Thought for Food

My sister & me. (Taken at La Colombe Torrefaction)

Wish we had Elmo on our side when we were trying to wean my baby sister off pacifiers (she’s now a freshman in college and thrilled, I’m sure, that I’m telling this story). As her third birthday approached, my dad made up a slogan: One, two, three, pacifier free! We all repeated it in our most encouraging voices — even Gena would occasionally indulge us and say it with us — but you could tell by the determined set of her chin that the pacifier wasn’t going anywhere.

Sure enough, a year later, Dad drafted a new slogan: When I’m four, I don’t need it anymore. (The more complicated conditional an indication of how silly she was beginning to look with that thing in her mouth.)

The pacifier never made it to five, but that’s only because of a strategic “loss” when we returned home from a trip. My parents cleared the house of any other pacifiers and after a night or two of sobs, she learned to live without.

A few months later, she found a dirty one under a dresser. She carried it around forlornly for an hour or two — at the age of four, already mourning her lost youth — but thankfully, the dust bunnies were just gross enough to break the addiction for good.

(via sesamestreet)

Running my mouth at the Tomato Bee. This has long been one of my sister’s favorite pictures of me.

I’m sure you can imagine why.

Funny story. Years ago, when my sister was one month shy of her third birthday, we vacationed in New Orleans. It was my first time there — and it was love at first oyster po-boy.

One day we had lunch at Mother’s. My parents ordered the red beans and rice for Gena. It was a very big bowl. She was a very little girl. She ate slowly and methodically, and kept chugging away at it long after we had finished our meals.

“Want me to take that away?” the waiter asked.

She gave him the toddler death-stare and yanked the bowl closer.

She kept eating…

and eating….

People were starting to stare.

“That little girl sure loves her red beans!”

Another bite…

“Are you sure you can finish that, Gena?”

Another…

and then…

She threw up all over the table.

The whole restaurant erupted in laughter. 

Nothing wrong with a little excess in New Orleans.

Lord knows, we’ve all been there.

My baby sister is moving to Santa Barbara for college right now. I’m so proud of you, Gena! This is the start of something BIG.

(And this photo proves that even when you were a [Wayfarers-wearing] 9-year-old you were much cooler than me. Juicy short-shorts? Really??)

Dad put up a screen tent for Gena’s graduation party. Weeks passed, and he never took it down.

This annoyed Gena. The tent took up most of the back yard’s prime sun-bathing real estate.

“You’ve got to get him to take that tent down!” Gena implored me.

I took the issue up with Dad.

“But I like sitting in there!” he said.

And so the tent stood.

One night a summer thunderstorm blew through the Twin Cities. The next morning, Gena found the tent had been thrown over the 6-foot hedge and was laying, broken and alone, on the sidewalk.

“Hahahahahhaa fuck this tent,” she said, as she posted the image on Facebook.

And the moral of the story is… 

Fathers: listen to your daughters.

I can’t tell you how happy this made Gena and me last night.

It’s eerie how human-like his poses are. Someone’s been watching us very closely….

(Also, can someone with Photoshop skillz and time make this into a meme already??)

thedailywhat:

Simian Self-Portrait of the Day: A crested black macaque snapped a pic of itself with a camera belonging to award-winning photographer David Slater, which was temporarily left unattended at a national park in North Sulawesi, Indonesia.

“He must have taken hundreds of pictures by the time I got my camera back, but not very many were in focus,” said Slater. “He obviously hadn’t worked that out yet.

I wish I could have stayed longer as he probably would have taken a full family album.”

[dailymail / thanks 4nt1g0ne!]

(via dazzlingdelta)