Arsenic Hour
Arsenic hour is the hour preceeding dinner on any particular day when your children are unravelling and you don’t know whether to take some arsenic yourself or give it to them. This is a joke, of course, I mean, who would take arsenic when beer is so available? Years ago, a friend from church told me that she called that time of the day arsenic hour and it fits so well that is how I’ve talked about it since.

So, on Saturday, during arsenic hour, the boys were really stirring things up. This is the last week of the summer vacation and I think that we’re all wearing emotionally a little thin. Dinner was going to be ready in half an hour, and they were all bouncing off the walls, so I made a dire threat. I got their attention and I told them, “Listen boys, if you don’t calm down and stop messing with each other, then I’m going to make you sit on the couch with me and watch Emma.” Oh, the look of terror on the face of the nine year old, “Mom, not a Jane Austen movie!” I replied, “Oh, yes. If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to make you watch it with me.” And I gave him my you had better believe it look.

They were angels until dinner.