The Gift that Keeps on Giving.

I had a birthday last week, kids. True to form, your father had set up a delightful and completely un-creepy surprise to greet me when I descended to the kitchen in the morning.



As you probably guessed, that surprise was the collectible M&M statue/dispenser he gave me four years ago for my birthday, modified this time around so that it had a speech bubble wishing me a happy day.

I'm so relieved that we do things in a normal way in this household.

The Differences in the Kinds of Meals Your Father & I Prepare.

Children, you may have already observed that your father and I have slightly different preferences in cooking and eating. Rest assured that these differences existed long before you came into our lives.


For example, your father, left to his own devices, will prepare himself a meal of bacon, Nutella, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.











Notice how nonchalant he is about not only eating the Nutella directly from the container, but also about eating it before the "healthy" part of his dinner.


I, on the other hand, make myself smoothies with kale in them.

Cheaper Per Ounce.

As an avid comparison shopper, I frequently come home from the grocery store with large containers of things we eat because, as I so often repeat to your father, the larger sizes are typically cheaper per ounce.


Despite this undeniable wisdom, your father persists in giving me a hard time about the quantities of various foodstuffs I buy. When I came home one day with this box of green tea, for example, he said, "One-hundred bags of green tea? We're never going to drink all that!"

Never, you say? THEN WHY IS THE BOX COMPLETELY EMPTY, JOHN? HMMMM?

Some Verse.

Two poets, both alike in dignity,

In my fair kitchen, where I lay my scene,

From liquor store and from the grocery,

One is a beer and one is tea that’s green.

From forth the tasty drops of these two drinks

Another poet finds her will to write;

Why wake at all without these two, methinks?

And how to start the day or end the night?

The quaffing of your mother’s constant thirst,

And the clearing of her brain’s daily smog,

Which happens in the early morning first,

Is now this entry’s traffic of her blog.

(And you thought poetry was dull and bland—

Not when it springs forth from your mother’s hand!)

Safety First, Chocolate Second.

What do we do after we take the cookies out of the oven, children?



Correct.


Turn that sh*t off.

The Neighbors Are Listening to "Rocketman." And That's an Improvement.

Children, be glad we no longer live where the past versions of your father and I who wrote this blog lived. This weekend was some epic drinking event for the undergrads at the university here in Carbondale. And because we share walls with our neighbors, who happen to be undergrads,* we got generously invited to share in this experience. By way of their gratuitously loud music. Which made our walls shake until roughly 3 in the morning.


Unfortunately, this photo doesn't capture the sound (how quaint, you must be thinking). But you can see by your father's expression roughly what he thinks about our neighbors' manners.

As you know, if those young men next door had been you, they would have gotten quite the stern talking-to.



*They are in their eighth year of study.

The Rumors Are True.

Yes, future children, I'm sorry to say that the murmurings you've heard on the street are not unfounded. Your father and I recently succumbed to the pressure of our contemporaries and brought (gasp) a television into our home.


However, we feel we maintained a modicum of dignity in the affair: we got this TV for free, from a friend who had plans to discard it (even though it's still got plenty of life in it, let me tell you!). This, of course, means we did NOT contribute to capitalism or corporations in any way. Except when we had to buy an antenna and digital converter box so that we could actually watch it. And there weren't any locally owned boutiquey stores selling hemp-based antennae and converter boxes, so we had to order those from Amazon. (Shudder.)

Oh, and we only get CBS and ABC. And three channels about Jesus, one of which is in Spanish*.


*I must say, this last channel really gives us trouble, because we of course don't approve of religious programming on principle, but we do approve of programming that promotes multiculturalism, so we're absolutely torn apart trying to decide whether or not to detest it. And that, my children, is how TV ruins people's lives.