Jesse, call mom and tell her the bestest thing about her that you've never mentioned before for fear of being mushy weird. And then tell her the present is in the mail.

Hee! That's not a bad plan. The good news is, her bday isn't until Sunday, so it will be there in plenty of time.

Oh, here's a question: The woman in front of me in the 10-items-or-less line at the grocery store had 13 items. A bunch of them were duplicates (she had 2 of several things), so I'm sure that's why she thinks she was fine being in the express lane. But she's wrong, right???

I only count duplicates as one item if they come in one bag.

2 cans of soup = 2 items

4 apples in one bag = 1 item

Yeah she was wrong. Duplicate items don't save any time in bagging. And unless the cashier is sharp and altert enough to scan one, then press the "quantity N" or whatever button, they get rung seperately too.

They were not in one bag. It was so annoying!

I don't do that. Each fall-on-floor-separate-thing counts. But, I'm all rule follower and that.

I'm regularly late with presents. It's a bad habit of mine. But I do tend to do the terribly intimate confessions , not out of guilt over the lateness, but out of "oh mom/dad, I love you and you never know how much you've done." I get terribly sentimental.

I regularly make my parents cry with cards.

Actually, much of the time, it's easier to scan in each item separately if there are just a couple than to hit the quantity key

Yeah, with just two of the same thing, it seems way faster to just scan them both.

ION, I just got an invitation to breakfast with the former head of "the Nation’s leading producer of disposable table top products for the away-from-home dining market." This makes me laugh so hard -- I love other people's industry talk.

That means paper plates, right?