We've just finished lunch at my favorite type of restaurant, a dark and dirty Mexican taqueria where you're kind of afraid to sit down anywhere because you might catch chlamydia, and Leta has just finished eating an entire plate of refried beans. That she loves this kind of food as much as I do is disproportionately thrilling to me, but I have to take any resemblance between us where I can. I'm pretty sure Jon is going to write a whole treatise about how horrifying it was to find out over the weekend that the reason Leta carries around so much junk is because I used to do the exact same thing, that my parents once opened my closet to find four years worth of Happy Meal boxes that I could not bear to throw away and a box full of candy bar wrappers I had been saving, just in case I ever needed them for anything. Like, I don't know, to prove to anyone interested just how fucking bizarre I was.

As we clear the table Leta asks if she can have some ice cream, probably because we've just spent the last three days with Grandmommy who would give Leta cocaine if she asked for it. Funny how becoming a parent makes you shift all your ire from other people's mischievous kids to grandparents and their unrelenting willingness to screw with you. Having your own children forces you to realize that the reason kids can sometimes be so repugnant is BECAUSE THEY HAVE GRANDPARENTS.

I tell her, no, no ice cream this time, but since she's been so well behaved today she can have some Skittles when we get to the car.

Her arms shoot straight into the air over her head, and her hands start waving in circles. "Skittles?!" she screams.

"Yes," I answer. "You can have a few Skittles."

She brings her arms back down and wraps them affectionately around my elbow, leans in with her mouth very close to my ear and says, "You mean a whole lot of Skittles."