Dear Kid,

What a difference a year makes.

Last year (as you may recall) I went to Las Vegas for a conference and got stuck due to charmingly lovely weather. Read about it here and here and here and here if you’ve forgotten all the hysterical details.

This year I went to the same conference (version 2016) in Orlando and travel was uneventful. Which (imho) is exactly how it should be. Thank you Mickey for the excellent weather across the nation.

The flowers that bloom in the spring Tra La!

Meanwhile, crazy weather here in southwest Ohio. One minute it’s warmish, the next minute it’s coldish. One minute people are singing “the cold never bothered me anyway,” and the next they’re searching for shorts and a T-shirt. One minute the frozen vortex of winter is freezing peoples’ vocal chords (causing weird versions of “Let It Go” to leak out of scarf-wrapped heads), and the next minute tulips are waking up.

The hotel we stayed in in Florida was very nice except for their soft drink policy. It is a Pepsi hotel.

You know I believe that Diet Coke is one of the most important food groups on the planet (right up there with the Chocolate food group and the Coffee food group). This hotel had not gotten the memo. They served diet Pepsi. (Fortunately, the bartender was kind enough to squeeze about a hundred limes into mine so I could drink it.) They were savvy enough to offer coffee and Diet Dr. Pepper so the world did not have to come to a crashing halt.

On the other hand, if this is the worst challenge I face this month, I’ve got a pretty good life.

Stay warm. Or cool. Or whatever the weather by you dictates I should be saying at this exact moment.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

There are many things I’m good at. There are even more things I’m not terrible at.

Opening bottles of sparkling water doesn’t fall into either of those categories.

I take incompetence to an entirely new level when it comes to opening soda water. (Not Diet Coke. For some reason I am an exceptionally gifted Diet Coke opener.) My inability to politely open a bottle of soda water is so thorough I may have to consider it one of my Super Powers.

Here’s how it goes.

Find bottle of flavored fizzy water. Place on counter for a long time. Gently turn cap. Watch in horror as it explodes all over the kitchen/workplace/breakroom. Fetch towels. Lots and lots of towels.

Other people seem to have figured out the secret code. It involves (I believe) simultaneously twisting the top in multiple directions, probably through multiple universes. It is possible that it involves secret pacts with the bottlers, being really tall, and a super-secret handshake with aliens although I haven’t been able to verify this.

After thorough analysis, I have determined there are three ways to handle this problem. One is to learn the super-secret handshake and get good at opening the bottles. The second is relying on friends to open the dang things for me. The third is to invest in a paper towel factory.

Guess which one I’m going with?

Love, Mom

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Dear Kid,

I love my phone. Even with the huge spider-web of cracks, it’s purple and it lets me text and make calls.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you about.

Last night I went to a Meetup (yep, I’m cool and I went to a meetup) at Ahalogy (yep, I’m hip and I was at Ahalogy) where I met Susan (WHAT a generous soul—you can find her at www.workingmomsagainstguilt.com) and Amy (who was the cheerleader for some new ideas for me which will probably keep me awake for the next three nights—you can find her at www.ahealthylifeforme.com/) and a bunch of other people (you’re going to have to pile on the mom-love to get mentioned) and where I drank too much caffeine (if I didn’t care so much about punctuation this entire blog would be one sentence because that’s how it is in my head).

I did not eat an entire pizza while I was there (I had one slice) and I did not eat a cookie while I was there (“a cookie” means an entire cookie and these things were big enough to feed a small nation so I had a part of a cookie). I did get to show someone photos of the giant quarter. And I got to learn a lot about social media, blogging, and how to do things that will embarrass you greatly. But again, that’s not today’s topic.

The point (and yes, my dearest, there is a point) is that Ahalogy’s offices are located in a part of town I don’t frequent. Actually, it would be more accurate to say it’s a part of town I don’t ever.

Since I had no idea where I was going, I looked up directions before heading out. I am on top of things.

Only I forgot to write down directions to get home.

And for reasons that escape me entirely, I haven’t figured out how to get my phone to give me directions.

You—I know—have no problem with this. You say, “Phone, I need directions to XYZ” and it gives you clear and concise directions. Dad says, “Phone, I need directions to ABC” and poof! there are directions to ABC.

I say, “Phone, pretty please, might you take a small bit of your data and show me the way home?” and my phone laughs. Generally it guffaws. Last night it giggled so hard it fell off the seat, landing in my purse where it glowed contentedly the entire way home.

Fortunately, I have an excellent sense of direction so the 23 minute trip only took an hour and a half.

Did I mention my phone is purple?

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Had a great day in Las Vegas yesterday. We took the monorail to the south end of the strip, where we first went to M&M World.

We saw a wonderful 3D movie about Red losing his M. I loved it!

And never forget Vegas is about gambling (even for M&Ms).

Then we went to the Coca Cola store where we saw T-Shirts made out of recycled bottles and I had a Diet Coke (I know you’re stunned).

After that we walked over to the Hershey Store (because M&Ms weren’t enough chocolate –obviously),

after which we had lunch in the Rainforest Café.

I’m leaving out all the other stores we went into—you’re welcome.

After lunch we came back to Bally’s where we arranged tickets for Vinnie Favorito’s show. In case you aren’t up to date on Vegas comedy, Vinnie does a stand up routine where he tells a few jokes (Two blondes walked into a building. You’d have thought one of them would have seen it.) and then makes fun of pretty much everyone in the audience and everyone in the world. He also says F*** a lot. He was absolutely hilarious and we had a wonderful time.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

But wait, there’s more.

If you thought I had posted a sufficiently caffeinated blog the other day, you’d be correct. If you thought (as I did for a short time) that that would be the end of the caffeinated discussion, you’d be wrong.

Not only does caffeine come in the traditional liquid form (coffee, tea, diet coke) and the easily abused and sometimes lethal powdered form (stay away), turns out there are non-traditional liquids and—wait for it—aerosols. Clearly, I have been living under a rock.

Thank you to Cornell student Kyle and Boston University alum Greg for bringing all this to my attention.

Turns out, there are concentrated liquid caffeines out there. Liquid caffeine mixes nicely with no powdery aftertaste but there is enough caffeine in a gallon of the stuff to show 7 people the wrong side of the dirt. One of the joys (and by “joys” I mean not so much) of liquid caffeine is you can mix it with your favorite alcoholic beverage so that you can be awake while you get drunk and do stupid things.

The only things worse than a drunk idiot is a drunk idiot who refuses to pass out.

Did I mention that too much caffeine can KILL YOU!!!??? And that these concentrated forms of caffeine are the easiest to abuse? And (as we know from professional football) abuse is bad. Ergo, stay away from the concentrated stuff.

Have you heard of Death Wish Coffee? It has 200% more caffeine than standard coffee. Which won’t kill you (probably) but might make you so jittery and unable to sleep that you wish it would.

And the aforementioned aerosol caffeine delivery system. Yep, it exists. The regular dose won’t harm you (presumably) as it has about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of coffee. According to everything I read on line aero-caffeine (once known as aeroshot, but now under slightly different names) works fast, is extremely convenient, and tastes horrible. Authorities worry that because it’s so easy to ingest kids will do multiple shots in quick succession which could be dangerous.

All in all, I think I’ll get a cup of coffee and head back to bed.

Love, Mom