Shopping and Family Secrets

My mom came to visit the other day for approximately seven hours. I think it's a sign of good mental health that I used to spend weeks freaking out about a visit from her, but this time I only had a short amount of stress the morning of the event. A 9am Bloody Mary took care of it. She is, by the way, a lovely person, but I always feel judged in categories that I cannot compete in: cleanliness and godliness (mostly the first one). The woman, as I may have said before, makes Donna Reed look like a crack whore while I make Roseanne look like a domestic goddess.

She wanted to come and shop for the boys' Christmas presents with me. I could have just called her and given her a list, but in the back of my nefarious head, I knew that we could finish that task pretty quickly and move on to a free (for me) lunch and some boot shopping.

She was shocked that we have shopping in Fort Collins becuase I apparently never mention it. Uh, that's because I never shop save for the odd trip to the GoodWill or a one item trip to some place like Kohl's. It took about two seconds to buy the boys a Wii (Yeah, now I can get a WiFi modem and let them watch Netflix documentaries on the TV) which left plenty of time for my first trip to Panera and my first trip to a shoe store in over 2 years. There will be a beautiful pair of brown boots for me under the Christmas tree. Then, she wanted me to pick out something in the $50 range which ended up being a great new bedspread for $120 and a pair of yoga pants for $25, but that's close to $50.

Then, we found the boys who delighted in telling the woman that I smoke when I drink (jerks). Allegedly I deserve this becuase I spilled all of my mother's secrets when I was little. Then, they told her about Toby's 22 naked laps around the backyard in the 19 degree snow the other day. Luckily, they didn't tell her about his nude face front snow angel. And she told them about a little kid who was being taken away from his mother on negligence charges because he was found wandering around barefoot in the snow. Of course, I could see a few holes in that story, and a couple of questions revealed that the kid was a toddler who didn't know where he was. The boys assured her that they were not three and that they were in their backyard barefoot and completely aware of where they lived not lost miles away.

I've always been more impressed with their logic than annoyed by the fact that they argue (about everything), and I'm glad to see that they can break down her story as well.