“Which idiot put these lights away last year?” I demanded. Only six shopping days left till the big day, and as always, I felt overwhelmed with stress and anxiety. The ceaseless jangle of the radio, playing an endless stream of hokey Christmas songs made my nerves raw, and my mother’s mindless humming didn’t help either. “Can’t you cut that noise off?” Edna, my mother, looked up from her job, which was to hack away at the base of the tree with a dull butcher knife until the trunk fit into her rusted 40-year-old Christmas-tree stand. “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer happens to be my favorite song,” she said mildly. “And as for the Christmas lights, you put them away last year—Miss Grinch.” I muttered dark threats to myself, and when the phone rang, I didn’t budge from my spot on the living room floor. “Let the machine pick it up,” I said. Edna and I run a cleaning business with the ridiculous name of the House Mouse.
