Dear Kid,

The 11 year-old Puppy weighs 20 pounds, most of it fluff, love, and napping.

A Canada goose weighs approximately 7 to 12 pounds, mostly poop and aggressiveness and all of it obnoxious.

The Puppy has been adopted for life.

Canada geese mate for life.

The Puppy is the baby.

Baby Canada geese are called goslings and are adorable. They learn to swim when they are less than a day old and they learn to fly when they are between 2-3 months old. The big problem with goslings is they grow up to be geese.

When the Puppy feels threatened, he bares his teeth and growls and then tucks his head when he is reminded that this is unflattering behavior.

When a C. goose is threatened, it will stretch out its neck, honk, and strut out into the middle of the road. The goose regains its sense of self by exercising its power to stop traffic for miles.

The Puppy eats his food and treats and whatever else he can get his little muzzle on.

Canada geese eat mostly green stuff (grasses, plants, moldy pizza left over from last month’s frat party) and occasionally insects or some fish (generally the anchovies on the pizza).

The Puppy migrates from his pillow to the dining room floor and back again.

Canada geese migrate so that they can fly in their famous V formations. Also because it’s hard to find aquatic plants for lunch when the aqua in question is completely frozen.

Puppy poop goes in the garbage can.

Geese’s pieces do not. Which is often a problem.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Hee-Hee-Hee.

Giggle.

It’s International Moment of Laughter Day.

Snicker.

Which means you should take a moment to laugh, smile, and perhaps even chortle out loud.

My dog used to chase people on a bike a lot. It got so bad, finally I had to take his bike away.

Listen to jokes, tell jokes, just don’t be the subject of jokes.

Snigger.

Optimist: The glass is half full.

Pessimist: The glass is half empty.

Mother: Why didn’t you use a coaster!

Guffaw.

I didn’t say they had to be good jokes.

OK, fine. Don’t like the joke idea? Watch a puppy chase his tail. Don’t have a puppy? Why do you think YouTube was invented?

Find something to laugh about today. It’s a holiday. Celebrate.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Two kids, one blog.

I win. (Grin.)

Seems both you and Pi completely believed yesterday’s April Fool’s letter (although you seem to have gotten over it with a wry smile while Pi is not quite so forgiving). It’s been a while since I got you both.

This may be the only appropriate use of the hashtag #SorryNotSorry.

Meanwhile, today is (officially) National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. I don’t know why. Some of these holidays perplex me more than others. I thought pretty much every day was PB&J Day (at least for some people). Others of us focus on Eating Peanut Butter Straight Out Of The Jar Day (you know who you are).

It is also (unofficially) Planting Pansies Day. I love pansies. I don’t know why, exactly, but I do. I love their beautiful lush, velvety-ness.

And their happiness. Like sunflowers (today is probably also going to be Sunflower Seed Planting Day). Both sunflowers and pansies (and tulips and daffodils and many other flowers) are cheerful. They smile happily. They are a cheerful guard and colorful welcoming committee. They are hearty and undemanding in the upkeep department (which makes them well suited to my particular brand of gardening—insert into dirt and ignore).

Symbolically (according to MFtI), pansies represent loving thoughts and free thinking. Maybe pansies are flowers that encourage us to stop and think for a moment. To reflect on life. Maybe I like them because they are so often purple.

The pansy flower was the symbol adopted by the Free Thinkers Society, a group of people who decided to adopt a mode of thought that was free from societal constraints, expectations, emotions, or religious dogma. They adopted the pansy as its symbol because the word pansy is from the verb pensee in French meaning “to think” which itself is from the Latin pensare “to consider”.

The plan is that the sun will come out and warm up the ground and then the Puppy and I will plant flowers this afternoon after which we will eat peanut butter.

I think that sounds like a pretty perfect way to spend part of a Sunday.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

As the song says, there are some things you just don’t do. You don’t pull on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask of the Lone Ranger.

And you don’t pour water on the heating element of a sauna when other people are expecting a dry sauna experience.

It turns out that some people (me) thought you should save water for a steam room and never ever pour water on the “coals” of a sauna. It further turns out that the experts on the internet are quite comfortable with the idea of a wet sauna experience in which one adds water and keeps the temperature at a lower level.

Hey! Guess what happened at the gym the other day? Jenelle and I went into the sauna expecting dry heat and this chick kept pouring water on the rocks. We were not amused.

If we’d wanted steam we’d have gotten nice hot beverages. We wanted dry heat.

Not having consulted My Friend the Internet, I was convinced that the chick was a heathen and going to break the sauna and electrocute us all. Turns out I was wwwwrong, but facts are not the point here. The point is that it’s a public place and you follow public etiquette in a public place.

Why didn’t we say anything?

We tried the subtle method of delicate commenting, but she had headphones on and her music was cranked loud enough for the entire city so I’m pretty sure she didn’t hear us.

More importantly, she looked like she could kick our butts without breaking a sweat.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Admit it. You’ve been waiting for it. You knew that sooner or later I’d get around to weird and wonderful facts about tea.

Ta-da!

The ubiquitous tea bag was invented by Thomas Sullivan. He put tea in little silk bags to give samples to customers. He called it marketing. Customers called it convenient and thought they were supposed to put the whole thing in their tea pot. We call it innovation. Not everyone thinks tea bags are a good thing, but most of the western world appreciates not having loose tea floating around in their drink.

The art of reading tea leaves is called tasseography. Remind me to check the tea leaves to see if I should write about reading them.

If the Queen visits, you need to know that to serve tea formally one requires a formal tea service. That means teapot (duh), sugar bowl, milk pitcher, coffee pot (for the heathens), slop bowl, teacups and saucers, and the tray (because how else would you carry everything out?). The slop bowl is not for the pigs, nor is it for the used tea leaves (one leaves the leaves in the tea pot, m’dear). The slop bowl is to hold the hot water you used to warm the tea pot prior to pouring in the hot water for tea. Don’t worry. The Queen doesn’t usually drop in unannounced, so you have time to figure it all out.

Once upon a time, there was breakfast and there was dinner but there was no lunch. In the 1800s, Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, got hungry in the afternoon. So she invited guests for tea and sweets (and conversation). This is where afternoon tea began.

In ancient China, tea was a form of currency. Tea leaves were pressed into bricks and scored on one side so it could be broken to make change.

It takes about 2,000 little tiny tea leaves to make a pound of tea. A pound of tea makes about 200 cups of brewed tea.

The best tea is grown at high elevation and is hand picked.

Tea plants can grow into tall trees (up to 52 feet tall according to one source I read). It is difficult to reach 52 feet high to harvest the leaves, so most plants are pruned to waist height.

Tea plants require 50 inches of rain annually.

All of which means we will continue to purchase tea and not attempt to grow any in the backyard.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

We’re back to our discussion about tea (you thought I forgot, didn’t you? No such luck.).

Tea (all of the actual tea varieties we discussed the other day—pop quiz: do you remember them? White tea, green tea, Oolong, Black tea, and pu-erh) comes from the Camellia sinensis plant. If the beverage you’re drinking comes from the leaf or flower of any other plant, it may look like tea, smell like tea, taste like tea, and be marketed as tea, but it is not tea.

You’re joking. The box says tea.

It does. It’s wrong. What you’ve got in your cup is a tisane or infusion or some other brewed loveliness of herbs. It is not tea if it doesn’t come from Camellia sinesis. Most of the time, these non-tea beverages are called herbal tea which doesn’t seem to make sense to me, but who am I to argue?

Herbal teas are made from the roots, leaves, flowers, bark, seeds, and/or fruits of various plants, which may be more than you wanted to know.

More importantly, just because the beverage is Not Really Tea doesn’t mean that it isn’t delicious and wonderfully good for you.

There are umpteen bazillion different kinds of herbal tea and they all offer different tastes and benefits. For the most part, the stuff you buy in a box in the grocery store isn’t going to provide too many benefits (it’s been sitting around for a while and generally is only average quality to begin with) but if it makes you happy (and soothes your throat) enjoy!

There are tea snobs in the world. Fortunately, I’m not one of them.

Love, Mom