3 Revenge of the Crafty Corpse Read Online Free PDF

masses into rebellion already?”
    “With Lucille anything is possible.” I flipped open my phone, expecting the worst. “Hello?”
    “Mrs. Pollack, this is Shirley Hallstead. I understand you’re interested in the temporary part-time position we have open for an art therapist. When can you start?”
    “When can I start? Don’t you want to interview me first? See a résumé?”
    “No need. Kara vouches for you, and after all, it’s arts and crafts, not rocket science. You’re more than qualified from what Kara told me. How’s tomorrow sound? Nine-thirty? That will give us half an hour for paperwork before your first class begins.”
    “Uhm, sure. Nine-thirty sounds great.”
    “I’ll see you then.” And with that she hung up.
    I pocketed my phone and looked up to find Cloris staring at me. “Are you quitting?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Could have fooled me. That certainly sounded like a job offer.”
    “It was.” I proceeded to tell her what had transpired at Sunnyside. “That was the director. She wants me to start tomorrow morning.”
    Cloris placed her hand on my forearm. “I know you’re desperate for money, sweetie, but are you sure about this? You’re going to burn yourself out.”
    I sank down into one of the molded plastic chairs surrounding the break room table and stuffed the remainder of the brownie into my mouth. “The money’s too good to pass up,” I said, talking around chocolate, caramel, and marshmallow. “It’s only for a few months. I’ll manage.” Somehow.
    “Famous last words. I’ll start researching asylums for loony craft editors.”
    “Make sure you pick one that allows care packages from sarcastic food editors.”
    _____
    Since God saw fit to make women the multi-taskers of the species (really, have you ever met a man who could do more than one thing at a time?), why didn’t He see fit to endow us with the ability to thrive on a mere three or four hours of sleep a night? Or create longer days for us? Or more than seven days in a week?
    When you come right down to it, it would have been nice if the Big Guy had thought things through a little more before going on a creation tear. Sort of a Biblical spin on measure twice, cut once . After all, no one forced Him to get it all done in six days. He certainly wasn’t in competition with anyone else at the time. Think of all the kinks He could have worked out beforehand had He simply taken eight or ten days. Or a couple of weeks.
    For example, let there be light, but hold off on the ones that cause melanoma. And we really could have done quite nicely minus the bed bugs and cockroaches. Not to mention the head lice.
    I pondered this and more as I inched my way home from work. How do I juggle a second job on top of my already more-than-forty-hours-a-week primary job without going totally bonkers from sleep deprivation?
    Or sacrificing my multiple responsibilities as a single parent?
    Yet something else I could blame on my selfish Dead Louse of a Spouse. Thanks to Karl, one kid now never had a parent standing on the sidelines or sitting in the bleachers, cheering him on when both boys had games at the same time. And given their sports fanaticism, rare was there a Saturday or Sunday that Alex and Nick weren’t both playing in separate games on opposite ends of town. Or in some other town.
    While I continued to ponder and cast blame, my stomach grumbled, reminding me that I’d skipped both breakfast and lunch in my mad dash to move Lucille from the hospital to Sunnyside and squeeze a day’s worth of work into half a day at the office. Woman cannot live by coffee and Cloris confections alone, as much as I try.
    As I sat in bumper-to-bumper evening rush-hour traffic, tepid air blowing on me, I took a mental inventory of my refrigerator and pantry, hoping I’d discover enough leftovers to serve for dinner since I’d forgotten to defrost something that morning. The last thing I felt like doing at six o’clock on a Friday night