Dear Kid,

It is a weekend full of holidays. Tomorrow is Labor Day. And today is Wiggle Your Toes Day.

I did not make that up. Somebody did, but amazingly it wasn’t me.

Wiggle Your Toes Day seems to me to be one of the greatest holidays ever invented. It involves toes and wiggling and bare feet and not having to send cards and pretty much the world doesn’t get any better than that.

It will also make my physical therapists happy to know that I am wiggling my toes. I’m sure they’d be even happier if they thought I was wiggling the way they showed me, but anything that gets my feet muscles moving falls into the “good” category as far as they are concerned.

Toe wiggling is fun. It’s even more fun if you can wiggle them in mud, sea, sand, or dirt. But since my last Venture Into the Wild ended on such an itchy note, I’m going to settle for wiggling in mid-air. Inside air. Non-poisoned inside air.

What’s your favorite place for toe wiggling?

There is something entirely carefree about toe wiggling. There is no end-purpose to toe wiggling. There are no toe wiggling competitions (at least none that I’m aware of). It’s just one of those things that’s fun just for being fun.

Hope you’re having a great weekend and that you find some carefree time to wiggle your toes.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Today is National Tooth Fairy Day. Didn’t know that? Now you do.

I don’t have any idea why it’s National Tooth Fairy Day. It seems fairly arbitrary to me.

But here’s the question I’m really thinking about. What happens when the Tooth Fairy loses a tooth? Can you take your own tooth back to tooth fairy central?

We know that the same tooth fairy picks up human and animal teeth. We know this because the tooth fairy was once late getting your tooth because of difficulties with a baby hippo tooth.

We also know that the tooth fairy picks up any and all teeth including wisdom teeth.

What we don’t know is why I’m talking about the tooth fairy.

What do you think about the tooth fairy?

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

It’s going to get blamed on me. It’s not exactly my fault, but people often overlook the kitchen table as a Viable Culprit. I am definitely going to get blamed.

Today is Uncle Sean’s birthday.

I bought a card about two weeks ago. It’s a great card in general. It is a particularly great card for Uncle Sean.

I made sure to have Pi sign it last weekend before she left for one of her various activities. I left it for you and Dad to sign. I’m pretty sure it was at that point that the kitchen table stepped in.

We have a nice kitchen table. It’s generally pretty understanding about having various condiments and beverages spilled on it. It’s accommodating when someone dumps a knapsack on it. It doesn’t generally shove a large pile of papers onto the floor when someone leaves them too near the edge. Every now and then it will reach out and bite someone on the ankle, but for the most part it is very well behaved.

Up until now.

Maybe the scale was a bad influence; I’m not sure.

The table took the card and slid it into a time warp. Not a big time warp mind you, just a handy, card-sized pocket of a time warp. Then it sat quietly and watched.

The thing about time warps is that you don’t notice them. When you look at them, your eyes slide right around to the other side without noticing that you’re overlooking the important part. Like magicians, only moreso.

For the last week, I’ve overlooked the card—not on purpose, but because of the time warp and the kitchen table. It’s not until I’m about to fall asleep or at work (it can be hard to tell the two apart) that I think “Uncle Sean’s birthday is coming up. I MUST get that card in the mail tomorrwwwww…zzzzz….”

Google put an end to the problem when it popped up a calendar reminder this morning.

It is well-known that Google (with or without the Alphabet) is stronger than most (but not all) of the kitchen tables in the world.

As I marched downstairs this morning, I therefore muttered in my sternest voice, “Now would be an excellent time to put that card right back where you found it.”

Kitchen tables have excellent hearing. There’s no need to yell if you know what you’re doing.

Lo and behold, there was the card happily waiting to be sealed in an envelope and sent eastward.

The kitchen table didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed.

Which left only one problem.

The USPS can’t pick up here and deliver there on the same day.

Which means Uncle Sean’s birthday card will be late.

Happy birthday Uncle Sean! From all of us (except the kitchen table who is currently in a time out).

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Whose ridiculous idea was this?

Today is Lazy Day. Not National Lazy Day because clearly the inventors of this holiday were far too lazy to figure out the national implications.

They were (obviously) also too lazy to look at a calendar, because today is (yes) MONDAY.

And Monday is the exact opposite of Lazy.

Monday is Back-to-Work day.

Monday is the-week-is-sitting-in-front-of-you day.

Monday is you-just-finished-a-weekend-what’s-your-problem day.

Monday is not Lazy Day.

Not even for children who don’t have to go back to college for a week or two.

If you didn’t get enough laziness over the weekend, I suggest saving today until the weekend and catching up on your lazy then.

Love, Mom

Ready to tell someone about DearKidLoveMom? Share the word!

Dear Kid,

Today is – wait for it – Take Your Pants for a Walk Day.

Yep, there is a Day for taking your Pants for a Walk, and it’s July 27^th.

This is (of course) ridiculous.

Because it is about a thousand degrees outside today. So people who are going for walks are (mostly) wearing shorts.

Also, this could be seen as discrimination against skirts.

But the point is, how does one actually take pants for a walk? When we take the Puppy for a walk there is a leash involved. Do you have to put a leash (or at least a belt) on your pants? Or can you assume they’ll just go with you?

Do you have to be wearing the pants? Are you supposed to take ALL of your pants at once? Or do you take them sequentially? Or is taking one pair of pants symbolically sufficient?

There are a lot of unanswered questions here.

The e-card business is all kinds of excited about celebrating Take Your Pants for a Walk Day. But I’m not sure who you’re supposed to send the cards to exactly. Maybe I have stupid pants, because none of them know how to read. And they’d have to borrow my computer to read an e-card, so that seems a little silly.

Bottom line: Take yourself for a walk, because why not? If you want to take your pants with you, have a good time. If you want to leave your pants at home, that’s fine as long as you find another way to cover all the important bits.

Happy Take Your Pants for a Walk Day.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Just in case you weren’t keeping up with the Calendar of Events, I should remind you that today is Embrace Your Geekness Day.

For the record, spell check is not a fan of “Geekness.”

In this era when toddlers walk around with outrageous amounts of computing power in their hands, the idea of geekiness continues to morph.

Just a few years ago, it was geeky to text. A few years before that, only the geekiest had their own laptop.

There was a time (brace yourself) when only geeks had cell phones.

Now it’s not even geeky to have an Apple watch. (Expensive, yes; geeky, no.)

Today is also Fool’s Paradise Day. Fool’s Paradise is a phrase that has been around for a long time, but has recently been made more famous by the adorable couple in the Swiffer commercial. I hope Morty and Lee (she’s 90) are celebrating today by dancing together on their clean floor.

Tomorrow is National Nude Day and Pandemonium Day. Yep, seems to me they go together. Enough said.

Love, Mom