My mom’s pissed at me.

It’s 6:30. Just got home. Usually it would be from work, but I got home from helping my mom move all day. I’m tired. So tonight, no work. Just play. No freelance, no quotes, nothing.

So, story about moving my mom:

At one point, my mom instructed me to go to her bedroom and unpack a box with stuff for her dresser. There was an open box sitting on the bed, so I started pulling stuff out of it. Definitely stuff from her dresser.

Near the bottom of the box, there was a candle wrapped in tissue paper. I unwrapped it, and it was lavender-scented, which went with her old purple bedroom. She likes lavender. So I unwrapped it and put it on her dresser.

Then I noticed that it looked like the candle had actually fallen out of a bag from a gift store in The Sprawl of America. The receipt was there. I thought it was strange, but whatever.

There was also a little jewelry box—which I opened—to find a very cool silver necklace.

With dawning horror, I realized that a) mom doesn’t normally keep receipts, b) mom doesn’t keep things she buys for herself in the original bag, c) my mom doesn’t wear silver, and 4) the silver necklace was just my style.

I rushed to grab the candle, rewrap it, and pretend I had never seen anything. She unfortunately chose that moment to walk in. She immediately realized that I had seen some and/or all of my Christmas gifts.

She freaked. She got mad and told me I should never have opened the box that was marked Do Not Open.

Okay, in my defense, the box was already open and it was the only one that contained anything remotely related to the dresser.

She asked me if I had seen anything else and I said no. She wasn’t buying it. And she was pissed. A few minutes later, she asked me again. I again told her no, but mentioned casually that I really thought the necklace was cute, hoping to at least make her laugh.

That did not make her laugh.