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??

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.

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

In the Deep End

I will let this visual pun speak for itself.

P.S. If it seems like we've been spending a lot of time with your Clark grandparents, that's because we HAVE! Because they're practically our neighbors now! It's so super-cool, children. You should definitely consider living near us when you become adults, so we can beat you in pool and Scrabble and then make you feel better about yourselves by plying you with food and wine. It's totally worth it.

The Truth about Coffee.

Now that we're settling into our new apartment, children, I decided it was time to buy a coffee pot. Ours broke during our last few weeks in Carbondale, and it seemed silly to replace it before the big move. So I ventured out into the world and came home with this little beauty.

It is fittingly called a "Chefmate." As someone who considers herself a chef (or at least a cook (or at least a cooker)), it's nice to feel as if I have a "mate" around to pick up the slack and take care of all the chores I don't feel like doing. Although I must say, if the kitchen appliances mutiny, I can definitely see this guy being the one to toss me overboard.

Fortuitously, I recently had another revelation about coffee that was made possible only by the grace of technology and the genius of Mark Zuckerberg. You see, despite living with my mother (your grandmother) for years and observing her carefully every morning, I never quite knew how she felt about coffee.

Until now.

Turns out she's "interested."

Thank you, Facebook. The mystery is over.

Meet Your Grandparents! (Clark Edition)

This weekend, your father and I drove out to the 'burbs to visit your grandparents, who kindly still feed us when we knock on their door. Hopefully, we will time your births exactly right, so that just as they're beginning to get absolutely sick to death of us, we will announce that we have made adorable new people who are currently living inside one of our bodies (we won't bore them with all the details) and whom they may play with, but only on the condition that they continue to feed us all when we knock on their door. Whenever we knock on their door.

Anyway, the main difference between your grandparents and your parents is that they have what are considered "useful" professions, and we are what is considered "freelance bloggers."

Your grandfather Bill, for example, is a preacher. While we were visiting, I sneezed and he said "Bless you," and you know what, children? It actually meant something.










And your grandmother Laurie, who is a doctor, examined your father's ears because they hurt, and diagnosed the problem with no difficulties*.

So let me apologize in advance for the day you and your spouses come to visit your dad and me in our suburban house and the most help I can offer you is to suggest you try shuffling your syntax so you have more trochees and fewer dactyls or perhaps a nice slant rhyme here and there or maybe an allusion to Greek mythology or two.

...I'm such a waste of space.

*Obviously, I can't repeat the problem here, because it would violate doctor-patient privilege AND spousal privilege, which I know about from Law & Order shows and because your father went to law school.

Not-So-Everyday: Visitors to Carbondale!

After a long line of excessively everyday occurrences (which, because of your mother's future fetish, you have been cruelly subjected to knowing about), we had some not-so-everyday things happen in Carbondale last week. What such events, you ask? Visitors!

Despite all odds, we actually enjoyed a visit from two people, who had to travel for hours and hours to get here--and they did it anyway! We couldn't have been more perplexed or more delighted to see folks from "the outside," as we call them down here. And now, children, prepare to meet your paternal grandmother, Laurie, and one of your top four favorite aunts, Christie.

The visit was such a thrill for us all that we decided to actually leave the house. Here I am strapped in the car for a drive to the big, delightful world beyond the walls of our everyday abode.

Such pure adventure awaiting us on the open road--it takes my breath away to remember it all!

Meet Your Grandparents! (Lemieux Edition)

You know how your maternal grandparents are in the future, but you've probably wondered what they were like in the past (or, for me, the present). So here's an overview of what everyday life was like for Cindy and Albert (whom you will undoubtedly call some cute-but-kind-of-annoying names coined by Auntie Danielle's older and more precocious children and about which I harbor not the least bit of resentment, even though she has always gotten to do everything first because she's older and a part of me maybe thought we would outgrow that at some point in our lives).


First of all, it's important to know that Cindy's hands get cold easily. Luckily, Albert has uncommonly warm armpits, so if they stick together, they can both achieve something like a reasonable temperature. And isn't that what true love is all about?

Secondly, your grandfather has a real fondness for measuring. He can hardly enter a new room without taking down its dimensions, in case he might need them in the future to resize a piece of furniture or make adjustments to his tax records.


Third, it should be noted that your mother's abiding love for beer can be traced directly to these two*.


Finally, I feel it is my duty as a communicator of truth to confess that your grandfather is so averse to the thought of waste that, upon removing a cracked wooden toilet seat from a bathroom in his house, he added said seat to the fireplace, that it might have a second life as part of our heating fuel.


I wish that incident had been a dream, but alas! When I awakened the next morning, my digital images offered no such balm to my mind. I hope this post gave you some things to think about, children. Like maybe how it might be kind of nice if it turns out we adopted you.


*I almost typed "these two lushes," but if they're both lushes, wouldn't that make me a double lush? And lord only knows what that makes you, children. Wait a second. Where did you say you were going tonight with Poni and Coaster**?

**Based on current trends, I can only assume children's names will get weirder and weirder in the future.