I don’t consider myself an allergy person, but I feel like I’ve snorted about half a bottle of Drano, and I’m reasonably certain I haven’t done that in at least thirteen years.

I pulled into my driveway earlier this week and thought we were getting rain because that’s what it sounded like on the roof of the car. It turned out to be some type of fuzzy green seed. A LOT of some fuzzy green seed, hell bent on ruining my life for a few days.

It’s not conducive to thinking, this sitting around hoping to sneeze. It isn’t conducive to writing or cooking or cleaning or much of anything. At least nobody’s vomiting. Plus the kids are happy that I’m not feeling well enough to torment them. And that when I went out to buy tissues I also hit the half-price Easter candy.

In lieu of having any real content today, I’m going through my pictures. If you want to read something funny about the kids, go here. Or here. My dogs are sometimes funny too.

Here’s a picture of part of my console at work. It’s British.

Those two big rectangular buttons under plastic. They look pretty similar, no? The only real difference is that in the picture one is lit up and one isn’t. One of them, the one labeled PC 2, seamlessly switches to your backup computer if you have a problem. The other one, the one labeled CHECK, reverses all your mutes. Meaning, everything that is currently on, it turns off; everything that is currently off, it turns on.

It’s like the Opposite Button.

You really don’t want to hit this during a show. Even if you’re at the almost-very-end.

Which is why those helpful Brits made the CHECK button so different from every other button (except one). It’s why they put it under plastic (just like the other button). And put it far away from the other button (a whole two-and-a-half inches away so that you couldn’t possibly hit it by mistake if you got distracted by something, such as a patron trying to talk to you when you’re shutting down the computers while mixing the walkout music).

You’d never hit it on accident. Because that would make the band mics all turn off and the audience wouldn’t be able to hear the band and the band wouldn’t be able to hear each other and then the stage manager would be calling light cues off of silence, Keeping Calm and Carrying On by counting to eight in her head, over and over. Then it would be mime, and everybody hates mime. You’d never do that.

Not a second time, anyway. Especially not after you tape it up with a note like Kevin Bacon did in Apollo 13.

This is accidentalstepmom reminding you that it’s never too late to screw up in a brand new way. For more British ingenuity, set your alarm tonight for 4am EST- or better yet, stay up!