Whoo-hoo!
I've been granted a vacation day for tomorrow. Woot! This is an excellent bit of news, because there is nothing going on here. I can actually hear Bad Lady clicking her mouse it's so quiet in here. No phones ringing (except Bad Lady's kids every half hour), no Big-Ass Projects looming, no boss at the moment, even Incompetent But Likeable has been keeping mostly to himself these days. No jingling pocket change roaming up and down the cubicle aisles.

What do I plan on doing tomorrow? Sleeping late, for starters. Then probably more Christmas shopping. My husband has Wednesdays off, so he and I will go together. We have to shop for his family -- which reminds me, they requested a wish list from me. My father in law asked for "Dude, Where's My Country" which I think rocks. My sister in law wants the Triumph the Insult Comic Dog CD.

I'm sure I can think of something for them to get me. But time's a-wastin'! This is the last shopping weekend before Christmas. Can you believe it? It always creeps up on me. Like bad underwear. Ok, maybe not like that. But like something else that creeps.

Subliminal message
Domino the Bad Kitty was at it again last night. My husband and I have this tendency of starting a project and then not cleaning it up for a couple days afterward. So from the Christmas tree decorating project of Sunday, we still have some boxes upstairs, as well as a few scattered items laying on the floor, such as two stockings that do not have a place to be hung, as we do not have a mantel. Or a fireplace. Or a chimney.

Both of us wondered, but didn't say anything to each other about it, why the unopened plastic-wrapped devil horns that I got as my not-so-Halloween costume were laying on top of the stockings. Both of us thought the other one had brought them up from the basement mistakenly, or that they had gotten mixed in with the Christmas stuff and neither of us had bothered to put them away. So finally, my husband asks, "What's with the devil horns being up here?" I say, "I don't know, I thought you brought them up or that they were with the Christmas stuff." My husband gave them a closer inspection. "There's a suspicious toothmark in the package," he reported. A-ha. Bad kitty! (Said in Cartman voice)

This is not the first time the bad kitty has moved a random item in the house where he nearly escaped blame. Last year at about this time, my husband had requested that I leave one of my rings out so that he could take it to the jeweler to have my engagement ring properly sized. So I left it on the kitchen counter, on top of a notepad, dead center, where there's no way he could have missed it.

I went to work, and at the end of the day, I came back and asked how it went. He said it had been fine and that he took the ring that was on the etagere in the bathroom. (The one that I wear on my middle finger!)

"Why didn't you use the ring I left on the kitchen counter for you?" I asked, the panic rising in my voice.

"What ring?" he asked me. "You mean the ring that was on the bathroom floor?"

At the same time, we both realized what had happened. Bad kitty!

Dom's modus operandus at that time was to find items, usually off the Forbidden Kitchen Counter of Doom, and then take them into the bathroom, which had a tile floor, perfect for batting said items around. Actually, it's very lucky that he didn't take that ring somewhere never to be seen again. So he nearly sabotaged my engagement ring.

Luckily, my husband was able to take the correct ring to the jeweler that same day, no harm done. And we lived happily ever after.