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Emma arrives at our house at 10:30 with a $5 bill and no lunch or cooking ingredients.
Tap, tap, tap on your computer to perform work-adjacent tasks while listening to the chatter downstairs. They are blinded by independence and sugar expectations.
“Here’s a cookie recipe. It calls for cream cheese and white chocolate chips,” says Emma.
“What? Cream cheese?” he asked incredulously. “And we all know white chocolate chips are garbage.”
White chocolate chips are garbage. Never trust clowns. These are just two of the many life lessons I have passed on to my children.
They are laughing and making progress little by little. In the end, they decided to start by creating sprites, which were easy to achieve. The materials are already available.
I beeped Jeremy a cliché-filled email to which I attached a completely rewritten note. His draft was worse than a white chocolate chip and had more spelling errors than a French immersion third-grade child’s version of her song, so he completely rewrote it. About the Furted Unicorn at the time:
“Hmm, how do you make simple syrup?”
I slowly get up. Chariots of Fire plays quietly in the background. He came to the right person. I’m a bit of a syrup aficionado, known for my classic marg recipes with my neighbor Dan, and would probably drink his shoes too if they were made from tequila.
“Dissolve the sugar and water 1:1,” I shouted back.
“Should I do it on the stove or in the kettle?”
“The kettle seems safer.”
For a while, the kids are hooked. Emma, no, that’s not a good idea, and oh, Emma, why did you do that? Wow, Emma, I hear so many stories about we all have to drink from it.
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Suddenly, the vibrations of soon-to-be grade 8 adolescents clambering up the stairs, precariously carrying multiple sugary drinks, slammed into my vestibular system.
They barged into my office and carelessly dumped three plastic cups filled with liquid in front of my work laptop.
My husband works at the office all day long. Even though I receive pensions and health benefits due to my seniority, my husband’s job, where he doesn’t have to answer to anyone, is a job that is respected by our children.
But Cheryl makes a big public announcement about quitting her job and becoming a full-time writer, tells her boss she’s an incompetent leader, throws Jeremy in front of a moving train, and refuses to clean up. If my desire to force-feed him cake comes true, it will be removed from the office fridge starting January 2023, so I’ll have to respect his entrepreneurial spirit, too.
When the initial shock of my laptop surviving the sugar water tsunami subsided, I asked them to identify exactly what had been placed in front of me. . As her son explained, Emma laughed uncontrollably and clasped her hand in front of her mouth.
“One is the real sprite, one is our sprite, and one is a surprise.”
Is the surprise pee? It’s probably pee.
I carefully lift the first cup to my mouth. Sprite. Raise the next cup. homemade sprite. Pretty decent, somewhat flat, but with a fixed ratio of lime to simple syrup.
This leaves you with a surprise cup. It’s clear and odorless, so I doubt it’s pee, but I’ve seen Emma’s Hydro Flask that kids can use to stay hydrated. Carefully, I pluck. It’s a simple syrup. It tastes awful, but at least it’s not pee. In any case, it is not 100% concentrated.
