Mr Bunches likes to cook, is not the point of this post. (Question Of The Day)

"Who lays eggs?" is technically today's question of the day, but that question itself is not so interesting to me as the answer, only I don't really do "the answer of the day," which, yeah, I mean it's my blog and I make the rules but anyway, this series of posts is the question of the day, and that's that.

So the question arose during a pancake cooking session with Mr Bunches, who loves cooking pancakes, although he has branched out somewhat: the other day he helped me cook pizza (frozen) for dinner, along with Mr F's macaroni and cheese.  In fact, Mr Bunches planned the entire menu, which he did in this conversation:

Me:  What should we have for dinner tonight?

Mr Bunches: Pancakes?

Me: Okay, we'll have pancakes.

Mr Bunches: No, only I have pancakes.

*NOTE: I will come back to that I in a moment.*

Me: What should I have for dinner?

Mr Bunches: Pizza.

*NOTE: Mr Bunches will probably get EXTRA money in the will.  Take note, other kids!*

Me: And what should Mr F have for dinner?

Mr Bunches: Macaroni!

Me: And what should Mommy have for dinner?

Mr Bunches:  Cupcakes.

To be fair, we had that day taken a trip to the grocery store, where Mommy -- Sweetie, to you -- had gotten cupcakes, so that was probably on his mind.  To be fair-er, the trip to the grocery store was a special trip for the sole purpose of getting Sweetie cupcakes from that particular grocery store, so Mr Bunches was spot-on.

Anyway, we cooked pizza and macaroni and cheese and then we did not cook pancakes, at all, Sunday night, because when you are Cooking With Mr Bunches, you cook one thing at a time.  We were going to have all of eat at one time, a full-on sit-down dinner of the kind that never never happens in our house, mostly because neither Mr Bunches nor Mr F want to sit down and eat.  (Mr F, in particular, prefers to grab a handful of macaroni off of his plate and eat it while he swings, leaving a trail of macaronis underneath the path of his swing, scatttered in random patterns that you probably could use to read the future, if you were so inclined and didn't mind the mess.  We don't really mind the mess -- macaroni sweeps up after a few minutes, pretty easily...

... do NOT try to vacuum it up...

... and our carpet long ago passed from "clean and beautiful" to "passable" and on down through "dirty" and then swept on by "are you sure that's carpet" to land on "well, I guess we'll just have to burn the house for the insurance money," so we don't worry about it too much but we are working on getting Mr F to sit and eat because society frowns on flinging cheesy noodles around wildly as you eat.

Or so I'm told. I don't really take part in "society" anymore.  Too many people.

So by the time we cooked all the pizzas, and then cooked the macaroni, and we were going to cook the pancakes, Mr Bunches had filled up on bagels, or rather, the top halves of bagels -- I'd gotten out bagels to make "garlic bagels," which are Sweetie's take on the classic garlic bread -- and Mr Bunches remembered that he likes bagels, and so he ate the top half of one.  I don't know why he only eats the tops.  I'm guessing because the bottoms, really, aren't so great. Did you ever look at the bottom of a bagel? I have, because I'm cool that way.  The bottom of a bagel is all smushy and flat and denser, really, than bread ought to be.  It's all the compressed, self-loathing parts of the bagel, resigned to its fate as the bottom half of the sandwich, or the second-eaten piece of a toasted bagel, but not resigned in a pleasant, "make-the-best-of-it" way.  It's resigned in a "You can treat me like this if you want but all it'll make me do is stare uncomfortably at you while we wait in line at the movie theater."

And I'd say that feeling is unwarranted, but really, the bottom slice of the bagel is inferior.

Anyway, we didn't cook pancakes Sunday, but we did cook them not so long ago, and it was while cooking them that the question of the day came up.  I had gotten out the eggs -- Mr Bunches makes his pancakes from scratch, and he's got the recipe memorized, more or less: he knows the ingredients to put in, but is not so careful about the amounts, which is how I learned two things about pancakes:

1. They are amazingly resilient, as a recipe.  You have to work to screw up pancakes, because most errors will result in simply a thinner, or thicker, pancake, but one that's still edible.  Try it yourself: take a random amount of flour, eggs, milk, baking powder, and stir it together and fry it in a pan.  Odds are you'll have a pancake that's edible.  It may not be the most amazing pancake you've ever eaten, but it's a pancake.  This is the only food I can think of that works that way.

2.  You can still screw them up, as evidenced by the time Mr Bunches made what can only be described as a papier-mache pancake: heavy on the flour, it was solid, like a hockey puck, but a little less appetizing.  Even he wouldn't eat them.

So: we were cooking pancakes, and it came time for the eggs, which Mr Bunches likes me to do for him because if he does them he sometimes gets egg on his hands, which is entirely unacceptable to him.  So I try to make him do it:

Me: Do the bam! (Motioning as if I'm breaking an egg on the side of the bowl)

Him: Can you do it, Dad?

I just realized I forgot to go back to the "I" in that earlier excerpt, but this is getting long, so I'll explain that some other day.

And I tried, as I was doing the Bam! for him, to make this (more) educational, so I said "What lays eggs?" and Mr Bunches said...

...DRAMATIC PAUSE. What do you think he said?

...I mean, I'd have said chickens, because that's what laid the egg I was about to Bam! and also because, that's what lays eggs, right?

But Mr Bunches said:

"Penguins."

Which threw me.  It's correct, after all, as anyone who watched March of the Penguins and saw that scene where the egg gets away from the penguin for just a second and then it never hatches, I feel a little sad now, knows.

But still, penguins?  I was impressed and confused, a little, because in my mind, and probably in all people's minds, animals have more or less one quality, maybe, two.  Think about animals for a second.  You probably only associate 1 or 2 things with each animal, as shown by this handy list:

Lions: roar, manes.
Ducks: quack, water.
Sloths: slow, possibly only 3-toed.
Dragons: fire, treasure.

I could go on. But you get the point.

So in my mind,

penguins

are

cold, water.

Not

eggs

which belong to, as I said,

chickens, which also get farm.

But now, thanks to Mr Bunches, whenever I see eggs I think of penguins, and honestly, my world has become more magical because of it.  More confusing and full of pancakes, too.

Mr Bunches does not wear glasses.
This was a pair I got at the Dollar Store because my eyes sometimes
hurt when I read, and I thought reading glasses might help.
Unsurprisingly, a $1 pair of glasses did not help.
Surprisingly, that's because I'm farsighted.
So I'm typing this from 14 feet away from the computer.

If you think the way I do, you will inevitably end up super-rich. You'll see why. (Question Of The Day)

How happy are clams, really?






Not very, judging by that. And, yes, I know that Marcel is not a clam, unless he is, in which case, I'm right and you're wrong, but it doesn't matter anyway because seashells can't really talk, and I would know the difference also if I'd followed through on the very first career I ever planned to have -- oceanographer -- but I didn't which is why right now I'm sitting and wearing jeans and a t-shirt and typing on my blog while I wait to drive up to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to take a deposition and then drive back home, meaning that 90% of my work day will consist of "driving and listening to podcasts," which isn't a bad life because while oceanographers get to be outside in the sun and surf, my worst occupational hazard is carpal tunnel syndrome while oceanographers' is sharks.

The other day, I tucked Mr F into his bin of blankets in his closet (long story)(actually not-- it's pretty self-explanatory) and said "There. Happy as a clam." That made me think two things:

1. Why didn't I go with snug as a bug in a rug? What's wrong with me? and
2. Why do we assume that clams are happy, or edible?

According to the site "The Phrase Finder," which ought to know, the expression "happy as a clam" comes from one of two sources: Either it's because clams look like they are smiling




I suppose, a little, but that could also be a clam being aghast



Or it could be a clam pirating the superfamous emoticon I invented, "Righteous Indignation":





You can see the similarities there, right? The point of that being, I'm going to have to sue clams for copyright infringement. *cracks knuckles, mutters 'let's do this thing'* .

Those people at that phrase site disregard the Smiling Clam idea and instead say that the expression actually comes from the phrase Happy as a clam at high tide, which is when clams are free from predators, they say, and they trace that expression back to 1844, which makes me wonder, then, why a clam? Why opt to talk about clams being happy because they're free from predators? Why wouldn't the expression be happy as fox when the hounds are asleep, which would be perfectly serviceable? Was it because we already assigned foxes slyness in the animal emotions world and all animals only get one emotion?

(E.g.: Dogs: friendly. Chickens: fearful. Pigs: lazy. Cows: inanimate. Wabbits: wascally.)

And, people who investigate phrases, maybe both versions are true: maybe people thought clams looked happy, and asked themselves why clams were so happy, and then decided that it was because of high tide, and the tide coming in made them happy. Who knows? They were very simplistic people back then, not all sophisticated like we are now.



Pioneers, as I've noted, were reputed to have hard lives, what with typhoid and small pox and Indian attacks and railroads, and... um... sod houses. Whatever. They were reputed to have hard lives but in reality they sat around reading magazines about kids being taught stuff by guys in an alley behind a hotel, and now we find out that they had nothing better to do than sit around and discuss the emotional lives of clams, which, it turns out, actually exist: Clams have emotional lives.

Provided, of course, that (a) you mean by "emotional lives" "having nerves" and (b) you are willing to take the word of a bunch of people on a chat room debating whether or not fish and clams have feelings. Everytime I feel as though maybe I'm not living such a productive life, what with the driving and podcasting and all, I remind myself that I didn't spend a bunch of time creating a web forum to debate whether clams have feelings.

(Of course, I did once ask a web forum to tell me what might go wrong with my eating a 100-day-old Twinkie, but the web forum did not respond; also not responding? Doctor and The Medics, who never answered my email asking that same question.)

The web forum answer about The Secret Lives Of Clams that I liked best was this demonstration of scientific rigor:

Clams do respond to stimuli, but that doesn't nessecarily mean that they can "feel" anything. You can build simple robots with good wiring that makes them respond to stimuli in a similar way to clams (having said that, i don't know if anyone's done a wiring diagram of a clam before, they might be more complex than i think - im no expert). I would expect that you'd need something a lot more complex than that, more like a brain, in order to have anything close to sentience (however, clams taste disgusting and are hardly an important part of a diet, so i like to use the excuse of being a vegetarian to just steer away from the things regardless!).

That is the single-most-helpful thing a scientist has done for me all day: declared that clams are disgusting. Now I have science backing me up, so everyone who believes that velociraptors actually existed also has to believe that clams are disgusting. Believe one, believe 'em all. That's my motto.

As always, though, with science, we have to go back to music to answer all the hard questions. So here's "Clams Have Feelings, Too" by NOFX:





A little thrashy for me. I like this better:




That's "Do The Clam" by Elvis Presley. That seems to me to not give a conclusive answer to the question, so I went for a tiebreaker by trying to find the classic song "Surf Clam" by The Mel-Tones. Only I couldn't find it, so I settled for "Kung Fu Saturdays" by that group:




From which I conclude that clams can do kung fu, and that we all probably should be afraid of them because, I also learned, clams can move:





And so it's probably not very much longer until we are all besieged by Happy Ninja Clams, which is the name of the cartoon series I am now going to pitch to the Disney Network and I will be a bajillionaire, which is a real number of dollars to have, and I'm going to have them. See you suckers later!

UPDATE: I realized why that sounds like a bajillion dollar idea: It's because there are already Ninja Turtles. But the pre-existing ninjas are not happy, and they are not bivalves. So, in a way, it's like my idea doesn't infringe on that idea at all. And if it makes you happy, I will change it to Happy Kung-Fu Clams, which equally rips off the ninja turtles and Hong Kong Fooey, and if I know anything about the law, the rule is that if you rip off everybody equally, you've ripped off nobody. *crosses fingers, hopes nobody sues him for anything written in this post.*

(You can buy that Righteous Indignation t-shirt here.)

Plus, what's the bonus in being able to make someone think they're a chicken? (Question of the Day)

How could you ever trust a hypnotist?

I don't believe in hypnotism; I remember when a hypnotist came to our school in about the 8th grade, or maybe the 9th grade. I don't know, school is just a blur of never knowing what was really going on and doing reports at the last second.

Anyway, this hypnotist asked people to knot their hands together and then close their eyes and then listen to him and concentrate and then try to get their hands apart, and if they couldn't get their hands apart, they were chosen to go down and sit on a row of metal chairs and be further hypnotized, like having to act like a chicken and things like that.

I was able to get my hands apart, and so was not chosen by the hypnotist to be further hypnotized, and so I had to sit and watch as 8 of my classmates got chosen to go down there and be hypnotized into thinking they were in a desert or something, and all I could think was... fake.

Also, now, recalling this story, I'm wondering just what kind of education did I get, anyway? This may be beside the point, I suppose, or maybe it is exactly the point, but I can recall this hypnotism assembly, and I can recall another assembly in grade school where we went to watch a girl sing Heartbreaker by Pat Benatar. It wasn't Pat Benatar we saw; it was just some girl who was about 20 who sang the song Heartbreaker for us, and as I think back on that and other assemblies, I'm thinking maybe the fact that I spent my entire childhood being not quite sure what's going on here was less a fault in me and more a fault in the local school district.

So: this hypnotist got 8 kids down on 8 metal chairs and made them do funny things that everyone laughed at while they kept their eyes closed and jumped around like chickens or something, and I kept thinking fake fake fake, which is a natural reaction I have; I assume everything is fake up to and including every single story people tell on talk radio.

That's true: If you call a radio station and tell a story, and I am listening, I am in my mind (and sometimes out loud) saying fake fake fake to the story you are telling, so I'm on to you. I don't believe you for a second that your dad once met Bill Clinton in Las Vegas and stole his tie and that's why you were calling in about the tax breaks story. Fake fake fake.

Later on, after the assembly, I asked one of the kids who'd been hypnotized whether it was real, whether he could remember any of it, and he said "No," and I assumed he was lying, too, because I hate people and also was a little jealous.

But then, one day, recently when this memory came bubbling up as I drove home from work, and I began to be mad all over again that I was played for a sap at a school assembly, I reversed it and then thought to myself:

Okay, if hypnotism IS real, then you can't trust them because while you're going and pretending to be a chicken or losing weight or becoming a more positive person, how do you know they're not secretly making you into their slave, so that one day, that hypnotist is going to snap his finger and millions of people across America will suddenly stop playing Angry Birds and will march to New York and begin attacking everything in sight... while also acting like chickens?

I know what you're thinking: sell that idea to AMC, quick! Already on it.

In closing: your story is fake.

Question of the Day, 76

Beard, or liposuction?

This question arose yesterday, when I was playing with Mr F and Mr Bunches. Mr F and I were playing tickle, which is about what it sounds like: I tickle him.

Part of what Mr F likes is when I've let my stubble grow for a few days; he likes to rub his face against it, and doing that always makes him laugh. I thought that might make for a cute picture, and got my camera to take some pictures of Mr F and me, cheek-to-cheek and laughing.

Ten minutes later, I gave up in disgust, as every single picture I tried to take turned out horribly; in each picture, Mr F appeared to be laughing hysterically as he smushed up against a monster made out of melting cottage cheese.

Honestly, I have no idea what I look like in real life. In my mind, I'm very handsome and dashing and don't look at all like I'm made out of melting cottage cheese.

Me, in my imagination.

But in real life, I bear zero percent resemblance to the person I picture in my mind, and I look instead exactly like this:

Me, in real life.

Which doesn't at all look like how I think I look like, and also bears zero percent resemblance to the person I was when I married Sweetie, as evidenced by the fact that one of my clerks the other day picked up a picture on my desk and said "Who's this a picture of?"

It was me. It was a picture of me. On my wedding day. A day when I had hair, and did not have bags under the bags under my eyes, and did not have the generally-puffy looking exterior my face now sports no matter how much I don't eat Doritos, which I don't eat (anymore.) I was good-looking on that day. It was no wonder Sweetie married me even though I didn't have any money and wasn't in any way expecting to earn much money in the near future, either, and also had a comic book collection. When you look as good as I did on my wedding day, those things are irrelevant.

But now I don't look like that, and have to hope that my personality and/or income is enough to keep Sweetie from checking out the prospects out there, because Sweetie is still hot and has not aged at all since we got married, unlike me. I've aged a lot, and also appear to have somehow become made of cottage cheese, which now appears to be melting.

The primary source of my concern is that neck, which I see in the picture above looks a lot like a turkey's wattle and which now concerns me even more than it did last night in the pictures with Mr F. Last night, I assumed the pictures were a product of bad lighting, or Mr F smushing his face, or maybe a glitch in the camera, my neck appearing to be slowly drooping down my chest as some sort of programming error on Google's part when they made my phone.

But here in the clear light of day, that neck is clearly a disaster waiting to happen, so my alarm last night was obviously not overstated in any way, as I am already doing everything that is necessary to avoid having a neck that looks like that and which appears, in pictures, to be swelling up like a frog's:

Me, in every picture I took last night.

I never eat Doritos. I exercise -- well, not that much recently but I have good reasons that I won't go into, and anyway, I've gone jogging and walking twice this week and I'm still pretty fit. In fact, I've lost enough weight since my heart attack last year that I've gotten to the third notch on my belt; last year it was the first notch. And I have to wear a belt, or all my pants fall off of me.

But yet... there's that chin, in every one of the photos I took with Mr F. I can handle the receding hairline. I can handle the drooping eyes with bags. I can handle the puffiness in my face. I don't want to have to handle them; I'd rather look like that inner version of me, but I'm willing to compromise with the universe and accept those.

But that chin, which is increasingly big and increasingly saggy, was bugging me last night (and now today, even worsely bugging me.)

So I announced to Sweetie that I was not going to take it, and that I was hereafter saving up my money for liposuction, which Sweetie told me would not work because it'll just make the fat move from my chin to somewhere else on my body. (Sweetie did not realize, in saying that, that I would immediately take it as confirmation that I have a fat neck.)

I said I didn't care, and that if I ended up with a fat forehead that'd be fine, as long as my chin didn't bulge out in photos.

Sweetie then said I can't get liposuction, and I said it was either that, or I grow a beard. Beard or liposuction? I asked her.

She said neither, but I'll probably do both. Even though the last time I tried to grow a beard it ended badly, with the other workers in my firm taking a vote and unanimously telling me the beard had to go. The beard will cover me until I can sneak off to get liposuction, which I'm sure they offer at the mall or something.

In the meantime, Sweetie did find me some exercises that are like sit-ups for my jaw. I'm a little leery about doing that, because one time I started to do sit-ups as exercise regularly, but the problem with that is if you're doing sit-ups but not doing anything to reduce the amount of fat around your waist, then all you're doing is adding a layer of muscle underneath the layer of fat, which then results in your jeans being tighter, and harder to button, and nobody buys it when you're walking around in tight pants saying "No, no, it's okay, they're only tight because there's a layer of muscle underneath the layer of fat, so I'm actually pretty healthy and all."

I started doing the jaw-ups, or neck lifts, or whatever they're supposed to be called, but if it makes my neck bigger, I'm stopping, and I'll accelerate Operation Secretly Get Liposuction On My Neck And Don't Tell Sweetie.

Until either the neck-ups work, or the secret Chinposuction occurs, you will sadly have to live without any photos of me tickling Mr F with my stubble, because I'm not going to unleash that travesty on the world. You'll just have to imagine it. And to have it so that you and I are picturing exactly the same thing, just imagine Mr F snuggling up to this guy:

My spleen is feeling extra-normal. (Question of the Day, 76)

How come there is more than one kind of pink eye?

-- Sweetie.

And the kind that Mr Bunches has is the kind that means we cannot go swimming today. Mr Bunches woke up with pink eye Friday morning, a development that had a couple of effects on people: Sweetie had to cancel the four teachers and therapists who were coming that day, call off the bus that picks up Mr F for his school, and make an appointment to get Mr Bunches to the doctor.

I, on the other hand, had to immediately feel as though my eyes were itching, too, and consider whether I should go into the office Friday at all. On the Yes, you should go side was the fact that I had two depositions scheduled and also I'm not too crazy about opposing counsel on one of them, which means I might be able to give him pink eye, and also on the Yes, you should go side was the fact that grown men do not call in sick with pink eye, or at least they do not do that three times in their professional career, and I've already called in sick twice in the past 11 years with pink eye.

On the No, you'd better not go into work side was this compelling thought: It's Friday.

I ended up going into work and not having pink eye, only to then find out that our regular plans for Sunday, which are go to the office for a while, then go to the pool at the health club had to be cancelled because technically speaking, Mr Bunches is still contagious.

Which, as I think of it, makes it probably not my best idea to bring him to the office with me.

But we definitely cannot bring him to the pool, because Sweetie told me it would irritate Mr Bunches' eye to go swimming, to which I said:

"It won't hurt him. If you don't believe me, call that nurse line, and ask them," and I should have known better than to ask a nurse, because asking a nurse never gets me any kind of helpful answer.

My mom was a nurse, and my mom, as great as she could be at times, never gave me any helpful answers; her answers were almost always "Drink more milk," that being Mom's cure for everything from shin splints to depression to unemployment. "Drink more milk," she'd say, sometimes before I'd finished asking the question.

And other nurses are no more helpful. I saw a nurse a few weeks back when I was having chest pains that have been tentatively (and, I'm pretty sure, wrongly) diagnosed as "maybe asthma" (that being exactly what the doctor said), and the nurse I saw told me I'd hurt my ribs and to take ibuprofen.

And, of course, there was the nurse practitioner who (mis)diagnosed my actual heart attack as "probably that chili dog you ate last night" before going on to hand me his (oversized, apparently novelty) business card in which he mentioned his love of live-action role-playing.

But by far the least helpful nurse ever was the one we told Oldest Daughter to call the time she was having chest pains and thought she might (at nineteen) be having a heart attack. "Call the nurse," we said, to calm her down, and she did, and this ensued:

"Are you having pain in your left arm?" the nurse asked.

"Maybe, a little," Oldest said.

"Because pain in your left arm is a sign of a heart attack," the nurse helpfully told her.

"I am. My left arm hurts," Oldest said.

Ending up with us at the emergency room proving once and for all that our "medical system" sucks, and also proving that Oldest was having "anxiety," probably because she and the nurse had combined to convince her she was having a heart attack.

Which, if you're keeping track, means the one thing you should certainly never ask a nurse about is a heart attack.

Another thing not to ask a nurse about is whether it's okay to take a kid with pink eye to a public swimming pool, because they'll act all horrified and repeatedly use the word contagious in a very negative sense, which will then result in Sweetie getting off the phone and telling you "He can't go; he's still contagious," even though he's had the pink eye for more than 24 hours.

He's still contagious because as it turns out, God decided the world needed two kinds of pink eye, the kind everyone knows about where your eye gets all pink and you take medicine and stay home for 24 hours, and the more sneaky kind that Mr Bunches has, where you don't get any medicine for it at all...

... and is it just me, or is the medical "community" getting really very stingy with their medicine and X-rays? When I was a kid, you'd get an antibiotic and x-rays for everything you did: sprain your ankle, and get an antibiotic and x-rays. Ear infection? antibiotic, and an x-ray to be on the safe side. Running late for work? X-rays + antibiotics = will fix that.

But now, you've got to meet some impossible standard of sickness to qualify for anything other than a co-pay. No matter what you tell them -- and I've tried everything-- getting them to give you an x-ray or a pill is practically impossible.

And if you're like me, then you firmly believe that unless the doctor (a) cut you open, (b) took an x-ray, or (c) prescribed something, then they didn't do anything and you are probably going to die.

Seriously: doctors should just pretend for people like me. They should look in my ear, tap my back with a stethoscope, and say "Let's take an x-ray to be sure," then have me stand by the copying machine for a few minutes, wait a half-hour, put an x-ray (it could be of anyone, since all rib cages look more or less the same) up on that light box, point to things and say "There's your spleen, it looks extra-normal" and then prescribe a placebo pill that I'd take for five days. I would happily pay for that, because I'd feel like they're doing something.

But instead, they say "It's viral, there's nothing we can do," even when they're talking about, say, my knee, and I limp out of there convinced that I've got Horrendous Knee Cancer and that I'm going to die and nobody cares, and also I've got to go back to work that week.

So for my sake, let's just take some x-rays and give me some Flintstones vitamins to cure the Horrendous Knee Cancer, okay?...

...and the sneaky kind of Pink Eye that Mr Bunches has is viral, and can't be spread around the community by taking him to the community pool, so we had to cancel our plans to go swimming.

Which meant that Sweetie got to ask the question of the day (to which I replied, "I guess God had a little extra time that day," which I thought was clever) and which meant, too, that Sweetie claimed victory in this debate, even though her thesis was "It will hurt Mr Bunches' eyes to swim," and the nurse did not say that (she also, amazingly, did not misdiagnose this as a heart attack), which means that although Sweetie was right that he should not swim, she was wrong about why, which means that like our last debate, I'm pretty sure I won.

And, also, we're probably going to the zoo today, because the nurse said nothing about whether you could give pink eye to a giraffe, and I'm not going to ask her.

The picture is of the time The Boy locked himself in handcuffs. (Question of the Day, 75)

Is it okay to put mayonnaise on toast?

The Boy, in the midst of what will hopefully be just one semester off from college, is staying with Oldest in her apartment, because we don't let people live at home if they're above 18 and not in school.

Sunday, Oldest mentioned to me that The Boy had cooked breakfast -- the only thing he can cook, outside of frozen pizzas, and he always burns the eggs -- and that because they had no butter, he'd put mayo on his toast. We both agreed that was gross-sounding and that we wouldn't do it -- but then she mentioned that The Boy had then finished up by putting an egg and some bacon on toast, making me wonder first, how can you have bacon in the house but not butter? and, second, why does it seem gross to put mayo on toast... but only if you're not going to put it into a sandwich?

Because I put mayo on toast when we make BLTs, and I like that -- but the idea of just a piece of toast with mayo on it sounds disgusting to me. So the act of turning that toast into a part of a sandwich somehow transforms it in my mind.

Then, I mentioned that to Oldest, and said that I still wouldn't just have mayo on toast. "I like pickles, and peanut butter," I said, "But I'm not going to combine them."

To which she said "Oh, pickle and peanut butter sandwiches are great."


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Question of the Day, 75.

Why do we bother sealing up croutons?

Aren't they just, when you get right down to it, stale bread?

Okay, maybe they're not, but can they go bad? Get more solid? Am I wasting my time re-sealing that little bag?



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All The Questions Of All The Days I Had Questions.

Ask good questions... the only advice anyone will ever need. Here are mine:

1. Is it true what they say about a fear of heights?

2. Why back into a parking space?

3. Why would an air conditioner need a remote control?

56. The Xbox question.

57. "How is that ironic?"

58. If you jump up in the air in a spaceship, and just stay free-falling while the spaceship keeps moving in the same direction, eventually would you drift towards the back of the spaceship if you waited long enough?

59: How much do you have to buy at McDonald's to use their playland without being a freeloader?

60: Am I a good person because I take my shopping carts to that little pen in the parking lot?

61: How old were you when you began actively comparing your age to other people's?

62: What if a spider flew up your nose?

63: Do you agree with me that there is a difference between garbage and a garage sale?

64: Is it wrong, if, when I go to get ice cubes out of the refrigerator and one drops on the floor, I just kick that ice cube off into a corner somewhere rather than expend the effort to pick it up and put it in the sink?

65: Was I required to talk to her?

66: Did you tell the Boy we're going to get a McFlurry?

67: Can you tell us apart?

68: How much money would it take...

69. Why is blue raspberry blue?

70. Why do we sell beverages in multiples of six?

71. Is downhill good or bad?

72. Why do we say "off limits?"

73: Can you cheat on a magazine subscription?

74. Why aren't all rivers perfectly straight by now?

75. Why do we bother sealing up croutons?

76. Why do we need two kinds of pink-eye?

77. How happy are clams, really?