The Top Ten Rules of the Craig House

Okay, I’m not a big follower of the rules. Well, except when they’re my rules! Now, ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you I’m a tad of a rule bender, and rule tweaker. I was mostly born that way. I mean, when my mom told me that I had to clean my plate, I did. The fact that I cleaned it by scraping the peas and hominy-God I hated that stuff—to a nice, little hideaway behind the refrigerator, is just a little manipulation of the rule. When my editor tells me my books have to be 90,000 words or less, I simply delete spaces between the words. Hey, if he wants to fix it, that’s his business. When I handed him the manuscript it was only seven thousand over the word limit.

Nevertheless, we do have some Craig rules. Some of them came into being because of some extraordinary experiences. Others are just . . . well, normal household rules.


1) No snakes in the refrigerator.

The son was five and he found mama very negative about his recent barrage of pets. The three frogs he’d captured and stored in his toy box. The neighbor’s kitten he’d kidnapped and hidden in his sock drawer. But the one that incited the actual rule was when I opened the butter dish and found what suspiciously looked like a baby copperhead tucked behind the blue cheese. (Oh, no animals have been harmed by my son. There was the dead squirrel, but he picked that up off the side of our yard—road kill—right before he carried it to show our new neighbors.)

2) No Play Dough in the sugar canister.

Yes, I explained that this was the last pack of Play Dough I would buy if he lost the tops again and wasn’t able to seal the cans and stop the fun little entertainment from drying out. Well, guess what the sugar canister came with—a nice little seal top.

3) No whole eggs, shells still on, cooked in the microwave.

“Can I boil an egg in the microwave?” I was asked by my then seventeen year old son. YES, Seventeen!
“No. If you put a whole egg in the microwave, it will explode like a bomb in seconds.”
(Warning: Anything that blows up and fast sounds like a good thing to a seventeen year old.) “Holy crappers, Mom! You were right. That egg is plastered all over the microwave.”

4) No farting at the kitchen table.
This one is pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it?

5) No condoms in the dryer for mom to find later.

“It was AIDs’ awareness day and they were passing them out at college and I forgot to take them out of my pocket.” Right, I bought that.

6) No running from mommy when I’m trying to snatch the dingle berry that is dangling from the fluffy hairs that surrounds your cute little bottom.

(This is not my son I’m referring to, just in case you thought it was. Or hubby. “Come on kitty, if you want to sleep with mama, the dingle berry has to go.”

7) No throwing up hairballs on the kitchen table when company is walking in the front door.

I think this is pretty self-explanatory as well.

8) No wearing boxers around the house that doesn’t have button front. Yes, mama thought you were cute when you were two and used to streak through house, but things change!”

9) If it smells funny, or taste funny, don’t, DO NOT, ask me to taste it or smell it.

“Sweetheart, this milk tastes bad, really sour, can you taste it?” Sweetheart, doesn’t like sour milk, I don’t even like milk period, why would I want to taste it if it’s bad?


10. No letting Junior’s pet rats loose in the bathroom when Grandma Ginger is visiting.

I think this is another one of those that should be self-explanatory. However, it might have been hubby who instigated this. What can I say, she’s his mother-in-law.

So...do you guys have rules at your house? What rules do you bend, break, use to your favor? What were the rules at your parents' house? Come on . . . share a little.