Life Rule #573.

When your animals have diarrhea (thanks, Mom, for INSISTING that it was Christmas for the dogs, too, which meant a plate of turkey and gravy - for each dog), inevitably the animals will gravitate towards the most difficult floor surface to clean up, like, say, CARPETING, to relieve themselves, instead of using all that nice, easily-washable linoleum. I feel like I should take my jug of Nature's Miracle out to dinner, it has saved my life so hard this December 26th.

And so it goes.

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Yeah. So. The holidays happened. They were actually quite lovely, and I got waaaay too many beautiful gifts because my family and friends are awesomely wonderful. I'm ready for non-eventful days for the next few weeks, though....oh, except we're saying goodbye to 2007 in a few days - thank Christ - and, oh yeah, I turn 27 next Wednesday.

My birthday is always pretty low-key, because for Chrissakes, who wants to party it up right after Christmas and New Years? Oh, right: NOONE. Plus something catastrophic always seems to happen on my birthday. People die (my cousin in England, and one of Steve's uncles), blizzards ravage the Midwest (the one is 1999 was so bad, it was a key factor in why that uncle I mentioned passed away), and then there was that one year when it was unseasonably warm (like 60 degrees) and I thought I'd finally gotten some luck on my birthday. The family had just finished a pretty good dinner, we were talking and enjoying ourselves....and then Smokey, our geriatric cat with diabetes, stroked out on the dining room buffet, while conveniently lying underneath my mom's beloved tree of ONLY GLASS ORNAMENTS.

This string of bad luck on my birthday has gotten so bad, that people don't want to mention to me when bad things happen on my special day anymore. Like that cousin in England? I found out about three days later about that from my mom, who was dancing around the subject when I asked her when my cousin died (distant, older cousin, FYI, who died at a ripe old age of natural causes). Mom's voice got really high, and she was all, "Oh! Yes, well, [insert cousin's name here] passed away a few days ago...." and then she trailed off, and I knew. January the Second had struck again.