to refer softly to the one remaining roll as “that damned mylar.” It is damned stuff, it is damnable stuff, and you are wrapping presents, not filling balloons. Check again to make sure. They may not have to tell the truth about whether things actually contain blueberries in this country, but they are not allowed to lie about mylar wrapping paper, so Upton Sinclair did not live and die in vain.
Just trying to look out for you, self.
Love,
me