Life, With Kids

It’s pretty likely that it’s a four digit number, and as there are four digits chosen there, that means that there cannot be any repetition. This mean that there are:

No, no, no. Don’t base your deductions of psychology. Let’s talk chemistry. When you first press a button, there’s more of the natural oils on your skin, and therefore it wears down the numbers on the keys faster. Obviously 0 is the first one, then. Try 0791 first.

The light is green.

the hot, dry air of jakku, making mirages of old memories just outside the shell of her AT-AT. the desert so quiet that you can hear sand sliding down the dunes, in soft silky layers. rey, scraping crumbs off her plate with her fingertips, pressing her droid with more questions. what’s naboo? what’s a forest? how big is a forest? what’s a tree? how many trees are there? (no one else tells her about these things. no one else talks to her.) the droids go everywhere, she realizes. they see everything and keep everything, scavengers of memory and information, of events and people and ideas. she learns binary until she gets good enough to detach the comm screen and just listen; during the day she quietly practices binary to herself, whistling each beep and tone as she hikes the dunes to the star destroyers, her calves aching. when she gets home, the droid greets her with a happy beep. for a few months, it feels nice, strange, hopeful. it feels odd to have someone waiting for her. refreshing, almost. 

and then one day rey comes home and the astromech droid doesn’t beep, no whistle of greeting. the light in its glassy round eye is dark. the fuel cells are dead. her heart sinks. she searches the star destroyer endlessly for another working fuel cell, tries to trade for them at niima outpost, but to no avail: the model is too old, and any fuel cells that could work are all being used for other things. that night she wears her x-wing helmet and sniffs, watching the stars, wrestling with hope and despair in equal measure; in the morning she drags the droid to unkar plutt and trades its parts for twelve portions. the first portion is bitter and tasteless, more so than usual, but it’s alright, rey thinks. her friend even fed her.

now the correct answer to this question, in my opinion, would be “that is a fire alarm. we only touch fire alarms if there is a fire. if there is a fire, you would pull the handle and it would make a very loud noise so that other people know to get out of the building.”

according to several reliable sources, my sister-in-law’s answer to the question was, “it says ‘pull.’”

So I have been setting this prank up for about 3 weeks now, but unfortunately the fruits of my labor came to fruition yesterday. All for the best I guess.

Background: My wife and I are very healthy and we eat the same thing for breakfast every day, well maybe a solid 350 days a year. It is egg whites and toast. It has got to the point that if I don’t eat this for breakfast my entire day feels “off.” I put salsa on my eggs while she uses ketchup and she has to have ketchup or else she will not eat breakfast. We have a backup bottle or two in the pantry just in case she runs out.

3 weeks ago: I notice that her bottle is running pretty low and she has to actively shake the bottle to get the last remnants out. We are pretty earth conscious as well, so nothing goes to waste, use until the last drop! There is still just enough left in the bottle that I can tell she is thinking that she shouldn’t recycle it just yet and puts it back into the fridge. I notice this thought process going on in her head and decide I should mess with her. Once we finish up breakfast she goes to get ready. I take one of the full bottles of ketchup and add just enough to the almost empty bottle so that she will have the amount needed for breakfast the next day. Breakfast the next day rolls around and she does the same thing adds ketchup to her breakfast and decides there is just enough to save and puts it back in the fridge. I again refill the bottle with just enough for the next day. I should also mention that she is short, I hid the refill bottle at the top of the pantry so she could not see that it had been opened and used.

2 weeks ago: After 7 days slyly watching her add ketchup to her breakfast I can begin to see an intrigued look on her face when she is prepping her breakfast. She doesn’t say anything, but you can tell she has taken notice of the bottle. This goes on for another 7 days.

1 week ago: Breakfast continues to go off without a hitch and every time she adds the ketchup to her breakfast she gets a little twinkle in her eye, like she really really wants to say something about it, but doesn’t want me to make fun of her being crazy and thinking the ketchup bottle is never ending. To the point that she will look at me, start to say something and then stop herself change the subject and put the bottle away. I have never looked forward to breakfast so much in my entire life!

All this week: She is on the verge of saying something everyday. Its becoming hard to not laugh while watching her add the ketchup to her eggs, but I am laughing hysterically on the inside. At this point I have used roughly a half bottle of ketchup refilling the other one. This is all I can imagine when watching her

Yesterday: She adds ketchup to her breakfast and looks me directly in the eye and dead serious says, “/myname/ we have a fucking magical ketchup bottle.” I could not control my laughter and proceed to loose my shit while she tries to explain to me how she has used the exact same bottle of ketchup for 3 weeks and it has been almost “empty” the entire time. She now thinks I am laughing because of her belief in magic and she is trying as hard as possible to convince me that she is serious and it IS magic. I proceed to go into the pantry, take out the half empty bottle of ketchup and place it on the counter. It all finally clicks in her head and at that moment the empty ketchup bottle clicked into my head, but don’t care because I made a magic ketchup bottle happen so I am essentially Jesus.

“Wait, how many different cultural celebrations are there among Humans?”

In the end, they come to the conclusion that Santa is most likely a mythical figure, instead of a factual one. Still, that doesn’t stop them from making him a sort of unofficial mascot for the Tal Shiar’s intelligence on Earth.

HE SEES YOU WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING

HE KNOW WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE

HE KNOWS IF YOU’VE BEEN BAD OR GOOD

It’d be more useful if people actually organized to communicate to tumblr their displeasure with the lack of replies as opposed to just bitching about it. Could you imagine a bunch of folks picketing tumblr HQ? That’d be wild.

I hadn’t actually emailed support about replies until today. They directed me to this site https://www.tumblr.com/support which brings up a form you can fill out. Have you filled out the form to indicate you want replies back? I just did. I put it under the feature request category

Maybe if they get inundated it will make a difference. Maybe not. But it’s more effective than just complaining, IMO.