Something Fishy

Yesterday's traffic report...

Police are ticketing drivers in the anchovy lane with too few passengers.
My guess: anchovy lane = HOV lane

Brown hawks! How wonderful!

I was telling my haircutter about the birds and other wildlife in our backyard.

"All we have is a pair of brown hawks, " she said, with a little moue of disgust.

"Brown hawks! Wow, are you lucky!" I exclaimed.

She made a face. "Well, I don't like them. They dig holes in the yard."

"Wow! Hawks that nest underground! They must be quite rare," I enthused.

The scissors stopped mid-snip. "Just what are we talking about here?" she asked.

Turns out my exotic brown hawks were nothing more than a pair of ground hogs.

Banning Alarm Clocks

Yesterday I heard it on NPR--

The French government is considering banning alarm clocks.

Turns out that what they actually said was:

The French government is considering banning GM crops.

Double-Klutzing

I'm a dangerous person in the kitchen. When a major cookfest is underway, I draw an imaginary Line of Death across the kitchen floor and warn the dogs not to cross it. But the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune seek me out, even when I am preparing a feast for those I love.

The holidays are fraught with peril. Too bad that most recipes require the use of a knife. I should be required to get a license in order to have access to knives. I inevitably miss and nick my finger, or worse. On Christmas Day, I needed brown sugar for cookies. I put a plastic bag of frozen sugar in the microwave. Must have hit 2 minutes instead of 20 seconds. Reached in without looking. ZOWIE. My finger won't be healed until mid-January, at best.

This morning, reaching for something in the fridge, I stood up and banged my head on the closed freezer door. And not for the first time, either. My husband shook his head in wonderment. "Well, after all, " I said, "we've only had this refrigerator for 12 years."