Crazy Hour

Most days at about six pm, imps raid my apartment for easy afternoon marauding. They tell the dog if she feels barfy that she should lie down on the couch next to the sleeping baby and that will certainly help expel the grass she ate. The rest of the gang topples delicately stacked clean laundry from the top of the dryer directly into the garbage and a third faction makes sure to incite riots on the play ground insuring the kid will be outraged and in tears when she bursts in the door. The imps make a hasty exit as the dominoes of chaos clack into each other and I grasp desperately both simultaneously trying to stop the progression and knocking down completely new sequences. Sometimes I burn dinner, overflow a bath tub or shatter a glass and assuredly this is the time slot teachers, doctors, my husband and publisher's clearing house choose to call. I stopped being upset and surprised and even ceased bracing for it. Sometimes the imps come on Saturday at ten am or Thursday mid-day just before parent teacher conferences. So if you happen to call me and on the other end of the line you hear a crash and I say “Let me call you back, crazy hour just started,” now you know.