Pretend it’s not actually 12:05 a.m. That way I can talk about what happened five years ago today and we can all agree that I mean Tuesday, February 28.

Do you know what happened five years ago today? Anyone? Anyone?

That’s right! The Nisqually Earthquake, magnitude 6.8 on the Richter scale shook our house and caused me to run upstairs to my son, instead of crawling under a sturdy piece of furniture as I suppose I should have. My son, then barely three years old, had been playing “Yoshi” on Nintendo 64 and frankly, couldn’t have cared less about the shaking of our house. I felt like I was in a snowglobe and not in a good way.

But nothing broke and that crack in the ceiling? We ignore it. Perhaps it was there before, right? Normal house settling and all.

Also, today is Fat Tuesday (as well call it in Seattle) or Mardi Gras. Last hurrah before Lent and everything. I did not grow up around the Lenten traditions and the first time I saw ash smudged on foreheads when I was a new bride living in New Haven, Connecticut, I eyed people curiously. Growing up in a Pentecostal tradition means you lack liturgical observances. Sure, people would hoop and holler in church and once, I saw a group of people trying to cast a demon out of a girl who was simply having an epileptic seizure, but no one ever mentioned Lent. Or Ash Wednedsay. (Or Fat Tuesday, of course, because everyone knows that drinking alcohol is a sin if you are a Pentecostal Christian, at least it was in the old days.)

So I enter the season of Lent without any preparation or plans. I regret that, too. I wish my life were more measured and solemn and observant. And I wish I got out of the house alone more often and I wish I had more Diet Coke with Lime and I wish it were not so late. I wish I were not so distracted and I wish I hadn’t waited until the last minute to do my little writing assignment because I missed watching the last half of “American Idol.” I wish I knew what to make for dinner tomorrow and I wish the taxes were already done.

And just because I want to make a note of it, I have to tell you that my husband and I were laughing over the fact that four cars sit in our driveway tonight. The one that drives the best doesn’t even belong to us and it has over 250,000 miles on it. That says something, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does. It says “L-O-S-E-R-S.”

[But at least we don’t have a baby rat in our house. Read this and laugh!]