Ode to My Daughter Doing Homework

Forsooth, my daughter Eva sits to mine own left:

She toils to write a poem for English class:

A worthy cause for one to learn while I, bereft

The love, attention, care of our one lass,

Do pen a work my own which I may share.

Her mind now rapt with words she seeks to meld,

Is learning art and science fine and fair.

These words have pow'r to break apart or weld.

At times too few, at times too many, then

At times too strong, at times too weak, these words

Are seldom stated well.  Such has it been

Since start of time.  O vomitus and turds!

Behold, my daughter's task is fin'ly done,

And thus, distracted, ends my mirth and fun!

The forbidden fruit

Now that E is older, we're trying to go on dates together even there often isn't enough to time to actually do them. Alongside this running theme, we'll sometimes joke about the next best thing: eating dried dates together. Tonight I saw her opening up the bag of dates, so I protested with a smile, "Hey, you're enjoying a date without me?"

E replied, "And I did it without telling about it first!"

Let's Keep It Together

Earlier today, I was fixing one of the repeatedly broken spindles of the banister at the bottom of our stairs while Evangelina was practicing piano.  Apparently my hammering was distracting her.  When she opened her mouth in protest, I thought she was going to ask me to find another time to do the repair.  Instead, she suggested, "Dad, if you have to use the hammer, would you at least do it with the tempo of the music?" 

Why so rude-y with the sassy attitude-y?

Evangelina's a teenager now -- a female teenager to boot -- so needless to say, I often don't "get" her.

Recently after a long day before dinnertime, I couldn't have one word with her without some sarcastic negative remark from her mouth. Thankfully, dinner was a much more pleasant experience together, so later in private I asked her what the heck had happened with her drastic changes in countenance. 

Hinting that she had been painfully ravenous earlier, she asserted, "Mina the foodie is no longer moody!"

Mentholatum Chicken?

Lately, starting with a visit to Z&Y Zagat and Michelin rated Sichuan restaurant in San Francisco, our family has been on somewhat of a spicy Chinese food kick. This has required some adjustment in our originally anti-spice daughter. 

The other day on the way home from dinner which was prematurely ended by her running out of her bottled drink, E declared, "I feel like I have /ca-ca/ (Tiger Balm or any of its menthol/Eucalyptus oil knockoffs) all over my face."

No Sh—!

With a nerdy dad it's no surprise my kids sometimes like to joke around with word play. One day, one of their off-hand comments turned out to be much funnier than expected.

Evangelina and I were enjoying ice cream shakes from a nearby joint when we realized that our server had done a very good job blending the soft serve vanilla ice cream together with the real strawberries. Sometimes when I've frequented that place, the server might be in a rush, inexperienced, or (hopefully not!) lazy, and I end up with some blended shake with a big glop of ice cream in the middle. It's generally not a big deal since (no surprise!) I love ice cream and the price is reasonable, so I just take more time shlucking down the sweet concoction.

The day out with Evangelina, however, our cups were filled with heavenly yum of just the right blending so that the flavors were evenly mixed and drinkable while retaining its frozen chill! I told Evangelina about my past experience with gloppy half-shakes, to which she responded, "We should just call those 'Sh-'!"

What followed made the initially innocent thought hilarious in a made-up conversation with the restaurant staff:
"What is this sh-?"
"What do you mean giving me this sh-?"
"Do you expect me to eat this sh-?"
"Are you guys in the habit of giving out sh-?"

Unified in spirit

We had a stressful evening, partly my own fault. But I was glad to see Jadon and Evangelina ending their day in prayer.