A Miscellany of Chuckles

“When not in a catalepsy of literary composition, I am essentially a man of action.”

-Jeremy Garnet in P.G. Wodehouse’s Love Among the Chickens

  
Recently my daughter sent our puppy over in the neighbor’s cat’s direction to rescue a praying mantis it had in its jaws.  Her method worked, as the cat dropped the mantis.  So she decided to keep the mantis as a pet, named it Sammy, and feeds it the crickets we usually buy for the lizards.  One evening Sammy ate seven in one sitting, which would be best described as akin to watching someone from southern Indiana eating corn-on-the-cob.  
  
Celia was not sure if it was a boy or girl, but we now know Sammy is short for Samantha.  One morning my wife discovered Sammy had escaped from her makeshift cage and was laying eggs on her phone’s charger cord.  If you think that’s gross, then you may not want to read that they are in our refrigerator waiting to be brought out for hatching next spring.  
  
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On several different days over the past month, I laid insulation in our attic.  That’s a job no one should really notice that you have done.  Which would have been the case, except that each time after ducking about sixteen times under the low support beam up there I would forget about it on trip #17.  So you could count the number of days I worked by the scabs on my bare head.  And yes, I have already been told I could use some insulation of my own.  
  
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When will we start calling things as they really are? We let our children have friends over for the night and we call it a sleepover?  An "awake-over" is more like it, followed by a parental, non-alcoholic hangover.  
  

We were visiting my dear mom for a pre-Thanksgiving meal sponsored by her nursing home.  During the meal, she started commenting about the “big, fat man” sitting at the table next to us a little too loudly for my comfort.  Yet my attempt to quiet her down was replaced by astonishment as my wife, clearly misunderstanding Mom, was on the other side of her saying, “Yes, Barry has put on a little weight lately.”