Gift Wrapping Is An Unlearnable Skill And A Niche Industry

So it's my niece's birthday.  For once I was proactive in getting the gifts.  The problem now is that I don't know how to wrap them.  I think I had done it while I was really young, but back then I realized how much I sucked at it, so I had Mother do it, or, to be quite honest, I didn't buy a gift at all.  That's right -- I learned not to buy gifts because I didn't learn the art of gift wrapping.

But I'm a grown-up now, and I have a niece to whom I want to show love, so I have to buy presents.  I have been able to avoid this situation because I would always send the presents (in the name of myself and my parents) to her mother/my sister-in-law, who knows how to wrap gifts.  But over the holidays she basically that she was done with all that.  I don't think she meant just me having her wrap gifts.  I think she meant being my brother's wife.  But I don't know that.  But I won't bring it up either.  Bottom line -- I am now on my own when it comes to getting gifts wrapped.

Where in the hell can I go in this town to have this done for me?  Hell, where do I even find just one damn box to put these gifts in?  A couple times a long, long time ago I got them wrapped at, of all place, the Rosedale customer service department.  Hell if I know how they did it, but the people who helped you find out where in the mall to go had this set-up where you could walk up to them, give them gifts that needed to be boxed and wrapped, and they'd do it.  That remains a mind-blowing thing a mall just offers to do, and year-round, not just for the holidays.  Alas, it is a bygone feature of their customer service; they say on their website that they don't do that anymore.

There is one store in the Twin Cities that says they just do gift wrapping.  I left them a message but haven't heard back.  There was also, I believe, a company that picks up and drops off gifts.  That seems way too complicated for my need to have someone find a box and wrap my gifts up in it, but come to think of it, having a brick and mortar spot just for that service probably makes no sense.  Regardless, I e-mailed them -- no response.

Shit, man, I have to do this myself.  I'm now reduced to shopping for boxes.  (I looked in the seldom-opened closet right next to my bedroom; there is wrapping paper in there.)  But wait!  How about a gift bag?  I don't need to wrap anything then; I'll just throw them in a bag, then put some fancy-ish tissue paper on it so my niece can't just peer into the bag and see what I bought her.  I need to buy a bag, but at least there are bags to be bought, unlike boxes!  And I won't get frustrated over cutting out too little wrapping paper, or butchering the folding and taping.  Yeah, gift bags -- that's the ticket!

So I need to buy all that stuff after I wake up.  Hopefully I won't fuck this up.  But maybe I will.