I'm terrible at buying things for people when I NEED to buy them. My mind just goes blank. I am however very good at noticing gifts for people throughout the year, so I buy them and hide them away -only to not have the faintest clue where I've stashed them!
I started writing this comic from my perspective as Fran, all confident that she had Christmas taken care of, until Joel asks her where the presents are to wrap -cue mad panic. I was about to have her say that she "squirreled them away" when it hit me -squirreled? squirrel? SQUIRREL! Suddenly this comic had a whole other layer!
The storytelling took some messing around with. It's like a puzzle, trying to get the joke across in the fewest words, but not so few that it leaves the reader confused. At the same time there's the visual element; speech bubbles need to be nestled comfortably in the characters negative space, but also in the correct order. Sometimes that's easy, sometimes it's not!
The digging pose was hard. I used this for reference:

After I was done, something was still off about it. I eventually realized I hadn't made it look like Winter! That's what I get for living in Texas! :)