Pickles & Dimes

Nearly every night, whether we’re upstairs reading or downstairs watching TV, there is that moment when everything falls apart. And it starts out so well, you know? Jason and I will be cuddled up on the couch, Shorty curled into a ball on my lap, Sunny sleeping with an outstretched paw on Jason’s chest, Abby sleeping upstairs on the arm of the couch. It’s nice. It’s quiet, we’re all relaxed, it’s perfect.

And then it comes: the witching hour. Some nights it’s 8:30, other nights 9:00. If we’re lucky, 9:30, when we start to get ready for bed anyway. It always starts out innocently enough: maybe Abby comes downstairs. Maybe Sunny wakes up and stretches. Maybe Shorty runs upstairs to get a drink.

No matter how it starts, the end result is the same: absolute chaos. If Abby comes downstairs, Sunny attacks her. If Sunny wakes up and stretches, Shorty gets hyper and races around the room barking, bouncing off furniture, cats and people. If Shorty goes upstairs, Abby blocks his way, hissing and growling.

And it just escalates from there. One cat meows incessantly for food that won’t be doled out for another hour, another cat meows in a dangerous tone at the dog, and the dog decides any movement is delicious prey to be hunted.

After a long, exhausting day, the best part of the night is making it through that witching hour: when the cats are finally fed, the dog’s yawning and sleepy in his room, and we’re in bed. And things are calm again.

Until next time.

Do you have a witching hour at your house?

Today, I:

- Broke a glass while putting the dishes away

- Had a one hour, 50-minute commute to arrive 45 minutes late to work

- Have what feels like a potential gold-medal cold sore coming on

- Had to work through lunch

- Will spend another massive chunk of time commuting home

- Will help Jason shovel our driveway so we can eat dinner before 8:00 pm

- Was disappointed in that stupid February rodent and his lousy prediction

- Would like my spare time to be spent on reading or knitting instead of driving and snow removal

This masthead was inspired by our Wii game. As it turns out, my Wii aim for the shooting gallery game is just as bad as my real aim.

I’m especially excited for this month, despite the fact that a lot of the time 2009 felt like a real-life shooting gallery, and Fate’s aim was a lot more accurate. But technically, the Crappiness of 2009 didn’t start until February 12th. So let’s say this whole Bad Luck Year wasn’t a year, like 2010, but a year, as in 365 days. That means we only have 11 more days left of Crap, which I am making sure to deliver, such as when I failed to notice our digital camera falling out of my grasp into the parking lot this past weekend at TwinsFest. Ho, ho – what a delightful five hours that was, feeling sick to my stomach at the thought of losing our camera and all the photos we hadn’t downloaded yet. Luckily, we live in a state where people find a digital camera, don’t automatically think, “Score!” but rather, turn the camera into the parking lot attendant and leave a note on our windshield. God bless Minnesota.

Anyway, it just so happens that February 12th is when Jason and I take our annual trip to play roulette in Wisconsin. So all I’m saying is that it would be nice for the End of the Crappy Year to segue into The Awesome Year by having me win a million dollars. That’s how it works, right?

• A puzzle book (with proof of my mad Framework Puzzle skills)
• My car’s maintenance manual
• Five pairs of super-cheap sunglasses that I never wear
• Tire pressure gauge (used every day before I bought new tires)
• Thirty napkins
• A plastic baggie of corn skewers (from the corn on the cob cupcakes TWO YEARS ago)
• Directions from Mapquest to my old hairdresser, a place I went to a thousand times but still needed computer assistance to find

How about you?