Everyday Life in Black and White

There’s a challenge going around Facebook right now where people post black and white photos of their lives for seven days. The rules: no people, no explanations, and you’re supposed to challenge someone new every day.

Well, no one has challenged me. It’s a lot like being at the Snowflake Dance in seventh grade, which I attended by myself (technically I went with a couple girlfriends but they quickly abandoned me to do the Tootsie Roll in a throng of smelly boys), wearing my green velvet dress and matching Converse All-Stars (always one for a fashion statement), hoping to be asked to dance.

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Nine Happy Things

You can watch the Monterey Bay Aquarium otters any time.

Someone once made a sandwich that weighed two and a half tons.

There’s a frog out there that sits comfortably on a dime.

These chickens are so fluffy!

This pattern is so pretty.

There’s an ice hotel in Canada.

A group of porcupines is called a prickle.

There are so many hot air balloon festivals.

When the blackberries ripen, I’m going to make jam.

On the Occasion of Kurt Cobain’s 50th Birthday

A Raccoon in the Attic, and Other Reasons to Get Away from My Kids

My husband believes there is a raccoon living in our attic. With this in mind, he went upstairs with a ladder and baby-gated the rest of us downstairs. I grumbled about being stuck with both kids at this particularly hyperactive moment in the day (from about 3pm on it becomes chaos in our house, especially on days like today when we haven’t gotten out much) and he said, “Do you want to go in the attic? You can go in the attic.” With that self-sacrificial tone of voice, you know, that says quit whining and I’m the one doing the dirty work.

I said, “Yes! I’ll go in the attic!” To which he replied, “No, no, no, no, no,” and escaped as fast as he could, given he was carrying a giant ladder.

Now, maybe I’ve seen too many comedies. Maybe my respect for/fear of local wildlife is a little lacking. I don’t want to get rabies or touch raccoon poop or have a twenty-pound rat launch itself at my face. I’m not Will Ferrell, I’m not Chevy Chase. Such mayhem would not cue a laugh track, I know. But still, the idea of crawling around the attic with a flashlight, looking for a raccoon and its pile of treasures (when I think about raccoons, which is probably more than is normal, I always envision them hording piles of candy wrappers and costume jewelry, going over each item with their adorable little claws) seemed a lot better than staying inside. Because, well, my kids are inside. Clearly, my husband felt the same way. Perhaps he invented the racoon as an excuse to get away for a while–a theory compounded by the fact that he found no raccoon, nor evidence of one.