ArcaMax

"When will you be here?" I texted a friend I was meeting for lunch.

"What do you mean?" My mom texted back. "We're not coming up until Christmas."

I immediately realized I had mistakenly texted the wrong person.

"Sorry, Mom," I texted. "Wrong number. NM."

I was about to move on when she texted me back, "What's NM?"

"Never mind," I texted ...Read more

"The dog is barking," I said to my husband, looking at the new puppy barking at my feet.

"I can hear that," he said.

"What do you think he's trying to tell us? It sounds urgent."

"He has to go out?" suggested my husband.

"No, he was just out."

"He's hungry?"

"No, he just ate."

"I don't know, honey," said my husband. "I don't speak dog."

...Read more

I have a dryer that doesn't dry. You would think that if you are a household appliance and you only have one job, you should just do it. And yet our dryer seems to have missed the memo and only kind-of-dries in the most minimal way a dryer can dry, which is to say, not really much at all.

I've had petulant appliances before. There was the ...Read more

I come from a family of yellers. We wouldn't yell at one another; we would yell to one another. Specifically, from one end of the house to the other. These were the days before texting, when you couldn't just message someone to find out where they were. No, back in the day, if you wanted to find someone, you needed a good ...Read more

"So, there are some exclusions in the coverage for the trip insurance I'm considering for our winter vacation," I said to my husband. I had been researching trip insurance for our winter vacation and thought I'd found the best one. But there were some caveats.

"Are they reasonable?" he wondered.

"They're actually... a little strange."

"...Read more

"We have company," I said to my husband.

"Are they at the door?" he wondered.

"No, they're on the lawn," I replied. I pointed out the window to the area down by the lakefront. Fanned out across the grass were two dozen Canada geese happily munching on our lush, green lawn.

My husband growled, grabbed a pot and a metal spoon and went running ...Read more

We're about to become puppy parents for the third time.

I grew up with dogs, so I always knew someday, when I had my own family, we would have a dog. Of course, I never anticipated we would have a dog, a chinchilla, a bearded dragon, 500 crickets and four goldfish named Larry at the same time. But there are a lot of things about motherhood no ...Read more

The morning of my daughter's wedding dawned bright and sunny with crisp blue skies and not a cloud to be seen.

But it was raining...

Inside the house.

"JOEL!!!" I yelled to my husband from inside my bathroom where I had just discovered the deluge cascading from the ceiling. "It's raining in the bathroom!"

I heard his hurried steps pound up ...Read more

"I think your dog is judging me," I said to my brother. We were having lunch at his house and the dog was giving me the side eye. "You think he thinks I took too many potato chips? I looked at the dog. "Did I take too many potato chips, Elvis?"

The dog squinted at me.

"I think he wants your potato chips," my brother said.

I looked ...Read more

"Did you know you have a tilted uterus?" My gynecologist asked during a routine exam.

Honestly, I was not really in a position to comment, and besides, what do you say to an announcement like that? Is it a compliment? Is "thank you" appropriate? Or is it a problem? Do I need to say, "I'm sorry?" Or maybe it's just informative and I should say, ...Read more

"Hi, honey, it's me," I said to my husband on the phone.

"Hey, what's up?" he replied.

Me: "I just got back from the orthopedist about my knee, and I wanted to let you know what he said."

Him: "OK. What's the verdict?"

Me: "He thinks I have a torn, um... a torn, um... shoot! I can't remember what it's called."

Him: "What does it sound like?...Read more

One of the things you have to put up with in an old house is lots of old spiders.

Well, technically, I don't know how old the spiders are, so they could be old spiders or young spiders. But since the spiderwebs looked ancient, I figured the spiders have been around the place for a while. This may make them less spry, but they are also ...Read more

"Honey, do we have any sunscreen?" wondered my husband.

"Yes," I responded. "I bought, like, a case of it, years ago."

"You know that stuff expires, right?"

I actually didn't. I thought sunscreen lasted forever like Twinkies and Dick Van Dyke. So, when I checked out the expiration dates on the sunscreens, I was dismayed to discover that they ...Read more