We dropped the boy off at his grandma’s, picked up coffee, fueled up the car, and we were off.

Bank, to deposit cheques and other wondrous and unexpected amounts of money that showed up last night; post office, to mail off a parcel; a quick stop in to the pharmacy; and then we were off to the book store.

Piles of books, mostly for others, one or two tucked into the stack for ourselves. A train turntable for Liam. An unexpected and wonderful meeting with Jteethy, Pasley, and Tallis.

Home. HRH goes off to his work holiday party. I set out to wrap all the gifts.

Do we have paper? Check.

Do we have ribbon, and bows? Check.

Do we have tags?

Er, no.

We have blank white stickers, though. I could find a little stamp and stamp an image on them and write people’s names next to it. Or better still, I could find the linen paper I have somewhere and tear it artfully into rectangle-ish shapes and punch a hole in the corner and string then onto the gifts with ribbon!

I locate the little unused stamp set that’s been hiding in various stationary boxes for over ten years. I finally locate the linen paper… which has all of two sheets left. It’s enough.

No stamp pads.

That’s all right; I have a whole set of stamp ink felt pens, which are used to colour the stamps! I know exactly where they are; they are in my wooden art box!

… which is nowhere to be found.

I give up. After chasing various things around for an hour and a half, things are wrapped, and currently tagged with sticky notes. HRH is coming home around three, and we’re going back out to our second round of shopping before collecting the boy; I’ll pick tags up while we’re out.