... climbing various ladders in a dress and fishnet stockings

So!  It suddenly hit me last night that while I had bought my sister Texas's Christmas presents, I still needed to wrap them, and box them, and get them on their way to her.  Because I've discovered over the years that no matter which shipping service you use, packages hit the Texas border and enter some kind of weird Bermuda Triangle of shipping where they either sit in some huge package warehouse for several days before moving on to their destinations, or in one memorable case, they actually turn around and head back across the country before finally ending up in some giant warehouse in Atlanta and then disappearing entirely, DESPITE the fact that you had tracking on the package.

No, I'm not bitter. *ahem*

In other words, I needed to get that package on its way PRONTO.

Well, I couldn't wrap last night, because I had other stuff going on, and I knew that tonight I was going to be busy, because my new camera was finally arriving to replace the old Fuji that bit the dust a couple of weeks ago, and that is a whole 'NOTHER story.  Because as soon as the Fuji died ("lens control error", my a**), I went on line and ordered a new camera from Amazon, but it was going to take several days to get here because I'm too cheap to buy Prime, so I went to Walmart and bought a thirty-dollar point-and-shoot Vivitar to get me through the interim.  But!  That Vivitar is a piece of crap.  I actually went on line and wrote a scathing review of it on Amazon, which I almost never bother to do with anything I purchase, because the camera is the worst thing ever.  I mean, I only paid thirty bucks, so I didn't exactly have high hopes, but I *was* hoping that it would at least take good enough pics that I could use it as a "car camera" once the Nikon I ordered got here,  and shoot a couple of rescue events in the meantime, but I swear to God, my five-dollar FLIP PHONE takes better pictures than that camera.  See the previous post, and the pictures from the rescue?  Those are the crappy kind of photos I get out of that camera.  It did better at the Harley store, I think because the Harley place was lit up like O'Hare, but STILL.  Geeeeez.

*rant over*

So, back to the story.  The new Nikon will be here tonight and I need to figure it out, so I knew I wouldn't have time to start wrapping tonight, but I ALSO knew that no wrapping would get done on ANY date until I got the box of wrapping crap out of the attic.  I had a couple of extra minutes before I had to leave for work this morning, and I figured, I'll grab the wrapping stuff out of the attic NOW, because honestly?  At this point, ALL of my Christmas prep is getting accomplished a few minutes at a time, crammed in between everything else I have going on right now.

*sigh*

COMPLICATING things is the fact that my attic is accessed by a ladder.  A drop-down, TALL ladder, because the attic access door is in the garage ceiling, and the garage is, like, fourteen feet high.  And BECAUSE the ceiling is so high, making the cord you have to yank on to get the ladder assembly to descend ALSO far above my reach, first I have to get out a six-foot stepladder, set it up in the garage (oh yeah, needless to say I also have to pull the car out of there first), CLIMB UP THE STEPLADDER, and then grab the access door cord and yank it, making the attic ladder start to descend, at which point I can ease it down WHILE STILL ON THE SIX-FOOT STEPLADDER, until the attic ladder has fully descended, which is when I climb down OFF of the stepladder and ONTO the attic ladder and climb up INTO the attic to grab whatever I need. 

AND, this morning, while getting ready for work, I put on a dress.  A long, Amish-style dress, because whatever, it was there in the closet, but then I thought, well, THIS dress is kind of dull, and so I put on some fishnet stockings.  Just for fun.

WHICH IS HOW I found myself, at seven-thirty this morning, climbing various ladders in a damn-near-full-length dress and fishnet stockings, and swearing mightily as I tried to maneuver the giant box of Christmas wrapping crap back DOWN the ladders.  Sheesh.

And this, folks, is my life.  NO WONDER I'm always exhausted.

Ha.