This is the time of year when we’re all running around shopping for presents, refreshments for Christmas parties, and groceries for holiday meals.

I’d like to offer you a little advice as you scurry about doing your last minute Christmas gift and grocery shopping.

Here’s my first piece of advice.

You know how when you’re standing in the long checkout lines waiting to make your purchase and the store puts those impulse items like gum and candy bars on shelves and hangars at the checkout line for you to add to your shopping cart while you’re standing there waiting and waiting and waiting to get checked out…

Don’t make impulse purchases, especially when you’re doing last minute Christmas shopping and especially don’t purchase any of the lippies–those little twist tubes of lip balm or Chapstick– that are hanging in the checkout line aisle.

You see, it’s quite likely that my kids have used one of more of these lippies and then placed them back in container or box holding all the tubes of lippies!

But, I really don’t blame them. After all, if the store hangs a dispenser or displays a box containing unsealed tubes of lippies within reach of my kids, then they must be placed there for public consumption. And, everybody that waits there in line should take the opportunity to apply a little to their chapped lips.

At least that’s what they think!

So, my advice to you is that if you need lip balm to soothe your chapped lips during these cold winter shopping days, then do like me and purchase it only in the health and beauty department at the store in a sealed package that my kids can’t open.

And, there’s one other piece of advice I would like to leave with you.

After you’ve done your Christmas shopping or you are taking a break from your shopping and you walk into a restaurant to sit down and eat and you need salt and pepper on your hamburger and fries, don’t use the salt and pepper shakers on the table. You really don’t need all that salt anyway, but ask for the individual serving packets of salt and pepper.

You see, it’s quite likely that my kids have licked the top of the salt shaker and possibly the pepper shaker as well.

But, I really don’t blame them. After all, if the restaurant places salt and pepper shakers on the tables in the restaurant, they are obviously there for public consumption. So, shouldn’t everybody get to take a lick?

That’s what they think!

Now, at first I hesitated to offer this advice to you. I thought maybe I should offer an apology because you would be so shocked and appalled by my kids’ behavior.

Then, I realized that I’m actually doing you a favor because some of you forgot to tell me that your kids dropped gum or candy out of their mouths and it stuck to the floor in the store and restaurant.

You see, my kids scraped it off the floor, picked it up, put it in their mouths and chewed it or ate it!

After all, if the gum or candy that fell out of your child’s mouth was laying there stuck to the floor of the store or restaurant, I suppose it was there for public consumption.

At least, that’s what they think…