What was that Ben Franklin said about guests and fish?

We had plans of leaving for Pittsburgh after I got back from work the Thursday before Christmas. But I got back from work later than I had hoped, and we really weren’t packed at all, and I wanted to drop some presents by a friend’s place. She has small kids, and I get that it’s important to have Christmas Presents On Christmas Morning, Even if The Felted Hedgehog Is Not Dry.

So with the packing and the hustling and bustling in the apartment, we didn’t notice right away that there was someone on the porch tapping on our front window.

“Jeebus! What the fork is that?!” I exclaimed. My mother-in-law doesn’t allow swearing, so I was practicing.

The Fool pushed the curtains aside and took a look.

“Huh,” he said. “It’s woolly. I wonder if it’s from that living nativity the Baptist church had a couple nights back.”

He stared for a moment more.

“It’s cursing at me.”

“Call the cops,” I said, handing him the phone.

“Let me in, goddammit, it’s cold out here! You want me to get ice balls in my fleece?”

“Oh,” I said. “I think that’s Dolores. You know, Franklin’s sheep.”

The Fool opened the door, and in barged Dolores, bundled up in a wool overcoat (I ignored the irony.)

“Merry Christmas,” I said. “Come in.”

She stepped on my foot with a sharp hoof as she pushed past, and emptied a carpetbag upside down on the living room floor.

“There,” she said. “You stay here with Auntie Meg and the Fool until Franklin and I come back to get you.”

A half dozen balls of sock yarn shook themselves and settled into an attentive heap, trying hard not to gawk as they looked around.

“Dolores,” the Fool said, “You can’t leave them here. We’re going out of town tomorrow. Who’s going to take care of them?”

“They’ll manage fine on their own – just leave a takeout menu and a little cash by the phone. Now, I have to go to Aidan’s, so you all get acquainted.”

“But….” I began.

But Dolores was gone, hustling out my door again and into a waiting cab. No wonder she hadn’t started sniffing around the liquor cabinet; the meter was probably running.

With some reservations, we left for Pittsburgh the next morning. The sock yarn had curled up in a basket and seemed to be sleeping through the long winter’s night. I tried calling the cats a couple times to get a report, but cats are notoriously unreliable about answering the phone or returning messages left on the machine.

What with the total lack of opposable thumbs in the apartment over the weekend, I don't quite understand how the goings-on were documented, but they were.

Here, the lads seem to have settled in for the evening.

Some of them apparently overindulged. They left lint all over the bathroom rug, too.

Knowing that Franklin is an erudite fellow, I was a little surprised to see what the sock yarn preferred to read. They tried telling me they only bought it for the short fiction, but I said in that case, they could have read the New Yorker or the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, either of which was sitting around.

The Dynamic Duo better retrieve their wayward fiber soon, because we have a gig in St. Louis this weekend and don't want to have to take a whole basket of sock yarn with us. They're not staying home by themselves; I don't know how Franklin does it.