The Suburban Masquerade: What's Inside the Box?

My washing machine repair has been pushed back another week. My kids' first day of school has been pushed back another week-and-a-half.

Is is any surprise that I don't feel like leaving the house? Is it any surprise that this post is mostly photos?

Anyway, the convergence of the two factors in the first paragraph found me ordering my children's school supplies online Sunday night.

Two business days later, the Office Supply Fairy left three packages under my pillow, er, on our doorstep.

One large box, and two medium sized boxes.

I opened one of the smaller packages first.

There was one item inside:

Okay...well...maybe the other boxes were so completely jam-packed full of stuff (free shipping with $50 order!) that the (annoyingly-hard-to-find-so-I-had-to-buy-a-dozen-when-we-only-needed-four!) box of red pencils didn't fit in the other boxes.

I opened the other medium-sized box.

Perhaps there had been a mistake. The box appeared to be completely empty, save a packing slip and those air-filled plastic packing thingies.

Then I found it:

A 69-cent eraser. One entire box for a 69-cent eraser.

True, it is a pen/pencil eraser, but it's not all that special.

Maybe the packing experts were afraid of what would happen if they put the pencils and the eraser in the same box. Some sort of mayhem might have ensued?

It was sort of anti-climatic when I got to the big box. So much so that I didn't bother to take a photo of the contents. (Hey, you guys don't need to know all my business, do you?)

Suffice it to say that there was more than enough room inside the big box for both the red pencils and the eraser to have happily coexisted on their way to our residence.

The next day I was surprised when the Office Supply Fairy rang our doorbell again.

I had completely forgotten about these:

Of all the supplies that really could have used a box...the plastic bag was torn on one edge and the composition books just the slightest bit worn as a result of their unprotected journey.