Lies, Damn Lies, and Greeting Cards

So there I stand on 11:49 pm, Tuesday night at the Jewel/Osco buying the Queen a birthday card.  I need to buy a card because I forgot to on my way home from work, and the Queen will expect it sitting on the kitchen table when she wakes up.  Actually, I have to buy two.  The Princess also needs to buy Mommy a card, but she alleges that she can't go card shopping because "She Can't Read."  Frankly, I think she just didn't want to spend the 2.5 hours is takes to pick out one birthday card, much less two.

​Picking out the perfect card takes the endurance of a distance runner to wade through the crapfest produced by the greeting card industry.  If you haven't visited the card aisle in a while, then you are a bad person.  If you have tried to buy a winner, then you know that birthday cards only come in five different varieties: