For the past few days, Miss Mina Beana has decided that 4:30 in the morning is the best time to play. This she indicates to us by barking relentlessly until one of us wakes up, stumbles from our bed (while the spouse pretends to be deeply asleep), walks downstairs, and flings open the door to the dog�s bedroom. At this signal, Mina will prance at us with a play-bow and offer us a toy.
We do not play with her, of course, as we don�t have the luxury of sleeping late the next morning as she does, but we end up taking all the dogs outside for an early-morning pee break and then put them back into their bedroom with a treat.
Last night Mina changed her schedule. Apparently she wasn’t keen on the thunder and lightning, and wished to protect us from the elements by barking at it. For two full hours. Occasionally she stopped to take a break, but just as we were drifting off to sleep, she started up again. Eventually she must have been so worn out by the barking that she fell asleep , and it wasn’t a surprise when 4:30 AM came and went with silence from the Bean. By now, however, Chris and I were used to being woken up by her, and we found ourselves lying in bed, waiting for her to bark.
Lying awake in the dark, I was using my time to gently probe a new and suspicious lump on my neck that felt similar to a mosquito bite when — splat! — something landed onto my upturned elbow.
Given time to think about it, I would have assumed my first instinct would be to flail my arms wildly and scream, but instead, I immediately plucked the object off my elbow with my other hand and flung it away from me as hard as I could. I must have still been asleep because rarely do I have instincts that involve helpful, and quiet, behavior.
I sat up in bed and reached for my book light. Carefully, I shone the light down upon the floor where I assumed the object had landed. I was having a flashback to a scene in one of the Little House on the Prairie books, in which Pa awakened in the middle of the night and said to his wife, “Caroline, I felt something chewing on my hair.”
“Most likely it was a dream, Charles.”
“No, Caroline, I tell you, something was chewing my hair. I picked it up and threw it.”
“Oh, Charles, go back to sleep.”
The next morning, there was a dead rat in the corner of the room where Pa had thrown it, and a bare spot on Pa’s head.
A rat was too big for the object I�d thrown, but I was still nervous. Maybe it was a baby rat, or some kind of horrible miniaturized creature.
I got out of bed and examined the floor more closely with my book light. Then I saw it: an insect that looked like an elongated ant with wings. It was lying stunned and motionless, but I could see its antennae still waving around in a confused manner.
“Chris?” I said quietly. “This…thing was on me.”
“Was it a stinkbug?” Chris asked.
“I don’t know what that is, but it looks like a weird ant with an extra segment, and wings.”
Being used to humoring me, Chris grabbed a tissue from the nightstand and leaped up from the bed. Without any further comments or complaints, he trotted over to my side of the bed and looked at the bug.
“Yep, it’s a stinkbug,” he proclaimed.
I got back into bed, still shining the book light at the spot on the floor where the bug was, in case it decided to fly away before Chris could reach it. Chris efficiently dispatched the bug with a well-aimed squish, and dumped the carcass in the trash can.
“They come in from the attic,” he said. This did not prove to be much consolation for me, since our bedroom was essentially already in the attic, with an unfinished section on the other side. Nervously, I shone my book light at the ceiling, half-expecting to see it covered with an array of bugs.
“It smells like fresh pine when you kill them,” he added.
“Then why do people call them stinkbugs?”
“Some people think they smell bad,” he said, crawling back into bed. “But I think they smell nice.”
I work in a law office. And I can’t tell you anything about my work, because two assistants ago, my boss had an employee who made the mistake of describing a client during dinner with her friends. Unbeknownst to the legal assistant, the client was sitting behind her at the time. The legal assistant was fired immediately, and thanks to our missing $23,075 deposit from the house we were supposed to buy last year, I kind of need my job right now.
But what I can tell you about is my notary seal.
My notary seal arrived a few days ago, with a plunk on our doorstep that brought all the dogs running and howling. I was home for lunch, and as I opened the door, the UPS man was just getting back into his truck. The dogs were disappointed that he had narrowly avoided being loudly reprimanded by them for daring to venture into their territory.
I had applied to be a notary some months ago, when my boss mentioned I would need to notarize documents for work, but hadn’t found the time to get around to being sworn in until I suddenly realized I only had two weeks before my entire application would be rescinded.
I found a local constable to swear me in, and I became a notary.
The tools of my trade were simple. A seal, some gold labels, and a piece of paper. First, though, I had to assemble the actual seal.
I brought the seal back to work with me after lunch and opened the box. Three slips of blue paper fell out. Two of them were identical, and detailed the three-step process to assemble my embossing seal.
- Hold embosser with handle up and pull out the round embosser plates from the back of the embosser (Fig. 1).
This seemed to translate to: “Hold the two parts of the embosser.”
- With grooves on bottom of embosser plates facing down, squeeze plates together firmly and slide into seal press (Fig. 2).
“Put one part into the second part.” So far, I was rockin’ this seal.
- Metal tabs on seal press will lock into grooves on bottom of embosser plate.
This last step seemed to be merely informational, so I ignored it.
Now that I was fully locked and loaded, I prepared to test my seal. I didn�t want to waste the gold labels, so I settled for using plain sheets of paper. I placed a sheet between my embosser and squeezed the handle.
Hmm. Half of the seal was nonexistent. I examined the third slip of blue paper that had come with my embosser, and saw that it held an impression of my seal. It looked pretty good. For one thing, you could actually see a complete notarial seal on the paper, instead of a weakly faded circle that gave up before it could even become an arc.
I tried again, this time pressing harder on the handle. Now I had a complete circle, but the inside of the seal was blank. There was supposed to be a little coat-of-arms type of picture in the center.
I picked up the directions. For all of its thoroughness in assembling the seal, there was very little on how to actually operate the seal. In fact, there wasn�t anything about how to operate it.
Maybe my hand was to blame. I still had pain in my hand from when the fish guy had knocked me down, and had seen my doctor about it last week. He’d said that I’d torn one of the muscles in my hand and was probably re-injuring it every time I felt the pain. I wasn’t able to put much pressure on it, and evidently the embosser required more strength than I had.
I tried to use my left hand on the embosser, but the effect was even worse. If this was in Braille, it would have been illegible. Using both hands on the handle, I was finally able to produce a somewhat faded but complete version of the sample seal the notary company had provided.
Now I was off and running. I notarized a few Post-It notes and lined paper. I notarized an envelope. I examined some scraps of paper which I�d used to jot down work notes, and after careful thought, I notarized my notes. Gradually I came to my senses and decided I�d better pack my notary seal away for now. Power was corrupting, and I needed to remind myself that I was no better than anyone else. Just because I could notarize didn�t mean I should, and I knew I had to wield my power judiciously.
Then again, maybe a web page can be notarized…