Flights & Fanciness.

What's better than enjoying a beer with your loved ones? Enjoying THREE beers with your loved ones!

(Or, if you are under age 21, enjoying a glass of juice and a jolly conversation with your loved ones.

(Or, if you are under age 21 and have diabetes, enjoying a glass of juice and a shot of insulin and a jolly conversation with your loved ones.

(Or, if you are under age 21 and have diabetes and hope to go into a diabetic coma so you can meet a handsome ER doctor, enjoying a glass of juice that you have spiked with a few packets of sugar and a jolly conversation with your loved ones and the fact that you are still on your loved ones' insurance plan.)))

I had the privilege of enjoying what they call a "flight" of beers at a restaurant with no fewer than three of your grandparents not long ago, and it about made my eyes pop out of my head. Luckily, they did not. And if they had, there was a good chance they would have landed in a glass of beer, which would have killed the germs. RIGHT? RIGHT??

Two Sets of Best Friends.

Because you're young, children, you probably think of baking soda and vinegar as merely the ingredients in homemade volcanoes. But when you get to be older and more interested in eradicating soap scum from your life, you'll come to see these two powerhouses as best friends and warriors in the battle against household grime*.

I had a glorious few hours this weekend scrubbing the tub and chrome bathroom fixtures, and managed to restore them to something resembling cleanliness. As a bonus, these powerful cleansing ingredients are easy on the environment AND on the wallet. But they're not the only pair of best friends who experienced extreme cleaning this weekend.

Your dad was out of town, children, which meant I had an opportunity to put my childhood stuffed animal, Kringle, through the laundry without enduring endless mockery. So I did. And he came out so fluffy and bright that I couldn't resist letting him sleep on your father's side of the bed. Just until he gets back, you understand. 

Probably.

Before the bath. Note the dirty, mangy coat.

*Or, if you're not prone to personifying inanimate objects, you'll just see them as baking soda and vinegar.

Just Me and 500 of My Favorite Morning Beverages...

[Written in the style of a young adult novel.]

Ding-dong.

The doorbell snapped me from a reverie of writing keyword-rich online content intended solely to satisfy the insatiable spiders created by search engines. I turned briskly from my standing desk and hurried to the door. As I fumbled with the knob, the bell rang again, twice. Ding-dong, ding-dong. I scampered down the dusty front stairs.

"Package for Brenna," said the delivery man. I signed for it.

I'm Brenna, as you probably guessed. And I had a pretty good idea what was in the box, seeing as I'd ordered it from the Internet about a week before. I bounded back upstairs and dropped the package on the kitchen table, then sliced it open with a steak knife.

If my life were a movie, a golden light would have glowed on my face from the open box, while a heavenly chorus sounded in the background. Unfortunately, I'm just a freelance writer who lives in Chicago. But what did shine in my face was green tea. Five-hundred bags of it, to be precise.

I felt the grin spread over my face like a bout of impetigo through a preschool. At last. The days of jittery java gulping were over. I turned to the camera for a closeup.

Hiiiiiiii, Mooooooommmm.

Some Evidence for When You Want to Commit Me.

Children, I may be a bit off my rocker, but I am always fair. Which is why I have decided to graciously offer you evidence to use in case you should ever decide to have me committed (you know, if you decide you want a little more leg room on car trips and a little less chocolate chip cookie in your life).

Here it is.

What you're looking at is an actual snack I made and ate. It contains a soy-based hot dog product, rice, nori, lettuce, and ketchup. It is soy-hot-dog-sushi. What's more, I planned this snack in detail as I walked home from the bus, based on my knowledge of what foods we had available. This was not an act of impulse. This was not a heat-of-the-moment snack decision. It has been lovely knowing you all. Please come visit me from time to time.

P.S. Today is your dad's birthday! He's 28 on the 28th!

A Horse of a Different Color (A Gold Color, to Be Exact).

Last weekend, your Lemieux grandparents came to Chicago to visit us, children. And how did we thank them for the lovely visit? We showed them Chicago's famous tiny gold horses. Luckily, they're stored in the second-floor lobby of the hotel in which your grandparents were staying, so it was convenient.

As is custom, your grandmother listened to the horse's nostrils to hear whether he would breathe a valuable and much-coveted equestrian "AuGury*" into her ear.

Your father, in complete defiance of customs, tried to climb on the horse to ride it. To where, John?! Unless you're trying to get to the second-floor lobby of the Chicago Hilton, it's not really a great mode of transportation.

*That was a chemistry pun, for those of you who like that sort of thing.

Lord, Preserve Us...

...said these squashes. But since nobody named Lord lives here, I decided to step in. This time tomorrow, these salted and peppered zucchini discs should be ready to satisfy your craving for snackfood AND part of your daily vegetable requirements.

I know. I'm quite clever.

Stretching It.

As you undoubtedly know by now, children, your bloodline is cursed with both severe injury-proneness (Clark side) and extreme clumsiness (Lemieux side), which, we can all agree, is not the best combination for people with limited health insurance. Perhaps these traits should have been a warning sign against our having you in the first place, but we just figured if our genes were that awful they wouldn't have come with the velcro-like substance that allows them to stick together and form new humans*.

Anyway, just in case you thought you were the only ones who ever had to sit on the sidelines** icing your hips while all your friends had a raucously good time, here's some evidence to the contrary.

You see, your grandfather has stress fractures in his feet. And now as part of his recovery, he has to do elaborate stretches every day instead of running around the house and playing outside.

(Does he have to do them on the dining room table? I don't ask.)

*My understanding of genetics is cursory at best.

**Of the Scrabble court