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"Did he catch it?"

"No, he didn't." My neighbour scratched his chin. "What are you gonna do?"

We looked from my proud dog to the chicken-legged hut he'd somehow corralled into the yard.

Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better

To paint a picture, or write a letter,

Bake a cake, or plant a seed;

Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there's not much time,

With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb;

Music to hear, and books to read;

Friends to cherish, and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world's out there

With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair;

A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,

This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,

Old age will come and it's not kind.

And when you go (and go you must)

I was really glad to see the response, because advice is like a shoe. If it doesn't fit, don't wear it. When people ask me for writing advice, I usually start there— that only they can know what advice is good *for them.* For example, as someone committed to stopping to smell the flowers, and therefore constantly behind on everything, I should probably pay more attention to Brittany Spears.

But I find the anti-dusting advice to be insidious in a particular way. It implies that dusting isn't important and doesn't actually need to be done, and by extension, all that work, the laundry, the dishes, the vacuuming, that prevent women from writing, that work isn't worth doing either.

It puts the blame on women for wasting their time on dusting, when they could be doing something that was actually important. Like writing.

Stopping to smell the flowers is great, but you know what else is great? Having food on the table for your kids when it's dinner time. Do I think it's okay to skip meals when I'm writing? Sure, I often do. Did I do that when I had little kids? I did not.

Do I think "women's work" should consume a woman's life? I do not. Do I think that work is important? I do, I really do.

We say "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," but we don't tell Jack to just blow off his job. Instead we get the incessant worst case scenario: Starving Artist, Starving Artist, Starving Artist.

Americans:

From Wikipedia: A graham cracker is a sweet flavored cracker made with graham flour.

The next ingredient (which is also extremely traditionally American but slightly more variable) is typically Hershey's chocolate, but you could probably swap this out in the UK with any plain chocolate bar.

Last ingredient is big marshmallows, the kind you do the chubby bunny challenge with, like the size of your thumb and twice as thick.

A proper s'more, the most traditional possible variety, involves to graham cracker squares, two slab segments of Hershey's chocolate, and one to two marshmallows depending on your preference for filling and gooeyness. You put a slab of chocolate on one of the graham cracker squares. Your marshmallows should be toasted, usually over a campfire but if you're doing them at home over a gas stove burner is fine, but the fire part is critical. You can toast them to whatever degree you like, some people like them nice and golden brown but still kind of firm in the middle, me personally? I want that bitch to CATCH ON FIRE, I want it gooey and sticky as hell in the middle, crispy and burnt on the outside. Slap that motherfucker on your graham cracker and chocolate square, top with the other one so your marshmallow and chocolate are sandwiched together by graham cracker on the outside. You do this with your freshly toasted marshmallow because ideally it will be hot enough to start to melt the chocolate so it sticks to the marshmallow and the graham cracker and, combined with the gooey marshmallow, it keeps the whole thing together, and for that reason some people will let them sit for a hot second to let the melting process happen (especially if like me you have chocolate on BOTH graham cracker squares, not just one, because you're a sugar fiend), but if you are a young child you do not have that degree of patience and you eat that shit immediately, unmelted chocolate and all. Consume your summer camp delight like a tiny club sandwich, get gooey sticky marshmallow and chocolate all over your hands, and enjoy.

A couple weeks ago I’m going to get lunch and as I open the fridge, my mother attempts to communicate to me that any chicken currently in the fridge is ok for people to eat, because the chicken that was intended for the dog to eat has been used up.

What she actually says is, “That’s human chicken.”

After taking a minute to process all horrible implications of the phrase “human chicken”, I decide to go a different route and hold the tupperware of chicken out to my sister, saying, “Behold, a man!”

This was evidently the wrong choice, as it meant I had to explain to my parents who Diogenes was, thereby cementing the incident in their minds and leading to me, just now, opening the fridge to see the following incredibly cursed image:

I know what I am doing is wrong

I know there is an activity that looks similar that is not wrong