Dear Kid,

I went grocery shopping last night. Kroger’s policy is that once you hit the checkout line, they want to help you give them your money and get out of the store quickly (before you can reconsider whether you need 2 more boxes of coffee K-cups or that box of chocolate chip cookies). Speed at that point is good.

Who am I to argue with such a noble cause? I was wearing 4 inch heels, so I was ready to go home.

So I put the groceries on the conveyer (yes, I also really needed two kinds of new treats for the puppy), handed over my frequent shopper card, and ran my credit card through the little machine. All speedily to keep up with the program.

While I ran the cards and chatted with the cashier (making sure she didn’t charge me for two boxes of the new kind of tea I decided to try instead of the one I wanted [she didn’t, but you never know]), the bag boy bagged the groceries.

“No, no” the environmentalist within me woke up from her nap to notice the bagging. I’d only brought in one reusable bag (my inner environmentalist has got to get better at putting bags in the car) and the groceries (yes, I really did need two packets of lamb to make stew for Dad and Pi) didn’t fit in the one bag even after I put the tp directly in my cart. The bagger had finished plastic bag number 1 and moved on to plastic bag number 2. “No, no, just put as much as you can in the first bag.” Inner Environmentalist didn’t think the bagger limit of two items per bag was quite right.

Zip, zip, the cashier handed me my receipts and coupons (for things I will never buy) and off I went.

It wasn’t until I got to the car that I realized that the bagger had carefully triple bagged the groceries for me.

The best laid plans.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

When you see commercials on TV, mascara glides on smoothly, coating each lash with an even layer of makeup giving the model huge, gorgeous lash-fringed eyes.

That’s exactly how it works—with 6 makeup artists, professional lighting, and 642 takes. Most of us don’t have 3 or 4 days to enhance our faces. We have 32 seconds between brushing teeth and dragging a brush through unruly hair.

Most days, mascara goes on reasonably smoothly. Every now and then, however, there is a  morning where I just have to face the reality that Mascara Has a Mind of Its Own.

On mornings like that there is no hope. And today was one of those days. Mascara flew off the wand landing in a sticky mess somewhere in the vicinity of my eyes. Note: the raccoon look is bad on teenage girls. It is downright ridiculous on someone my age.

Small animals scurried to get out of newly created tar pit on my face before they got stuck forever.

Makeup tip: This is generally a good time to buy new mascara. Or to wish you’d bought new mascara the day before.

But it’s been that kind of a week.

A few days ago my purse committed suicide in the Walgreen’s parking lot. That was a lot of fun. So I pulled a really cute funky handbag out of the closet and I’ve been using that for the last couple of days. Today—did I mention it’s been ridiculously cold?—my purse froze and the then the handles broke.

Yesterday, I was attacked by my computer cord. It viciously tangled itself around my feet, tripping me. So naturally, I stepped in the ceramic wastebasket, which clamped its jaws around my ankle and down I went.

Then today the Great Mascara Catastrophe of 2014.

This year is just over a week old, and we have a lot of room for improvement.

Love, Mom