Food, Glorious Food

Six weeks in and the guilt is beginning to get to me, so I thought I would send my children a little gift in the mail today. They have inherited my sweet, and come to that, salty, tooth, so I decided a food parcel would be just the thing.
I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that every item has at least 50 varieties, but with Ross safely at work, it was much easier to pick and choose what I wanted.
So into my cart (that's what American call trollies) went all sorts of goodies. The peanut butter M & Ms were a must - you can't get them in England unless you buy peanut ones and drive over them. Then there was the maple syrup. Of course you can get this, but this is all the way from America, so it must be the real mccoy.
Time for something savoury. I popped in a pot of instant Mac and Cheese. It looked disgusting, but according to an article I read recently, all true bloodied Americans have fond memories of growing up with this comfort food. Anyway, the pot was virtually weightless, so it must be worth including.
Hersey's Kisses, just the one bag so they wouldn't weigh the package down too much. Oh, and some Goldfish. (They're savoury snacks - sending real ones would just be wrong).
Clips to hold the open snack packs together in the unlikely event they don't eat them all at once;
a couple of t shirts they'll never wear but they say Chicago on them; some tooth rotting candy - nothing's too good for my kids. (By the way, for those readers who don't know them, they are 20 and 23, so quite old enough to drive themselves to the dentist).
I popped the shopping into the boot of my car ( that's what the English call a trunk) and drove off to my nearest Fedex office. I'm quite well known in there already, and was delighted to find the English girl who works in there behind the counter. Later I was to be positively ecstatic.
As I struggled in with the shopping, a thought occurred to me.
"Er, I may have gone a bit over the top here," I warned Heather. "Could you just weigh this and let me know how much it will cost?"
She looked at me knowingly.
"We've all been there," she said. "That's why I work for Fedex. It's for the discount I get."
She squinted at the computer screen in front of us as we loaded up the scales.
"Hmmm. Seems that will be $139. Plus the cost of the box."
I gulped. Ross would kill me. That'll teach him to buy me a car.
"Er, maybe I could send it in bits?"
At that rate it would take up to a year for the parcels to arrive, and the kids are visiting in the summer anyway.
"Don't worry," said Heather. "You can use my employee discount. That'll bring it down to around $30."
Who said the English aren't helpful? The Americans may say "have a nice day", but here was someone who was ensuring I did. What a relief.
The food parcel should arrive on Monday morning. Of course the kids won't be in, so they will have to collect it from the depot, which probably means they won't actually get it for another month.
At least they know they have a mother who cares....and a father who will soon be bankrupt!