Over half of the month is gone.

I am now three games ahead for the month. It has been that way on and off for the past week. First two than three than two than three ahead. I am certainly not complaining about that state of daily cribbage but my mother most likely has another story to tell...
We have both had our times of 21 point hands and then 2 point hands. No real cliff hangers to note, although one day I was one point shy of a win.
The first picture is a jigsaw puzzle we recently put together. That has been our secondary mania for the last few weeks. Now I am experiencing withdrawal as we have no more to do for now. It had become the daily jigsaw puzzle as well.
The second picture is our crop of volunteer hollyhocks that cheerfully come up every year all on their own. I did initially bring them to the area by casting a few collected seeds from my daily walk. (Ooooh, another potential blog "The Daily Walk." ) And of course this picture has the necessary capture of one of my fingers for all to see.

Had to do it.

It is day 12. Up until today every two days in this month we were tied. My mother likes it that way. She is even generous in saying it is your turn to win today when she is that one day ahead. Today I ruined the perfect tie combination by skunking her (she lost by over 30 points for those of you who lack basic cribbage speak, it was 33 points to be exact). I sensed that her feathers were ruffled by this so I resorted to counting her victories last month. Remember she was so far ahead last month that we did not bother to total the win/loss tally for that month. Today was the day to salve her wounded cribbage soul. The count, for those of you holding your breath, was 16 wins for her and 13 for me. Again, I know June has 30 days but this time I know why there are only 29 games to count. It was that lost day due to roses and other assorted yard work. The amazing thing so far this month, besides the record amount of ties, is how the individual count evolved throughout each game. I would get a 24 hand along the way and be way ahead and then she would get a 24 hand to catch up or vice versa. Cribs were also fantastic in that we would each along the way get 12 point cribs, all just by luck. There truly is never a dull day at the daily cribbage.

The month so far.

I am pleased to report that as of today, I am one game ahead. Yesterday we were tied 3-3 so someone had to be the tie-breaker today. Yesterday's game was very plain vanilla, no real significant cliff hanging. But today's was a thriller! We each had 24 point hands at some time in the game. Just when I thought I would skunk her, she received her 24 points to round the corner. I was actually happy for her as there is nothing worse than an extremely disgruntled loser. And I still seemed to be sufficiently in the lead. For those of you avid cribbage players you know it is those final hands and who counts first near the end that is critical. However, sometimes all can seem so right and the game is snatched away. It is in those heated moments of final play that I will shout out "You stole the game!" and she does not even care. Today, though, I calmly crossed the well-deserved finish line. Tune in next time for future exciting cribbage duels.

Rough game today.

Today's game started out badly for me. My mother kept getting these fantastic hands, like 12 points in her hand and 12 in her crib. Also she was scoring lots in the play itself. Being early in the month, I am not overly concerned. Let her feel good and get ahead for awhile. But today's play was brutal. Even the flowers were wilting over the bleakness of it all.
At one point, she must have been ahead by 50 points. Then she slowed down in her luck and I had a few good hands. Initially, I thought it would be a double skunk. Then it really got exciting as there was one fleeting moment when I thought I might even win!!! In the end she won by 15 points.
Overall, I cannot feel too bad as the month is starting off with two wins each!

I'm resistin'

I so want to count the days of wins/losses in June. My mother does not seem to care. Probably because she knows she won. Or has she counted them in secret and sees no need to share her calculations? Today she questioned my count during the play. It was in regards to a four card out-of-order run. So I brought out our 40 some year old xeroxed rules to show her the definitive ruling on my play count. Along with the rules, there came a calender from 2005. Actually, it was only December and maybe November. At the bottom of December we had the totals wins for the year. She had won 7 of the months and I had won only 4. Usually if a month is tied we most likely put that as a tie. So this particular year, either only had 11 months or there was an unrecorded tie month! We will never know because of the missing pages. Or are they lurking hidden in the cupboard? Undoubtedly, we kept the final year tally to comfort her if she lost too many times in the future. I do not think that I need to report that she could not believe she won that year by such a large margin...