My cooking has always been the target of family jokes. One evening, as I prepared dinner a bit too quickly, the kitchen filled with smoke and the smoke detector went off. Although both of my children had received fire-safety training at school, they did not respond to the alarm.

Annoyed, I stormed through the house in search of them. I found them in the bathroom, washing their hands. Over the loud buzzing of the smoke alarm, I asked them to identify the sound.

"It’s the smoke detector," they replied in unison.

"Do you know what that sound means?" I demanded.

"Sure," my oldest replied. "Dinner’s ready."

My daughter had absentmindedly left her sneakers on our kitchen table. "That’s disgusting," my husband grumbled. "Doesn’t she realize we eat off that table?"

Then he went out back to work on the car. I cleaned the table and left to do my grocery shopping.

When I came home I couldn’t set my bags down anywhere. Sitting in the middle of the kitchen table was a car muffler.

When a squirrel slipped into my house, I did the logical thing: I panicked and called my father.

"How do you get a squirrel out of a basement?" I shrieked.

Dad advised me to leave a trail of peanut butter and crackers from the basement to the outside. It worked—the squirrel ate his way out of the house. Unfortunately, he passed another squirrel eating his way in.

I was in small-claims court when I listened in on the case of a woman who held a good job but still had trouble paying her bills on time.

“Can’t you live within your income?” asked the judge.

“No, Your Honor,” she said. “It’s all I can do to live within my credit!”