The kitchen table is filled with wrapping paper, ribbon, name tags and Christmas presents. The two pair of scissors and a desk-size Scotch tape dispenser are somewhere there, but disappear when I need them.

Same goes for the large packaging tape that has a personal grudge against me, and turns me into a I Love Lucy episode while I tape, and re-tape, boxes that have taken on a life of their own.

I’ve been to the post office three times to pick up and mail boxes to our New York, Missouri and Norman children, grands and greatgrands.

There are still boxes and plastic bags of jingle bells, pieces of ribbons and garlands scattered around the table, and in all but one of the kitchen chairs that I share with Tuxedo-the-Cat.

That black and white kitty has been useless, especially when it comes to those shiny, tiny, curly ribbons. That’s when she turns into a dog that thinks the ribbon is her bone.

Tuxedo is most helpful when she naps, sits in my lap and purrs, or alerts me to alarms.

The other day while I was on the couch she lifted her head at a noise. It wasn’t

that I’d left the refrigerator door ajar, again; not the smoke alarm to signal the cookies were done, or the stove timer to remind me for the fourth time to take clothes out of the dryer.

It was my cell phone!

All the sounds on my phone have somehow been changed by yours truly after a mechanical update. I haven’t figured out if the sound is for a text, email, or an actual phone call until I find my phone.

It usually hides under something, but that’s not all that I can’t find in the house. I bought a box of gadgets that open jars, and lift off sales prices, but it’s no where to be found. I’ve hunted and hunted for it, and found other things I wasn’t looking for, but not that box.

It’s seldom that I buy something useful because their stockings are usually filled with goofy stuff such as fake Santa beards or mustaches, a red nose or funny glasses, or maybe a rubber snake.

Back when I first made Christmas stockings for our five kids in the early 1970s they always included booties. Now with the kids, spouses, our eight grandchildren, one grand-spouse, plus two great-grandkids, they always get Christmas socks.

All the grands and greats also get paper money, or checks. They’d probably like it better if I just doubled those amounts, but then it wouldn’t be a fun Christmas, for me.

It’s not Christmas if I’m not making cookie dough, or buying, wrapping or bagging presents for those I love, all the while suffering from arthritic hands and dry and splitting skin on my thumb and fingers from wrapping gifts.

I’ll get around to sweeping all the glitter, tiny silver stars and cookie dough off the kitchen floor when my back is better from all the heavy lifting and going to the post office.

Just kidding! Except for my sore thumb, but do wish it was a dumb Grandma joke and not a reality that made me include masks and hand sanitizers in their 2020 Christmas stockings.