Card-carrying Idiot

Now that it’s been a few weeks since Mother’s Day, I’ve finally mentally recovered enough to write about it. This year, the month of May has been my stress trifecta. For Mother’s Day, I have to worry about doing something for my own mother and also for the mother of my kids. Those are the first two legs of the stress.

The third is that our 15-year-old daughter celebrated her 16th birthday, which has become a big deal in recent years thanks to reality TV and these shows about over-the-top sweet 16 birthday party celebrations.

Anyway, back to Mother’s Day. If I were a smart man, my planning for this day would have started the day after Mother’s Day last year. Unfortunately, besides being an idiot, I am also a procrastinator, so my plan of action for this highly important day starts within 24 hours of M-Day. Now, both my mom and my wife have no great expectations for this day, which is all the more reason we need to celebrate them. They don’t want a fuss or for us to spend a lot on them. Mothers are truly selfless.

My minimum obligation for this day is for me to at least purchase a meaningful Mother’s Day card. If I just had to worry about my mother, no problem. But I have to get cards from my daughter for her mother, a card for her Nana (my mom) and believe it or not, a card from our dog Buddy to my wife, who is technically his mom.

The dog card is not a joke, for there are complete sections in greeting-card racks from pets to their human owners. Even a 5-year-old knows that an animal is not going to go to a store to buy a card to give to a human. Yet we, as the mentally superior beings, eat that stuff up.

Mental superiority went out the window as I signed the card for Buddy to my wife and tried to do it in such a way that she’d think it was his actual handwriting!