Pickles & Dimes

• 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?

Failure:

The newest plate is on the cribbage plaque. Boo. I sense a very disturbing and unwelcome trend here.

Successes:

After failing to find the motivation to finish my Frankenstein Sweater, I didn’t knit for months. I’d walk past my knitting basket and see that monstrosity just mocking me, ugly and stupid. Then it finally dawned on me that I could knit something else. My stupid brain thought I had to actually finish something before starting a new project! HA. So I’ve been happily knitting these quick and easy dishcloths, which I gave to Jason’s grandma:

Then I decided to get a little fancier, thanks to this awesome site:

(This also went to Jason’s grandma.)

But this one’s just for me. I think I’ll put it in our camper:

The weather has been warm lately, so instead of snow, we are getting a mix between rain and snow, a kind of rain-like substance that hits your car but then freezes and makes you dig out the ice scraper. The weather graphic looks like this:

Although every time I see this icon, I picture some kind of nature-allergic giant sneezing all over the trees.

This rain-snow makes the commute even more annoying, and the snow in our backyard even more treacherous. Last night, Shorty flew off the deck to chase something. I carefully shuffled my way down the steps and was almost taken out by a rabbit that had reversed course and headed back under the deck, a whimpering Shorty in hot pursuit. The trails I had made earlier for him were still serviceable, but everything was covered with a thick shellacking of ice. As we still have our outdoor hanging Christmas lights out (out, not ON, we are not those people) because they are still buried under a thick layer of ice, I think you can see where this is headed. When I turned around to go back inside, I slipped on some ice, forgot about the lights, and nearly garrotted myself.

After dodging more than one oblivious girl in a tiny white car determined to run me off the road, I stop at a gas station near work. I grab an overpriced tube of Tylenol to head off a sudden headache, put it on the counter, and dig through my wallet as I add, almost as an afterthought, “And one Powerball ticket, please.” The woman at the counter eyeballs me and says sternly, “I need to see your I.D.”

“Um…OK!” I say happily, as I gleefully hand over my license. She looks at me and then the photo, and then quietly mutters my date of birth. “Nineteen…seventy…four?”

“Oh my gosh!” she says, blushing. “I am so sorry!”

“No problem,” I laugh. “You made my day!”

“You have great genes, Miss,” she says, as I tuck the ticket into my purse. “Great genes.”

Even if I don’t win the lottery, I think today was my lucky day.