Posting about it now, before the damn thing shows up in her mailbox.

My mother is not going to be very happy with me come Mother's Day.

But that's not entirely my fault.

I purchased a gift for her a couple weeks ago that I was convinced was absolutely perfect. Muffin Uptown agreed. We were really excited about it; we spent hours scouring the intertubes to find just the perfect variation. For the first time in decades, shopping for Mother's Day did not have me in a spin.

And then I had a couple conversations with her that convinced me we had chosen very probably the lamest gift possible. So there I was, once again shopping at the last minute. I needed to find another gift that communicated how much I appreciated my mom, and it had to be good enough to make up for the wrong gift that was already on its way to her.

It didn't work out quite as I had hoped.

Finding her something new to wear was too difficult. I have a fairly hard time finding clothing for myself that doesn't make me look as though I were dressed for Bette Davis' part in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane." I just don't think my mother, who is mumble-mumble (no point in making her even more irritated with me) years older than I, would appreciate a short sleeved jacket and cuffed short combo, or a silk giraffe print halter dress. With matching hat.

Many times, I've given her a nice new handbag for her birthday or for Mother's day. I don't know when it happened, but if you've had occasion to price a new handbag lately you know that a new purse these days could literally put you out on the street. It's a scandal. A Kooba Nelli brown leather handbag retails for approximately $635.00. It's expensive, it's ugly, and it's not big enough to live in. Aren't we killing cows every second of every day to keep up with our insatiable beef craving? That being the case, I don't understand why a nice leather handbag should cost almost as much as an entire cow.

I expect I'll get all sorts of emails and comments with clever and affordable suggestions, NOW, when it's really too late. But please--don't suggest that I click over to Etsy for a clever little tote made of Day of the Dead hand-printed fabric or sewn together from two place mats. Even if I were the one making it--my mom is not going to be into carrying a bag made of table linen.

So it looks like Mom's getting the not-so-perfect gift, a Hallmark card, and this blog post.

My poor mother--who sacrificed and went without and sat up into the wee hours of the morning waiting for us to come home after breaking curfew and worried about our grades and our complexions and our dating choices--my poor, darling, long-suffering mother is going to shuffle to the mailbox and back later this week, open the disappointing gift I've chosen, hang her head, and weep.

Sorry, Mom.

Image, Banana Republic.