They Shoot Bad Gift Givers, Don't They?

This is my first Christmas buying gifts for people I care about. (Not that I haven't bought gifts for people before, but then I used my mother's money. Now I'm using all that money I earned while sitting through three hour school board meetings and later reporting on them, so it means quite a bit more.) To put it humbly, I am great at the buying and the wrapping and the arranging under the tree part of gifting. See for yourself:

Gideon offered to help me with wrapping gifts but I kindly reminded him that I am much better at it.

The part of gifting I kind of suck at is waiting until Christmas to give the gifts away. I get so excited about gifting that I force people to open presents weeks in advance. If someone is so brazen as to reject my early offer, I tell them what's in the package anyway. Surprises are not my forte. I hate being surprised almost as much as I hate waiting to surprise people. I'm a patient person in nearly every other facet of my life, but when it comes to happy surprises I tend to sulk and whine until people give me hints or let me give them a gift early.

Friday afternoon, I received some of Gideon's gifts in the mail and hid them in our spare bedroom. Of course, this was after I showed him the wallet I bought him to affirm that it was sufficient while smirking and knowing it was definitely what he wanted. I just wanted him to see it before I wrapped it. I have a serious problem, guys.

Anyway, as he was leaving for work I told him that he didn't know what one of the three items under the tree was. He smiled and agreed with me. Then, just as he started to close the door, I screamed, "IT'S SHIRTS." 

His mother visited us Saturday, where I forced two pre-Christmas gifts on her and also ended up giving her  a flat iron I recently discovered in one of my boxes from college. It was hard to convince her to open a gift early, but once she agreed to my pleas, I Flo Jo'd it to the Christmas tree. (If you're wondering, the gift was a cookbook she lost in a house fire roughly a year ago. It was either that or...well, I can't say because she'll read this but IT WAS EARRINGS. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME.) 

To my credit, I come by this naturally. My mother has always had a hard time keeping surprises from me, often giving me gifts early. Last year, she asked if I wanted to exchange one gift on Christmas Eve before we opened everything with my nana. I agreed. After I opened the first gift, she asked me to open another. And another. And another. And another. Before I knew it, I had opened all the gifts under the tree and we both looked at each other thinking, "What have we done?"

Instead of telling Nana what we did, we carefully re-wrapped all the gifts and placed them under the tree. "Just act excited tomorrow," Mom told me. I was so impressively excited when opening gifts Christmas day that you could have mistaken me for an anime character. (I'm sorry if you're reading this, Nana, but you know we've got serious problems regarding waiting to open gifts. This should not surprise you.)

Sigh. I am terrible at surprises. If my mother is any indication, it will worsen with age.