You know, by the time I got to the hand-crank flashlight, I was really laughing. It's sort of a bath-and-body care package for those days when the power grid goes down and you want to look clean, buffed and pretty even though the lights are out. And your food will not be bland. And you can avert boredom by reading the Evanovich book by flashlight. I like to give theme packages to people, but normally the theme is somewhat discernable. However, in the instance of your mother's packages, perhaps one has to go a little deeper and employ formulations used by chaos theory researchers in order to uncover the hidden logic?

I sent the link about the crazed hoarding mother to a coworker who is more than a bit of a packrat in his office and tends to get a bit obsessive about eBay, but usually only in the pursuit of vintage Nebraska Territory maps. He felt so normal after looking at it that I think he's back on eBay, trying to find more maps.

Yes, it's like chaos theory! The pattern is: there is no pattern.

Now that I looked at the ebayMom site I feel really normal too. However, I am on a road trip and have bought more glassmaking supplies, and my car is filled with that and the laundry that needs to be done. As far as packrating goes, I had to clear a house after my aunt died(she'd lived there for 35 years) There were lots of tiny bars of soaps from hotels,and vintage cocktail napkins,as well as every bill and recipt known to humankind.I fear the packrat mentality is genetic and must strive against it.fortunately, what I want on ebay has gone way up in price, so I haven't been able to bid,:

I did see someone using one of htose cranking flashlights just the other day to show off their car-coordination is key,but it does seem like a good item:)enjoy your presents!

At least eBay Mom had rectangular piles. The brunt out shell of the MIL's house (she's an undiagnosed/medicated/therapied OCD hoarder) still haunts my dreams sometimes.

I am tickled by Valentina's package narrative for your mother's latest love offering. My own mother gifted us with a mah jong set so that she could draw us in to her own peculiar obsession. She becomes a screeching mad woman when she plays! Again with the .

Darkity, I totally understand the fear -- there may be a fine line between collection and obsession, but there's no escaping the parents My parents left a set of pinochle cards with us, so we'd always have a set to use when they visit.

Carwoman, please don't worry about "hoarding" your glassmaking supplies -- those are for your later creations! I wish I was more creative; I gotta hit the sewing machine and get some stuff made. I'm a slacker

It sounds like the packages we get from my in-laws-to-be. A big box will arrive from them and it will have around $20.00 of postage on it because it weighs a ton and has been insured and then inside it will turn out that there's at least 2 lbs. of popcorn kernels and 20 VHS tapes of goofy movies we would never watch and other bizarre unrelated things. It's pathological!

The ebay mom had me laughing until I was almost crying, and I probably shouldn't be laughing that hard, because I'm a terrible packrat who will usually manage to completely take over at least one room with all my clutter and if I lived alone, god only knows how much crap I would collect. As it is now, it's a battle I'm constantly fighting. Hmmmm...now that I've got valentina's address, maybe I'll start sending her bizarro packages.