The problem with Hallmark is that while you can easily find a birthday card for your uncle's best friend's sister-in-law (and at Hallmark, the card would be marketed as such), it is nigh impossible to find an age-appropriate, occasion-appropriate congratulatory card. It seems it would be almost easier to-- as my mother used to say-- cack it in the basement and make one myself.

Walking into the kitchen just now, I came across a spider in the hallway. Since I didn't have my glasses on, I couldn't tell what kind of a spider it was. But since we found a black widow spider lurking outside our house last weekend, I thought I'd better just go ahead and kill it. This is the part that makes my hair stand on end. When I whacked it with a rolled up magazine, our carpet started to crawl with what seemed like a hundred tiny spiders fleeing for their lives. What kind of a freak of nature did I just encounter???