“Hey Betsy, once you’re finished hooking this rug…why don’t we hook a new rug for your head?”

Tell me how you sleep tonight.

Unless the angel hangs herself.

A few weeks later, we pulled out the mummified body of “that jolly old elf,’ who apparently missed out on our home’s updated blueprints.

The sun was shining hotly that day, my friends, as the Chicken People contemplated the backwards crate beneath their feet and the carton stuffed with unfulfilled fertility dreams.

Priscilla and little Madison entered themselves in the Rocky Hills Mall Moms N’ Girls pageant, and won third place that year (to a standing ovation) for their punny homemade puff-paint shirts. The other two contestants clapped with forced pride.

“I can be restored to the Union, but by god, I won’t be reconstructed into it as a toilet paper holder.”

The situation turned into the worst mass suicide of yarn dolls in the history of 346 W. Maple Street. The note read, in the scrawl of a child, in green crayon:

We did this to protest our unfortunate lot as wimsikal(sic) dekorations(sic) for a goddamn trash can. We hope your(sic) happy, now you’ll have to use this very vessul(sic) to despose(sic) of the greatest yarn dolls you ever crafted. Goodbye, crule(sic) world!

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, thought Madeline over and over, as she promenaded around, pretending the afghan was a beautiful tulle veil and she was getting married in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she weren’t completely whacked out on codeine and in the middle of a Contemporary Crafts board meeting.