Into the Darkness...

As expected with any Ham–induced sweeping overhaul that entailed my participation, events that ensued over Memorial Day Weekend inspired Hammies. As for the aforementioned overhaul, it entailed an office revamp with a new Internet home network. I don't understand a single bit of it, other than the concept of "cable," so let's just say it was a major production.

 

(Above) Here's a Hammie with hubby's expression as he untangled the thick matte of computer cables I'd woven together over the years. The phrases, "Dear God!," and "How can you live like this?!" were heard repeatedly throughout the process.

Now here's the kicker: to construct this upgraded system, hubby had to crawl around in the crawlspace—under the house. This isn't something he's prone to do and, in fact, he dreads it so much, he's never done it before.

You see, his ancient and infernal nemesis resides there in vast, seething colonies, just waiting for the opportune moment to lurch forward to deflesh him.

Spiders.

The sheer loathing and revulsion he bears for these creatures is nothing short of astonishing. If I had a dime for every time I've had to leap to the defense of a tiny eight-legged cowering creature, I'd have bought us a trip to Antarctica where there are no spiders.

This is what a spider looks like to me.

This is what a spider looks like to Ham.

Now I should mention that I have this annoying tendency to blurt out highly inappropriate comments that just pop into my head. Inconveniently, if a moment is amusing (to me), my internal filter spontaneously malfunctions and out the comment comes. And believe me when I tell you that these thoughts are truly funny—but only to me.

So as my dear hubby spent a goodly amount of the morning psychologically preparing himself, he took a deep breath with braced trepidation in his eyes, steadying himself to enter The Den Of The Beast—and out my mouth blurts, "I wonder if you'll run into Shelob down there."

Fear has many eyes and can see things underground. 

~ Miguel De Cervantes

Muddy Mischief

You did...wha...WHAT?!

When making sundry clay items there’s always leftover clay. Not quite enough to make another tile or magnet, but too much to just hang onto indefinitely. So a couple of weeks ago, as I was fiddling with a leftover blob, this little guy took shape (above).

My husband, whom I call "Ham," has a very expressive face with an equally expressive voice to go with it. The combined effect drives me dizzy with delight, to the point that even when he’s—shall we say—excessively perturbed, I’m giddy with internal glee. Not that I don’t take him seriously, of course, but those expressions of his are just too priceless to toss aside. And one of the hazards of being married to an artist is that it’s just as easy to become the hapless victim subject as it is to be the innocent bystander spousal support.

So as this little clay guy materialized in my fingers, an idea popped into my head, as ideas invariably do, "Why not capture a Hammy–moment?" 

What I mean by "Hammy–moment" is a snapshot of one of hubby's mercurial expressions in response to my seemingly–endless shenanigans. It seems I have a knack for eliciting a barrage of expressions from him because—apparently—I do things that invite all sorts of incredulous reactions. Indeed, the man is a pillar of patience because, I do admit, I'm a bit of a whirlwind of catastrophic unpredictability. And thus a win–win situation was born: I'd use up the extra clay and have fun to boot. And I shall call them Hammies.

The first Hammie is pictured above, wearing hubby’s expression when he’d discovered I’d opened up the house to the beautiful spring day, but left the central heating on. All day.

And here are Hammies #2 and #3—I gleaned two Hammies from one incident! I couldn't get Netflix to work on the tube all day and asked hubby to "make it go" when he got home (him being an IT guy). He fiddled with the machine, and then the settings and then finally called our Internet–provider tech support, spending about 45 minutes hashing things out with them to no avail…

Above is his expression when he'd discovered—after all that trouble—that the problem was that the wall switch had been turned off. By me. After he'd told me about a million times never to turn off the wall switch. There's some highly technical reason why the wall switch controls the TV hook-ups, but I promptly forgot and, of course, flipped it off. I couldn't even remember the reason why…I just remembered the wall switch was important so I flipped it off. Note to self: don't work in a nuclear power plant.

And (above) here's his expression immediately after the initial shock of the unfortunate discovery. A grumble went with it as well as a reminder, for the one-millionth-and-one time, not to turn off the wall light switch.

Look for gaggles of Hammies popping up for sale in my stores from time to time, an ode to an endlessly suffering and infinitely lovable man.

We have an infinite number of reasons to be happy, and a serious responsibility not to be serious.

~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi