Yesterday was a Jonah day, to quote Anne. And therefore I have to share it with my best friends.

The morning started deceptively well, kind of like Jonah probably thought as he successfully boarded that ship. We woke up late, and got up with the happy thought that pancakes were in order for the day. So, I went down to start making them, only to realize that, of course, we didn’t have milk. But, happiness! Daniel had leftover “Just add water” pancake mix from his last camping trip, and it was just enough for a batch! I also found some chocolate chips, so went ahead and threw those in, mixed up the batter, and started them on the griddle.

At which point, Daniel came up from the basement, where he had been putting laundry in, and looked at me with great unhappiness. Apparently, there was a dead mouse behind the water heater, and the question was whether he had to take it out before or after breakfast. That was our first hint of our Jonah day. He decided to get it over with, carried the dead mouse out the door on a shovel, and washed his hands thoroughly.

Thankfully, the pancakes were ready by the time he finished, and he was much happier as he sat down to those chocolate chip pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse, and dug in.

About halfway through, I hear a horrified gasp from him and look up at his even more horrified eyes. He lifted the bite on his fork so I could clearly see the legs on the stink bug that had been cooked in the pancakes, and apparently looked just like chocolate chips in the thick batter.

The bite I was currently chewing turned to ash as I stared at that specimen, and sat there for awhile as I tried to determine whether it would be worse to swallow or spit. I eventually convinced myself that if there had been a bug in my bite, it would have crunched, and forced myself to swallow, and then Daniel and I went to the other room, and thoroughly washed out mouths and then then our stomachs with whiskey. I don’t know how long we sat there, staring at each other, our stomachs roiling, But three conclusions were reached.

1. There are legitimate excuses for drinking whiskey in the morning.
2. We were never again eating Daniel’s camping leftovers, particularly when it involved pancake mix.
3. We might never eat pancakes again anyway.

Once we could force ourselves to move again, we began cleaning the house, in preparation for both our 3:00 PM meeting with a notary to finish the refi on our house and because we were having guests at 7:00 PM to try the whiskeys we bought in Kentucky. Around 2:30, we got a call from the notary who told us that the title company had never uploaded our paperwork, so we couldn’t close. Which means we have to hope that we can get it straightened out before we leave again in two days. or we won’t be able to close before next year.

Finally, we took off to run some errands before our guests arrived, went to Costco, Daniel went to get gas, and. . . the car died. Died so thoroughly, in fact, that he couldn’t even get it to jump.

On the upside, we were at Costco, so he unhooked the battery, carried it into the tire center, and got a new one. FYI, it is unwise to travel in winter without mittens or scarf, no matter how quickly you think your errands are going to go. . .amazing how fast it gets cold when you are working on a car outside.

And thus our Jonah day ended. Apparently, God decided we had had enough because the rest of our errands went well, and we got back home with fifteen minutes to eat dinner before our guests arrived.