My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

I’m in my father’s den. Behind me are stacks of coins, the small squares of white cardstock with cellphane circles cut in them, circles of different sizes corresponding roughly to the sizes of american coinage: pennies, nickels quarters, half dollars. One coin per square, stapled shut with four staples, stacked in leaning tilting Jenga piles. I’m home for Christmas, on the computer while the rest of the family sleeps.

Heidi, my sister, is staying with my parents too. She just moved back from her teaching job at a Christian school in Tennessee. She has the guest room. My grandmother lives downstairs, in the bottom part of the split level ranch house my parents own. My parents have a large master bedroom with a antechamber, a foyer, a waiting room area when you first walk in. They set up a twin bed for me there. The three cats, Fritz, Pounce and Widget sleep in my parents room as well. (Yes, it’s weird to me too. I’d sleep in the den but there is only a little trail of carpet visible between boxes, file cabinets and cardboard tables set up to hold his collection)

It was 48 degrees tonight, according to the First National Bank thermometer on Route 33. “Pretty warm for ten at night in mid-December,” my father remarked. He’s talking about New Hampshire. My sister and mother were baking gingerbread cookies and the house smelled like warm brown sugar. The two black cats, Widget and Pounce, are terrified of motion, and ran and hid when I arrived. My mother’s daily prayer book was on the kitchen table, Dad and I sat down and played a game of cribbage. I drank egg nogg and spiced rum. I lost to my father, and he went to bed. I lost to my sister, and she went to bed. Now I’m going to bed.